Photograph: Alamy
In response to Lucy Mangan’s assertion (After six long weeks of unrelieved parenting, we’re on our knees, 31 August) that “you have no holidays that are worthy of the name after having a child”, I would suggest she stop moaning about the supposed horrors of the six-week holiday and enjoy her time with her child doing things together they can both enjoy. I am a grandparent carer, parenting second time around. I spent the bank holiday on an English beach in the sun with two of my grandchildren, swimming, digging in the sand and sharing a picnic with friends. What’s not to enjoy? If you’re too inflexible to adapt to the wonderful world of children, then don’t have them.
Janet Kay
Sheffield
• I am struck by how tiring your writers find the care of their children during the holidays. “At the end of three weeks of unbroken time with my children, a treacherous part of me was looking forward to returning to my desk,” says Emma Brockes (Journal, 31 August); “You have no holidays that are worthy of the name after having a child,” says Lucy Mangan. Those of us in my generation who just got on with it day after day, year after year, were never credited with doing anything particularly onerous. We “didn’t work”.
Jeanne Warren
Garsington, Oxfordshire
• While I have sympathy with Emma Brockes and Libby Brooks (Journal, 31 August) in their struggles to look after children and have good jobs, the articles were from a very middle-class position. The Guardian needs to do more to address the plight of women who are in a poverty trap, working two jobs, trying to look after their children, struggling to pay rent and buy food. Our bubble may be under threat, but their position is more desperate and we need to be talking about it.
Annie Tunnicliffe
London
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