German childcare plan sparks debate on stay-at-home mums

Ms Rueckert acknowledges that “being a housewife is not necessarily good fun” because “her work is not valued”. Nevertheless, housewives quietly “hold things together and provide an atmosphere which is good to come home to”.

Another article argues that for a mother to stay at home indefinitely is not fair on the father, who finds himself condemned to be the sole breadwinner in uncertain economic times. Christoph Droesser says such men miss out on valuable family time.

“A woman who expects me to provide for her and our children ‘until death do us part’ puts a burden on my shoulders of which even the strongest can no longer say today whether they can bear it, even if they want to,” he adds.

An article in Die Zeit’s magazine supplement makes a different point: choosing to give up one’s career to stay at home with the children can result in poverty if the breadwinner ends the relationship. Julia Friedrichs, whose article is about a mother who faces this predicament, says the possibility of resuming work and sharing childcare with her partner had not even entered the woman’s mind.

“Contrary to Scandinavia and France, where the state sponsors childcare, or Britain, where many women have no choice but to take up work again soon, Germany is still a conservative country in which the state chiefly supports the mother who stays at home rather than childcare facilities,” she says.

BBC Monitoring, external reports and analyses news from TV, radio, web and print media around the world. For more reports from BBC Monitoring, click here