"OF course only a generation or so ago we could have a one income family with one parent at home but that seems to be much more difficult with the cost of living these days."

I do not subscribe to this view, I believe it is priorities that have changed.

My parents were much worse off than we were during the time children were growing up, but their priorities were different. In the fifties, my mother had to work, not for luxuries, but to make ends meet. However, not until I started school, and then only part time.

The relative cost of clothing, was much higher then than it is now, and yet I always went to school neatly dressed in full school uniform because it was a priority. These days school uniform is often described as too expensive, and yet children will turn up to school in very expensive trainers and the like. Likewise with holidays, how many parents will take their children out of school to avoid paying premium holiday rates on the grounds that it's the only way they can afford it. It would never have entered my parents' heads to take me on holiday during term time, If we couldn't afford, then we didn't go.

No, I do not believe that it is any more difficult to meet the needs of the cost of living now, than it was in my parents' time, on the contrary, they had it much harder. What we have these days is a wish to have everything, and I'm afraid when it comes to priorities, chidren's well being, particularly moral and emotional and educational are not always as high a priority as it was for my parents.