Angela Priestly for Women’s Agenda writes:
[W]e couldn’t help but gasp at comments shared yesterday by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton.
Here’s what he had to say while talking to reporters.
“My wife works, but I can tell you she’s a great wife and a great mother. We never had an au pair, she never asked for one. We have never been in a situation to employ an au pair and made an active decision not to.”
The comment is patronising and judgmental, and carries the subtext that women need to ‘ask’ for au pairs, but only if they’re struggling at being a ‘wife’ or a ‘mother’, or are not all that ‘great’ at either or both roles. There are, as my colleague Georgie Dent tweeted last night, just two many shades of wrong to unpack in it.
https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/my-wife-works-but-shes-a-great-mother-peter-duttons-au-pair-comments-are-so-wrong/