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Hi folks Just a further recommendation for Dr Langhoff. I have seen her for 6 sessions on two separate occasions (a couple of years apart). She has been hugely important at helping me deal with PND and ongoing depression and most importantly at giving me tools to help me day-to-day. She is very welcoming and easy to deal with and very flexible about dates/times/how often you need to see her. Her CBT-based approach worked very well for me, being both practical but also exploring underlying problems and feelings. I wholeheartedly recommend her. I'm so glad I made the decision to see her. It was an important investment in my health.

I've sent you a PM

How very sad this thread is. I really hope DMC are reading and paying attention. The only reason I have chosen not to move my entire family from this practice is because I have a good relationship with the GP I always ask to see, and being in the middle of a course of medication I don't wish to move just now. This is the only reason I stay. Many of the complaints on this thread are justified. However if the practice read this and make some drastic changes then perhaps they can turn it around. Surely they will want to address the awful public response? How about a statement on here DMC?

I don't know he does, but I do. Was using myself as a reference.

Can I just chuck into the mix that it makes me sad to see things like: "I'm not doing this to have a break." People who do childcare and don't think their needs are important or relevant in these situations should know that they are. Childcare is so much harder than sitting on your backside in an office all day. There is absolutely nothing wrong with giving yourself and your child the opportunity to have time away from each other if it is of benefit to both of you, and in my experience it is. I've had post-natal depression during maternity leave after having both my children, and having just gone back to work for the second time I can tell you that being in the office is what I call my 'rest' time. I realise people don't want to create conflict with their partners, but if your partner hasn't looked after two children on their own for more than 1 week then they don't understand what it's like and have less experience to understand what is best for everyone. The needs of children are, of course, really important but they don't eclipse the needs of everyone around them too. Hope that's taken with the earnestness with which it is meant! I'll just add that, as DaveR says, a childminder is a good option as a transition away from you but still in a home environment. We used a childminder until age 3 and then on to nursery. Worked very well.

I still mean that Huguenot. It does need legislation. Legalbeagle shows it can work and she did well to persaude her company to agree - and it worked for all of them. Many companies wouldn't have accepted that without being forced into it, but thanks to legislation, flexible working hours are now your right to apply for if you are a parent of a child under 16. Hurray for legislation I say.

Quite right Brum, it is in my own company. I have the experience to move on to a job higher than the one I currently have but there are no part-time roles to apply for. As disappointing as it is I don't get my knickers in a twist about it any more because I know that this is also one of the things that is slowly changing. Unlike Huguenot I see absolutely no reason why businesses shouldn't be just as successful employing people who work all sorts of different hours and in different ways. It's entirely backward to think the standard working week is the only model. Huguenot, would you prefer if the workplace was only for people who don't have children? Or who didn't have elderly, sick or disabled relatives to care for? Or didn't have any other area of their life that interfered with their ultimate commitment to the workplace? You seem think the rest of us are being unrealistic expecting the workplace to accommodate the fact that we aren't robots, whereas I think it's you who expects an unreasonably narrow view of an employee. Businesses are finding there are benefits to being to flexible these days - and I'm not being rose-tinted specs about this - simple things like letting someone work from home means a business saves money on a desk, lighting and heating. Businesses continue to be ruthless, that's why they make money, and that's why they don't like changes in legislation, it costs them money in the short-term. But it benefits society in the long-term and that is good for the economy. Listen, if you love your job and think it is the most important thing in your life above all else then that's great and I'm happy for you. But some of the rest of the world has to go on producing human beings and having other interests in order to keep the world turning. Money does indeed make the world go around - that's why a lot of us go to work - but also reproducing keeps you in staff to nurse you when you're sick, to serve you food in a restaurant, and to clean the office that you spend so many hours in. We need people. We're an aging population. Same reason we need immigration. And Gordon Brown needs us parents to work as well to keep the economy moving. In the UK we have the longest working week in Europe and I for one, even if I worked full time wouldn't work the 60 hour week you're on about. We work longer hours than our parents ever did and we're no happier for it. Is there really something wrong with people being able to both work AND expect to have a life? And as SeanMac says, some countries manage to accommodate the family in the workplace just fine. It's not an impossibility at all. You, sir, are just a bit of a dinosaur.

No, actually I'm not keen on single sex and would always push for co-ed. I don't know if primary or secondary is more needed and would be happy to see either kind of school go in this space. I may do a freedom of information request to Southwark Council to see how many miles children have to travel to both primary and secondary schools in the area. That way we might know which is more necessary. My daughter isn't even at school yet, which may explain why I'm not aware of all the secondary schools around me. I'm just thinking ahead...

The phrase "a feminist orthodoxy in government" is pernicious in it's use here by Marin. Do we refer to the hundreds of years of parliament in Britain before 1919 when there was no women MP's as a period of "patriarchal orthodoxy in government"? No we don't. Women weren't allowed to vote let alone stand to be MPs. People who get all uptight about the ideas of all women shortlists - or as is being discussed here - putting women into the top roles of the workforce are always forgetting that men only MP shortlists and men only top jobs *were* the only kind up until the twentieth century. Good for you if you're happy doing what you do niledynodely. Here are my answers: 1. Yes I want to work very much. I really couldn't stay sane as a mother without it. But I know it's different for everyone. 2. Of course Mothers and Fathers should be able to stay at home if that is their choice. 3. Women absolutely tend towards roles such as teachers because it fits in with picking our kids up from school. However this is changing. The liberation of women has only happened in the last 100 years and I for one, despite expecting a 50/50 split of all responsibilities in my house between me and my partner, am not in any way surprised that things aren't quite equal out there in the rest of the world yet. 4. Men and women are suited to doing whatever jobs they would like to do. History has set us all on a certain path and society still walks down it, but it's changing... 5. The unequal representation of women at higher levels of the workforce is a result of unjust discrimination yes, among millions of other reasons. Not least, as I've said, that men have the jump on us by hundreds of years. But Government taking seriously the fact the imbalance is there is very important. 6. Do you see motherhood as a problem which makes it difficult for you to work? I think this question is phrased in a bit of a difficult way. If you are asking if being a mother makes it harder to work then the answer is of course yes. It could also seem that you're asking if kids are an inconvenience for someone with career plans, which seems a bit of a loaded question. Either way I have seen my career grind to a halt because I don't work full time. I don't find this at all fair (or sensible for my company to waste my skills in this way). 7. Do you think the problem of motherhood can be easily fixed by paid childcare subsidised if necessary by the state? Is Motherhood a problem? Yes I suppose it is, how sad. I dream of the day when just parenthood will be a problem! 8. Yes it's up to the state to sort this out, and do you know why? Because if you let us do it for ourselves it'll take forever. Businesses weren't going to give men and women flexible working hours unless forced to. Annoyingly people aren't going to vote-in more women MPs unless they're given all women shortlists, just like women wont be voted on to 50% of Boards of big companies - even though few of the people voting would admit to being sexist. If you can't achieve equality through the system as it is now then you have to change the system. And can I add that the sooner maternity leave is allowed to be split equally between men and women the sooner women will face less discrimination at work. Thanks for the great thread. Yours rantily etc etc

I'm a fan of the hospital and the help it has given me over the years, but I thought it was interesting that people would like the site to be used for something else because Kings is so near. One of my main concerns about the massive baby boom in the area is that in 5-10 years we'll be in trouble because there are practically no secondary schools in the immediate area - for girls at least. There's a shiny new boys academy on the Rye but that's no good to my daughter who will have to travel quite some distance when she gets to secondary age (depending on which school she manages to get into). I think the old hospital site would make a great school. Don't know if any of you are aware of people in other areas who have been campaigning for/starting their own schools? Aided by this group http://www.newschoolsnetwork.org/ . I also saw a group of parents in North London recently who were trying to force a PCT to sell an empty hospital so they could start their own school. I know very little about the process, but it was just a thought.