Here is the blue sheep. And here is the red sheep. Here is the bath sheep. And here is the bed sheep. But where is the green sheep?
Its lilting refrain, and the dream-like logic of sheep in the bath, riding a train, sunbaking, shooting from a canon, have made Mem Fox's Where is the Green Sheep? one of my daughter's most beloved books.
So often have my husband and I raised the surreal but somehow profound question — 'Where is the green sheep?' — while admiring Judy Horacek's delightful drawings of unexpected sheep activity, that its rhythm has permeated deep into our subconscious.
Looking for any lost shoe, or toy, or set of keys in the chaos a 16-month-old brings is now accompanied by a pleading chorus of, 'Where is that green sheep?'
Fox knows how to speak to children, but what about their parents? A week ago this author of wildly popular picture books (her Possum Magic is Australia's highest selling children's book ever) was reported as condemning long daycare for young babies. Newspapers and television stations across the nation funnelled her critique into the headline, 'Mem Fox Blasts Childcare', and the predictable storm followed.
Working mothers 'offended' and 'disgusted' by Mem's comments were quickly located and photographed. There was much complaint about mortgage stress and even some talk of destroying books.
On the other side of the 'mummy wars' fence, the ritual warriors assumed their customary postures, berating 'selfish mothers' and a society so sick with affluenza it put mortgages above maternal love.
But there was one word missing word from all of this brouhaha — 'fathers'.
As seems always to be the case, discussion on childcare becomes a dispute over maternal responsibility and maternal guilt. Even Mem Fox, a self-described 'ageing, raging 60s feminist', began her critique of long daycare for young babies with 'parents', but soon slid into the more comfortable 'mothers'.
But the decision to place a young baby into full-time care is most often made by two parents — a mother and a father. This is a shared responsibility. And not only that, but the alternative — staying home with your child, full- or part-time — must also be a choice both parents can make.
The feminist revolution has profoundly altered the way men and women have relationships. For women of my generation it was taken for granted that we would study, travel,