Last week, I wrote about safety, domestic abuse, financial security and the cost of having no choice.

This week, I want to come back to the question underneath so much of this work:

What would change if care was treated as infrastructure?

Not as a private problem.

Not as a women’s issue.

Not as something mothers are expected to absorb quietly in the background.

But as one of the foundations society is built on.

Uruguay has already taken a step in that direction. In 2015, it created a National Integrated Care System, recognising care as the fourth pillar of social protection and naming the right to care and be cared for. It is not a perfect system, and like every public system it has challenges around funding, coverage and implementation. But the starting point matters.

Because once a country says care is a pillar of society, the conversation changes.

Care stops being treated as something that happens privately inside homes, mostly by women, with very little recognition and often no income attached.

It becomes something to plan for.

Something to fund.

Something to design work around.

Something that belongs in conversations about equality, employment, poverty, ageing, childhood, disability, health, education and economic participation.

And that is exactly the conversation Ireland still needs to have.

What Uruguay Did Differently, and Why Ireland Should Pay Attention

Uruguay did not solve every problem connected to care. No country has. But it did something important: it changed the starting point.

In 2015, Uruguay created a National Integrated Care System by law. Instead of treating care as something that belongs only inside families, it recognised care as part of the country’s social protection system and named the right to care and be cared for.

That matters because the law did not describe care as a private arrangement, a favour or a family issue to be managed quietly in the background. It described care as something society has to organise.

The system focuses on people who need support in daily life, including young children, older people, disabled people and people in situations of dependency. It also recognises the people who provide care, both paid and unpaid.

In practice, that means Uruguay started building a national framework around care: expanding services, training care workers, setting standards, coordinating information, and trying to change the culture that leaves care mostly on women’s shoulders.

It is not one single programme. It is a way of saying that care has to be planned, funded, regulated, staffed and valued.

Ireland is not starting from nothing. We do have childcare subsidies, home support, family services, disability supports, homecare providers and community organisations doing important work every day.

But having care services is not the same as having a care system.

A parent can have a childcare subsidy and still have no childcare place. An older person can be assessed for support and still wait for hours that do not meet their needs. A disabled person can be entitled to support and still have their family filling the gaps. A mother can be told work is available, while the hours, childcare, transport and cost of living make that work impossible in practice.

That is where Uruguay’s example is useful.

Not because Uruguay is perfect, and not because Ireland can simply copy another country’s model, but because Uruguay named care as a right, as a shared responsibility, and as something that has to be planned across society.

Families still matter, of course. But families are not expected to carry care alone. The State has a role. Communities have a role. Employers and the wider economy have a role. Paid care workers have to be recognised. Unpaid carers have to be seen. And people who need care have the right to receive it with dignity.

That is the part Ireland should pay attention to.

Ireland has many pieces of care.

What we still need is the courage to treat care as infrastructure.

When Mothers Become the System

When care is not properly organised, mothers are often forced to become the system.

They become the childcare plan, the afterschool plan, the sick-day plan, the appointment manager, the school contact, the disability advocate, the elder care coordinator, the emotional support, the emergency backup and the person expected to somehow make work fit around all of it.

And then, when paid work becomes impossible or only possible in small fragments, we describe mothers as if they have simply stepped away from employment by choice.

But choice is a difficult word when the structures around women are so limited.

If childcare is unavailable, unaffordable or does not match the hours of work, what choice is there? If school finishes hours before the working day does, what choice is there? If part-time work is low-paid, insecure or treated as less serious, what choice is there? If employers see care as a gap instead of experience, what choice is there?

This is why the language matters. When a country recognises care as a pillar of society, it is saying that care is not an individual inconvenience. It is part of the architecture that allows people to work, children to grow, older people to live with dignity, disabled people to be supported, and families to survive.

Ireland often speaks warmly about families, but warmth is not infrastructure.

A mother cannot build a career on warm words. She cannot pay rent with praise. She cannot attend training with “sure you’re doing a great job” if there is no childcare place, no school-hour option, no transport, no income and no realistic pathway back into work.

If we want mothers to participate fully in society, then care has to be built into the design of society.

Designing Work Around Care

This is where Mums Hub sits in the conversation.

We are not building a national care system, and we are not pretending that school-hour work is the answer to every problem. But we are working with one very real part of the care question: what happens to mothers when paid work is designed as if care does not exist?

For many mothers, the issue is not lack of ambition. It is not lack of skill, and it is not lack of willingness to work. It is that the available work often assumes full-time availability, fixed hours, long commutes, expensive childcare, no school runs, no sick days, no appointments, and no years of unpaid care sitting behind them.

That is not a small mismatch. It is the place where many mothers are pushed out.

If we are serious about care as infrastructure, then work has to be part of that infrastructure too. School-hour roles, part-time roles with dignity, job-share options, flexible work, remote or hybrid work where possible, and training that fits around family life are not small favours to mothers. They are practical ways of recognising that care is real, and that paid work has to be designed around the reality of people’s lives.

This also means recognising the years mothers spend caring as experience, not absence. A mother who has managed children, appointments, budgets, schools, crises, health needs, emotions, routines and family life has not been doing nothing. She has been carrying responsibility every day, often without pay, status or recognition.

When employers treat care as a gap, they lose skilled women. When policy treats care as private, mothers lose income and independence. When society treats care as invisible, families pay the price.

But when care is recognised and work is designed around it, mothers have a better chance of staying connected to employment, rebuilding confidence, earning in their own name, participating in society, and caring from a place of greater stability; raising children who are healthier, more resilient, more secure and more able to thrive.

What Ireland Can Learn

The lesson from Uruguay is not that Ireland should copy another country’s system exactly. Every country has its own history, services, pressures and political choices.

But Ireland can learn from the starting point.

Care is not something that happens quietly in the background while the “real” economy gets on with its work. Care is part of the real economy. It is what allows children to grow, older people to live with dignity, disabled people to be supported, families to function and workers to show up.

If we continue to treat care as private, unpaid and mostly women’s responsibility, then we will keep seeing the same consequences: mothers pushed out of work, carers left exhausted, children and families depending on overstretched systems, and employers wondering where the talent has gone.

A care system does not have to be built overnight. But it does have to be named. It has to be planned. It has to be funded. It has to be connected across childcare, disability, ageing, employment, education, health, housing and social protection.

Most importantly, it has to be designed around real lives, not ideal workers with no care responsibilities.

Ireland already has many pieces of care. What we still need is the decision to treat care as one of the foundations society is built on.

Because care is not a women’s issue.

It is not a private problem.

It is not a gap on a CV.

It is not something mothers should have to carry alone.

Care is infrastructure.

And if Ireland wants a stronger, fairer and more resilient society, care has to become one of its pillars.