This week’s RTÉ documentary Housewife Of The Year castigated a show hosted each year by Gay Byrne through the 1980s and early 1990s.

“A Handmaid’s Tale type ritual that left women in little doubt where they stood in post- de Valera Ireland,” said one commentator, adding that the film is “a reminder that Ireland was no country for women of any age, and Housewife Of The Year let them know that”.

That is not my memory of Ireland of the ’70s and ’80s. I remember a world where women predominantly stayed at home to tend to the full-time job of cooking, cleaning, mending, repairing, playing, supporting, lending a listening ear, cajoling, educating and minding their families. Up one side of the street and down the other. So that neighbourhoods were teeming with kids, in and out of each other’s houses, while husbands left them to it – secure in the knowledge they were being well looked after, both kids and mothers were often very happy at home.

Irish housewives were climate champions, mentors, and psychologists rolled into one.

Instead of castigating them and comparing them to characters of a dystopian future, we should celebrate what they created – glorious, secure and fun-filled childhoods that are largely gone.

Ciaran Cassidy’s documentary takes a more jaundiced look at what it was to be a housewife in decades gone by- selecting previous winners that told of a less rosy picture of life at home.

Anne McStay recalls having 13 children by 31 and a husband who sought refuge in the pub. Ena Howell, whose mother gave birth to her in Bessborough House and Baby Home, was advised by her adoptive family not to have any contact with her birth mother. “They couldn’t accept that their perfect family wasn’t perfect any........

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