As with every other celebrity in Ireland, Síle Seoige has a podcast – at the moment it feels like Ryan Tubridy has about 10. The novelty is that Seoige’s Ready To Be Real is actually worth listening to, being a thoughtful interrogation of the challenges of negotiating life as a parent in modern Ireland. She now takes that formula to the small screen for the absorbing first episode of Síle Seoige: An Saol Mar Atá (TG4, Wednesday).
The series explores the many difficulties of just getting by and holding on to your sanity in Ireland, starting with parenting. As Seoige makes clear from the outset, the difficulty isn’t really the hard work of raising children. It is the many impediments Ireland puts in our way – from unaffordable childcare to grinding commutes and, in the case of women, the expectation that they will be both perfect mothers and overachievers at work.
Seoige honestly lays bare these frustrations, though she is self-aware enough not to make the show about herself (her own two kids barely feature). A mother in Kildare describes how frazzled she was after a week at the office and the responsibility of being there for her kids when she was emotionally and physically hollowed out. And she meets a therapist in Waterford who says that parents should not strive for perfection – it’s okay “to be cranky sometimes” because your kids will turn out all right all the same.
There are a few missteps. The series appears to go beyond its brief by advocating for State-supported childcare without acknowledging the potential pitfalls – such as the very high probability that we’d end up with the childcare equivalent of the HSE or RTÉ, ie bureaucratic bloat that would cause more harm than good. But a trip to Norway shows a better way is possible – though that would require an efficient public sector that prioritised the wellbeing of the taxpayer. In other words, she might as well have gone for a weekend to Narnia for all the relevance it has to Ireland.
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What’s refreshing about the series is that Seoige doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. She isn’t a glamorous A-lister living her best life. She’s muddling through like the rest of us in a country that can feel as if it has been designed to make the working week as difficult as possible.
Seoige won’t solve any of those problems – but the important message of this podcast spin-off is that we are not alone. Getting by is a massive chore for all of us, and while things are unlikely to change, at least we’re all in the trenches together.
