"The dads are certainly talking because they realise this bombshell with the bolt-on boobs who we've all pretended not to notice is actually for sale. "The mums are absolutely talking because they know what their husbands are thinking," he says, alluding to the fact Goff also admitted her high-paying clients include married men and that she helped "save marriages" by having sex with these gentlemen. "It's not a recipe for playground bonding with the mothers," says the father, "but it gives us dads something to think about while we're waiting for the school bell." It's been a big week for prostitution, with the stigma surrounding the profession flaring on Q&A Monday night thanks to Jane Caro's "historical analogy" that likened housewives to whores. I use that word because it was the term many people on social media invoked when they took exception to Caro's comparison. The press and adult industry may use the term "sex worker" but to many ordinary Australians - and parents at primary schools - women (and men) who choose to sell their bodies are still just whores.

This sort of casual abasement of sex workers is no doubt part of the reason Goff chose to go public with her story - aside from the fact she's spruiking a book - saying things like, "It is an empowered job for a woman" and "Is it such a big bloody deal?"and "Who am I hurting?" It's hard to know for certain what motivates people who seek publicity in the name of ostensibly noble causes while also plugging a product or brand. The very possibility they are acting on an altruistic impulse is usually enough to stymie direct criticism of why they're dragging the spotlight onto themselves. As a journalist, Goff would have known just how big a deal her revelations would be and the fact she's been seeing a child psychologist for a year in the lead-up to her announcement also suggests she's only too aware of who might get hurt: her children. Which leads us back to why people "have a problem" with Goff ... the effect it might have on her kids. As one mother at the school said to me: "My problem is the publicity. Yeah, her five- and seven-year-old might be cool with it. Let's see how they cope at 14 and 16 and 18 and how proud they are then. What is said cannot be unsaid. What is seen cannot be unseen.

"This is published. She can't take it back. She's just made it a million times harder for her kids. Blame 'us' all you like, but she's a media whore as much as she is between the sheets. "Prostitution is taboo for a reason; most women who go into it do so from a position of total weakness. Okay, she's empowered by it; she is probably in the one per cent of sex workers worldwide who are," said the mother. I put this to two sex workers one agreed, with another saying: "It's a simple case of envious women not wanting you to have your cake and eat it too. "The kids won't care. The school parents are just worried that language/behaviour may be influenced or be exhibited by said children of sex workers and they'll come home with confronting questions to their parents that they, as adults, haven't addressed themselves internally. "The heart of it is the Madonna/whore dichotomy. The fathers don't give a shit, they are our bread and butter. The women view it as having the best of both worlds; the joys of motherhood but independence financially with sexual variation.

"The reality is 50 per cent of sex workers are single mums f---ing for their children and they lose their children every day because it is used against them," said the woman. The great irony in all this is the "effect" on Goff's children will only be felt if parents and, causally, their kids are judgmental in the very manner of the parent concerned about the effect on Goff's children. This is the neat part about priggishness - we can pretend we're not like that, while tut-tutting that people like Goff should be pragmatic and take into account the unenlightened reactions of other people who are like that. A second father I spoke to about Goff said the morning after her TV appearance a couple of dads were "giggling" about the situation, which had seen a highly animated discussion between a group of mothers in the school's playground. While Goff has said "quite a lot of people in my life know what I do ... my community has been fantastic ... the school mums and dads are fascinated in what I do," it would seem not all of the more than 400 sets of parents at the school in question were in on the big secret.

Time will tell how they and, by extension, Goff's children deal with it. You can follow Sam on Twitter here. His email address is here.