Fabulous article published in the UK Telegraph about the unfair stereotypes of working mums and the pressure on us to "have it all" by "doing it all".
Once again, the debate around whether or not mothers should work has raised its ugly head. Oliver James’ latest book How Not to F*** Them Up highlights the rather obvious fact that under-threes need high-quality nurturing from responsive carers if they are to flourish. This prompted a row on R4’s Woman’s Hour recently, for while James denies pointing the finger at working mothers, the sub-text to his new book implies that it would be better for the children if their mothers stayed at home and looked after them.
Would it really? Or does it depend on the mother herself, her circumstances, her ambitions and her needs – emotional and financial? What if she is frustrated, unfulfilled and financially compromised? But if James is right and the mother is the optimum carer – even when her circumstances, ambitions, and needs suggest otherwise – it’s hard to see the finger pointing anywhere save at the working mother.
Enough. It’s time to call a truce. There is far more that unites women as mothers than who works and who doesn’t. All mothers try to do their best for their children, whether they work, stay at home, or do a mixture of both. None earns top marks; it’s not a competition, remember? No choice is better than another. But given that the majority of women now have no choice but to work, it is time we moved the debate on.
The question is not: should mothers work, but how can we find constructive ways to support working families – yes, I mean the father, as well as the mother? As for full-time mothers, the issue is not whether full-time mothers are somehow opting out or selling themselves short, but how, as Oliver James has himself asked, can we enable them to feel valued, rather than, as is sometimes still the case, second best?
We won’t find the answers unless we let go of an air-brushed, wishful portrait of motherhood. Let’s not harp back to those few supposedly halcyon years in the 1950s when a woman stayed at home, pinny and lipstick on, smiling children in tow. In the real past, mothers worked, and those who could afford not to farmed out their young to wet nurses, nannies and governesses. Children of all classes were cared for by a wide variety of adults from an early age. And so they are today, as parents go out to work, as will their children in turn.
We educate girls for work, obviously, and most want to work, to earn their own living and fulfil personal ambitions. But if they become mothers, they have little choice within our current working culture but to devise ingenious ways of being more flexible, stretching 30 hours a day out of the standard 24, in order to meet all of their obligations, both at work and at home.
That’s where the guilt kicks in, and the frustration, and the fatigue. Literally labouring under the cultural misconception that the mother’s contributions to child-rearing is of greater value than that of the father, she is torn in two – between the desire (and the need) to work, and the desire (or pressure) to play a greater role in her child’s upbringing.
So she compromises her own needs. She takes career breaks, moves into part-time work or sets up her own business so she can work from home and at night after the children are asleep. She argues with the father of their child until, in time, he takes on not only more of the childcare, but more responsibility for their child’s upbringing. That’s a good thing: this way decisions are shared, domestic tasks re-distributed. Parenting, whether it’s deciding what to have for Sunday lunch, or where your child should go to secondary school, becomes a joint endeavour.
"I don’t know how she does it" is no longer the mother’s mantra, juggling is no longer a badge of honour. OK, I know we are not there yet, but that’s the breakthrough we need; that’s the sea change. When fathers invest more emotionally and practically in the family, its foundations are strengthened. Men are less likely to leave, and the children grow up with closer relationships with both parents.
But back to reality: guilt hangs over many working mothers like a storm cloud, fuelled by a wide range of (largely male) baby "experts" from Dr Spock to Oliver James, offering up new guidelines we always somehow fail to meet. James even goes as far as to divide mothers into patronising stereotypes: "Huggers", "Organisers" and "Fleximums". Every mother I know has to be all three.
Once, not so very long ago, it was enough for parents to keep their children fed, warm and healthy until they could support themselves. Now we talk about "good mothers" and "bad mothers", like they were characters in a fairy tale. To be a "good" mother is an intense, full-time activity with a host of additional responsibilities, from helping with homework and playing games to being an expert in psychology so that a child’s confidence is never undermined by negative parenting.
The "good mother" is there in the early years but, as many working mothers with older children recognise, it it isn’t just the early years that matter. "I think it’s when they’re older, when they start to roam more in their minds and bodies that they need you more," says Laura Dugdale, who has four children aged between 17 and 23, and runs High Spirits, an events consultancy. “Any loving person can change their nappy but it’s much more important to get the level of nurturing right later on. That’s when you want to be there to answer the difficult questions."
"We know that early conditioning is important for a child’s future mental health, but that has been turned into a challenge to the mother to be perfect," concurs Penny Bickerstaff, a management consultant with two teenage daughters. "But actually it’s being aware of your own psychological patterns so that you don’t pass them on, rather than whether or not you are also working."
My own daughters are now 21 and 17, and when I look back over our times together as a family – my working (OK, mostly at home) has been completely irrelevant to their state of being. For what matters most is the culture of love, security, trust and honesty they have had at home. Their (working) father has been so involved in their care that we are almost interchangeable. If I were to die tomorrow, life in our house would carry on much the same without me (although they would certainly eat less well). Though we have inevitably made mistakes, I feel confident that we have sown enough in the way of good seeds for their future working lives and relationships.
Few things undermine the fabric of marriage and family life more than guilt. Instead of looking to mothers to provide "good parenting", it is time for working mothers, as well as full-time mothers, to relinquish whole chunks of responsibility to their children’s father. Family life can then flourish. We need to put the needs of of our children at the heart of working culture, for they are the future.
UK Telegraph - 'Life After Birth' by Kate Figes is published by Virago, £9.99
Published: 7 Jul 2010
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