Motherload

Now, I can hardly complain about Christmas. My former chef husband always cooks an incredible turkey and I baste in his glory. I have been able to leave my mother's warm embrace and step into the brawny waiting arms of a Christmas chef. I have never actually prepared the beast. Even when we lived in Australia — and still ate turkey in 40 degree heat, natch — it was broiled on the Weber by my father-in-law. The day itself is a piece of cake for me, compared with the stress it must cause many people, and those mainly female. I can remember my mother trotting for years between kitchen and sitting room, under the irritable watery eye of my father, trying to cook and Be There while the presents were opened. Her black patent leather shoes, with the gold buckle and a little heel, were firmly on; a gin and tonic was permanently in hand; she sported a smart red A-line skirt under an apron and a film of worry. Strange how silence is golden when it comes to the magical preparation of the ...

I Don't Know Why She Bothers has just been published by Daisy Waugh, to join the Mummybook pile. I read it at a couple of sittings, like a bag of sweets in front of Strictly Come Dancing . Nice to gobble, but not particularly nourishing. I Don't Know Why She Bothers , to be fair, wasn't intended to be a heavy read — its whole raisin d'être is that time is precious, and shouldn't be wasted agonising about one's children. Loving them, yes, but not agonising pointlessly about them. It's meant as an antidote — the cure of laughing at one's self — to killjoys, health and safety mongers, self-appointed experts, meddlers and misogynists. It's a joy manifesto. So far so good, I applaud mightily the motivation to write this book. It's important — so important, in fact, that I have been thinking about the same issues for a decade. It's not that Daisy Waugh is wrong — it's that she doesn't go nearly far enough. The book purports to be...

Yesterday Motherload led me to commit a bad thing. Like that’s unusual. No, hear me out, this is what happened. I was running late to collect the children, because I’d been working very hard on something… for the children (go figure). It was pouring with rain, and everyone else had also decided to drive to school. The reason I was increasing the world’s carbon footprint was because we have to get to a swimming lesson within half an hour on a Friday, and the only way we can do it is in the car.  Plus, frankly, I’m always running late, because I’m always trying to snatch a few seconds extra from the jaws of the playground wasteland. Those futile minutes spent just… waiting around for your children to come out of school, because, these days, you HAVE to be seen by the teacher so that they will release your kid (as otherwise they are bound to be snatched/run over in the gap between the school gate, and your waiting arms). Minutes usually taken up with sub-competitive...

Last night saw Showdown at our house. The usual story… a long day culminated in a bout of dinnertime naughtiness, then the barked order to, "Go upstairs and get ready for bed right now," then extended stubborn refusal, pushing, crying, howling, screaming, and me with my fingers in my ears and my eyes shut, willing it all to go away. It wasn't pretty. I didn't feel good for my Show Of Authority. The children were particularly outraged and irked, because their punishment was coterminous with not having apple crumble. They insisted that they had in no way been naughty, that they had, "just been laughing", and they wanted a recount. There was a tearful, fruitless, appeal to the Father, working upstairs. Eventually they gave up, and retreated to the silence and darkness of their lairs. I held firm. To my ears. I sat, catatonic, at my desk, pretending to sort out chores. Half an hour passed. My husband finished the work he was doing, gave me a look, and ...

A friend made a very intriguing comment this morning. Our children are going away for a five-day outward bound trip, and we stood in the October playground, acorns and condensation dropping on our heads, watching them try to unpack their rucksacks before they'd even boarded the coach. I was encouraging my friend to go out every night while her child is away, and take the chance to reconnect with her partner. She said, "But I find it really hard to go out if everything's not done, I'm not sure if I can actually do  that any more". We looked at each other, she, a highly intelligent, senior civil servant, and published author, working full time, me… in my yoga gear, and nodded. After a decade of clearing up, we have gradually been worn down until neither of us can face "dropping everything and going out for the fun of it", simply because of what will be waiting for us when we get back home. Now… is this being adult, depressed or a drudge? Which is it?...

A good friend of mine was having coffee round at my place this morning. She and I have often talked in the past about having children, whether or not to, and what it means not to have children. She described how a close friend with children said to her this summer, "I won't be able to see you 'til September". I was incredulous — until I thought about my own behaviour: I, too, duck into the trenches over the summer weeks, mainly because I don't have childcare, partly because everyone seems to go away, and sometimes we do too, and, with regard to single or childfree friends, I somewhere make the assumption that they won't want to see me with my pesky kids. But my friend today made it clear that it was she who felt excommunicated. "Why does she think I wouldn't want to see her children?" my friend said. I think that, after years of interrupted conversations, I know the answer: her friend wants to have a peaceful chat, and knows she won't g...

Harriet Harman gave a lovely answer this morning when pressed on why she didn't run for leadership of the Labour Party: I actually... still... wanted something else of my life outside the Party. She had just been discussing the paucity of women in Parliament (even as Thatcher was Prime Minister); the fact that fewer than 1000 men have taken up maternity leave if women want to return to work within a year of giving birth; the notion of transferring unused leave to mothers and mothers-in-law (although these people are likely to be working to reduce the earnings deficit they themselves suffered through having a family); and finally she had slipped in the old chestnut that women are still tearing their hair out looking for affordable, flexible, reliable childcare. Women. Because apparently no one, however much they believe in equality, can ever bring themselves to imagine men "looking for childcare". That, apparently, is intrinsically, inherently, BIOLOGICALLY part of a ...