Motherload

Two people recently sent me a piece called ' The Pandemic and the Female Academic ', so I felt it incumbent upon me to clamber back onto my Motherload soapbox, lean from the top floor window of my coronavirus lockdown retreat, and scream into the indifferent winds. Very yogic. This is a paraphrased version of what my poor unwitting friends received in response: Thank you! Mmmmm… thesis: "it's going to be even harder for women with children to get their work done if they are on lockdown at home."    I don't want to appear rude, but isn't this of the No Shit Sherlock school of writing? This is normal Motherload, merely topped off with the whipped cream of pandemic.   And BTW I have never heard the term 'maternal wall' before, in all the years I've spent banging my head against it, writing about the nonsense that is combining children and a career as a woman. Speak soon, love, Ingrid. Although when I come to think of it, whenever I have...

In the brilliant, provocative, honest  Nickel and Dimed , Barbara Ehrenreich takes a deep dive into the world of low-paid work in America. The story she has to tell is in some ways predictable. She can't make ends meet on the kind of money the lowest-paid make. No shit, Sherlock. What saves her account from turning those low-paid people into victims, and turns them instead into the  victimised  — people thrown under the wheels of a systemic problem: Capitalism — is that she never tries to hide the fact that she is privileged, well-educated and cushioned. Her honesty in admitting and claiming this (she makes no bones about the fact that she would never willingly choose to take a low-paid job) means that her work exists in a realistic framework. She is in no sense romanticising the 'poor who are always with us'. And she is not justifying herself.  No one can accuse you of what you claim as your own. How I love that her name means 'rich in honour'...

Jonah Lehrer Jonah Lehrer's 2012 fall from grace, following the discovery of errors and 'self-plagiarism ' in his published work, is a well-known story in academic and journalistic circles. It seems to have been, not his editorial mistakes, which are so easy to make, as much as his subsequent lies and deception about them, which really turned people off, and caused his spectacular career shutdown.  In July 2016, Lehrer told the story of 'what happened next', for The Moth in Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife and children. Before you read any further, please listen to what he has to say: he calls the story ' Attachment '.  I had been made aware of Lehrer's book Proust was a Neuroscientist back in 2007, by friends who knew I'd written on Proust, and who sent me copies of his work. Professional jealousy compelled me to smile publicly but privately find fault with it – he seemed only to have read the opening pages of A la recherche ...

Thinking about The US Admissions Scandal  had me reflecting on my own pathway through Higher Education and Oxbridge back in the 80s and 90s. Wow, it only cost me bulimia and an overdose to get into Cambridge. Cheap at half the price!  Luckily, after my own head of department ended my career as a lecturer at Cambridge, because I'd had a baby, it became financially impossible for me ever to pay Cambridge to get that baby into Cambridge. Or change the broken system from within. Or indeed, save for a pension.  Instead, these days, Cambridge comes to me as an alumni, asking for money.  Oh, and so does Oxford. I went there too (Just look for the Ingrid Wassenaar Library).  These days I earn a living supporting schools and students from different kinds of background through the Oxbridge process. My main goal is that they should mentally survive it. I'm a Tiger Mother who won't be pushing her kids through the Oxbridge mill.  External ma...

Where are all the children? Nursery fees rise as free childcare scheme backfires So this is how life in Britain will get worse, or has never improved. In France, the State subsidises about 80% of the cost of childcare. They *just pay for it* and have done for years. The amazingly simple rationale is that it's good for kids, and good for parents. No shit Sherlock. In Australia, government offers parents a healthy subsidy towards the cost of childcare – it depends on income, but it's generous. In Britain, the Government makes a promise to 'give' 30 hours a week of free childcare – but doesn't back it with nearly enough funding. This means that childcare providers are at risk of going bust, and have to start charging parents for the so-called free care, which excludes the poorest. The State is simply creating the conditions for a vicious circle. You can't tell both parents in a two-parent family, or single parents, to 'go back to work...

Amsterdam We recently took a trip to Holland, and were very excited to go by ferry. At least, I was – husband and children were a lot less enamoured of the idea. For me, it was pure Proustian Rush – the car queue in the freezing 6am wind and exhaust fumes on the quayside, the endless monotony of grey North Sea slapping the bows of the ship, the hours and hours of doing nothing except word search games in a stuffy lounge on fixed plastic seats – marvellous! The car ferry has not changed since the 1970s, and this made me preternaturally happy. But at Dutch immigration, things took an unforeseen turn. Married to an Aussie as I am, I am used to his being sized up suspiciously at immigration. He was once nearly sent back to Australia as we stood there, whey-faced, at the London border control, after the twenty-four-hour flight from Brisbane, because he hadn't transferred his right to remain stamp into his renewed passport. I am used to cracking hilarious jokes about his being ...

Lara Feigel is publishing what sounds like a fascinating analysis of maternal ambivalence, centred on Doris Lessing. Feigel writes , thoughtfully and thought-provokingly, about Lessing and other female writers on ambivalence. Here are the thoughts Feigel provoked in this particular ambivalent mother. I took The Golden Notebook with me when I went away for a month to write the first draft of Motherload , in 2014, and it found its way into the manuscript. I remember reading it in horror, while wind and rain lashed the February house, and I felt dreadfully alone. Horror, because I identified so much with Anna Wulf, and didn't want to have to. Why had nothing changed between 1962 and 2014? Just reading the book made me question exactly why I had felt it so necessary to leave my children, aged ten and seven, for a month, to write a book about motherhood. But it was perfectly obvious why. It had nothing at all to do with maternal ambivalence: of course I couldn...