Women who work have a price to pay
IKNOW. I know. The debate about working mothers vs stay-at-home mums is a luxury in which only a few women can afford to indulge. The rest of us – and I’m now a working grandma too – simply don’t have the choice. It isn’t about philosophy, the allure of our stimulating careers or wanting a few quid to call our own. It’s about simple necessity. We work because we have to.
Even if we could afford a chaiselongue we’re too cream-crackered to recline upon it discussing the pros and cons of work versus raising our children without plunging instantly into a deep sleep. We’re up against it financially, struggling to pay our rent or mortgages, worried sick when our thriving children grow out of yet another pair of expensive school shoes. We march off to paid employment, despite soaring childcare costs and an ever-present pang niggling at our hearts whenever we have a chance to think about what we’re missing.
The figures are dramatic. In 1975 only half of mums went out to work. By 2015 72 per cent of us were employed outside the home. Consigning our children, often still in nappies, to the care of others has become the “new normal”.
SO ACCUSTOMED have we become to women charging back to the office a matter of months after giving birth we’ve begun to look askance at the tiny 28 per cent who are around to wipe their infants’ noses and guide them through their first steps in person. Women who have made the difficult decision to buck the trend and become what used inaccurately to be called “housewives” say they are subjected to a mixture of disbelief. “What? You don’t work? You stay at home all day and make pasta collages? You cannot be serious!” And derision – “You – chief cook and bottle washer? What was the point of taking all those exams and climbing the career ladder? You must be so frustrated. What a waste!”
Before we turn inexorably into a society in which women are despised for bringing up their children, let us A BILLION people gawping at one might well put one off one’s carbs. Prince Harry has joined a gym and is following Meghan’s pre-wedding diet which is big on kale and DURRELLS fans are enthralled by the chemistry between Keeley Hawes’ Mrs Durrell and driver, handyman, raconteur and player of a plaintive guitar Spiro. We’ll have to IN A triumph of marketing over reality, Abba promise a reunion and brand new tour. In fact, the four have recorded a new track but intend to stay at home counting their cash while the paying public see holograms perform their greatest hits. Frankly holograms are surplus to requirements.
stop for a second and examine our current predicament. We don’t flinch at the thought of tiny babies checked into nurseries from dawn till dusk. We applaud the existence of breakfast and homework clubs which effectively contain children within the school gates for up to 11 hours a day. We bewail the prevalence of “unaccounted for” youth at juicing and low on burgers and carbohydrates. Slender sylph Meghan – who tries to “eat vegan” most of the week – doesn’t look as if she has an ounce to shed but Hazza, wait till the series finale on Sunday to find out whether the departure of Spiro’s wife opens the door to the brewing romance we’re all aching to witness. Meanwhile it must be said that there’s an element of nominative determinism about Alexis best getting into trouble and at worst adding to the stabbed or stabbing statistics on our streets.
We accept that our elderly relatives must reside in care homes because the women who would have been around to look after them are physically unavailable. We are inured to couples passing one another in exhausted silence like as she’s said to call him, has slimmed down by half a stone and is even more photogenic for it. Remember the engagement interview and the delectable down Georgoulis who plays Spiro. He is gorgeous. The fellow knocks Poldark’s Aidan Turner into a cocked hat. If I were not so sensible, I’d be tempted to write “phwoar!” “cor!” and other exclamations of that ilk. ships in the night and resigned to a hectic pace as we rush from childminder to public transport, flinging in the washing as we go.
Are we really content with a status quo in which life is too expensive to be sustained if women don’t go out to work? If the majority of mothers join the workforce can society afford the price it has to pay?
ROAST CHICKEN DINNERS ARE NO LONGER ON MEGHAN AND HARRY’S MENU
on one knee proposal moment the couple said coincided with enjoying a night in roasting a chicken? That succulent fowl must now seem a distant memory.