So when did being a mum stop counting?
HOW do I feel about David Cameron being “horrified” when his wife Samantha floated the idea of giving up work to bring up their children? Frankly, I feel horrified. Let’s face it, the Camerons’ situation is hardly “needs must”. This is not a couple on the breadline, wretchedly robbing Peter to pay Paul.
The Camerons are awash with wonga. His dad was a financial whiz. DC himself earned up a storm in the PR game. Sam’s mum, Viscountess Astor, is an interior design business mogul. Her stepdad’s rolling in it. There are country seats, holiday homes, fleets of cars – indeed all the worldly goods hard cash can buy.
Why did Cameron recoil from the notion of his wife failing to delegate the care of their children to nannies and instead undertaking the task herself? “He thought I would become someone, not the person that he knew and was used to.”
Hang on a second, isn’t that precisely what is supposed to happen to people when they morph into parents? Men evolve into fathers. Women blossom into mothers. Responsibility for another human being is designed to change and influence us.
SUFFUSED with hormones, enraptured by the feeling of that tiny downy head in the crook of our arms, women are surely programmed by nature to hunker down, stay warm and safe and nurture the baby they have created, not to squeeze into Spanx, a suit and painful court shoes, hand over the baby to an almost-stranger and hurtle back to the office.
Men are likewise orchestrated to accelerate their hunter/gathering urges and rev up their potential paternal pep-talks. In other words any spouse naive enough to imagine parenthood will leave his or her partner utterly unchanged deserves the shock heading their way.
Since when did it become acceptable to look down on stay-at-home mums, despising them for losing their killer work ethic, deploring their desire to lavish their energies on their offspring?
The historian Lucy Worsley said, “I have been educated out of the natural reproductive function.” It seems an entire generation has been “educated out” of respecting and appreciating the maternal instinct, even in the mothers of their own children.
Women who elect to be physically present in their babies’ lives report feeling alienated and condemned. Samantha Cameron’s comments show that it has become a badge of honour to remain your single self and soldier on in the workplace, leaving a less well-paid deputy to soothe your toddler’s grazed knee and teach your four-year-old to read. How did we get ourselves into this topsy-turvy position?
More important, will we ever be able to wrench our priorities round the right way again?