Juggling work and family is bad for women’s health says TV star (and mum) Mariella
WOMEN are suffering from “extreme insomnia” because they are attempting to juggle work and domestic life at the same time, Mariella Frostrup said yesterday.
The husky-voiced TV presenter and agony aunt says women have ended up in an “impossible situation” which is damaging to mental health and impossible to sustain.
The 57-year-old mother-of-two also has a dig at her lawyer husband for failing to pull his weight at home.
And she says she fears that her teenage daughter will face exactly the same struggles as she has.
“I think there’s a nation women suffering extreme insomnia because they’re trying to do too much, working and handling all the domestic, backstage stuff,” she says.
“It’s no longer just a slogan about having it all, what we’ve ended up with is an impossible situation which is damaging to our health and mental health and impossible to sustain.
“I’m really angry about it.” By contrast, her husband, human rights lawyer Jason McCue – who is nicknamed Mark Darcy after the Bridget Jones character by friends – gets to prioritise his career.
“My husband is Mark Darcy, in so far as he’s preoccupied with himself and his career, and he picks and chooses his involvement in our domestic life,” she explains in an interview with Psychologies magazine. “He’s a brilliant cook of
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and a brilliant dad, but it’s an optin,” she says.
The Norwegian-born presenter says she is worried that her daughter Molly, 15, is going to face the same struggles as she did as she grows up, blaming a prevailing culture for women to be self-critical and to feel fear.
“I think it’s going to be nearly as difficult for Molly as it has been for me and that upsets me,” she says.
Frostrup, who lives in Somerset but travels regularly to London for work, says how to build resilience in girls is a billion-dollar question.
She adds that her son Dan, 14, is the opposite to her daughter in terms of self-confidence – an issue she believes is damaging for women across the world.
“There’s a strong culture in women to be self-critical, not to believe in our abilities and to feel fear,” she says.
“My son’s belief in his abilities is inflated to the point that it’s probably dangerous and my daughter is the opposite.
“I’ve done everything to tell her she’s amazing and clever but she struggles with self-doubt.
“I think it’s changing but minority of women.
“How much it has to do with the world telling us we’re not as good, or how we’re nurtured at home. I don’t know.
“How to build resilience in girls is the billion-dollar question. I wish I had the answer.” in
a‘There’s a strong culture in women to be self-critical and to feel fear’