Watch your back, not your bump!
As a TV drama shows how office rivals move in when you take maternity leave, LINDA KELSEY says (from experience)
Gripping psychological thriller The replacement, which starts on BBC1 tomorrow night, should have a health warning for pregnant women.
Something along the lines of: ‘potentially more damaging than alcohol, cigarettes and runny cheese. May induce paranoia.’
it stars Morven Christie (of grantchester) as Ellen, who discovers she’s pregnant just as she’s promoted at the uber- cool Edinburgh architectural practice where she works, and Vicky McClure (Line Of Duty), who plays paula, brought in to cover for her.
Things start out well enough. But as paula cosies up to Ellen in ways that make her feel uncomfortable, as she starts offering unwanted advice on motherhood, currying favour with bosses, muscling in on meetings and leaving her out of the loop, Ellen goes into meltdown.
poor Ellen, all hormones and anxiety, is over- reacting to lovely, supportive paula, say her co-workers — even her psychiatrist husband — but is she?
Watching this nail-biter, which captures (then ramps up) the mixed emotions every pregnant working woman feels as she hands over to her stand-in, i felt a shiver of recognition.
One that catapulted me back to 1988 when i was editor of Cosmopolitan and expecting my son, Thomas.
i remember the look of horror on the MD’s face when i told him i was pregnant. A look that mirrored the expression on the face of Ellen’s childless boss, Kay, in The replacement.
After a lengthy pause, my boss said to me ‘Well, i suppose, Linda, if that’s what you really want . . .’ before checking himself and congratulating me in a far from convincing manner.
My stomach may have been ballooning, but i felt deflated at this barely concealed negative response from my boss.
Like Ellen, i said i’d be off for three months max, even though at the time i was entitled to six months’ fully paid leave.
This was partly because, as the publisher’s first pregnant editor (in later years, a good number followed suit), i felt the pioneer’s need to prove herself.
Of course, i could manage my myriad responsibilities like a superwoman. A baby was a breeze that wouldn’t interfere a jot with my dedication to duty.
ALTHOUGH i couldn’t admit it to anyone else, and barely even to myself, my determination to take as little time off work as possible was also to do with the fear of being rumbled as not being as good at my job as everyone had thought — of being found dispensable.
All fears which the talented Ellen comes up against as her talented rival sharpens her claws.
Joe Ahearne, writer and director of The replacement, is absolutely right when he says: ‘ Most of us share the fear we’re not good enough and feel envy when we see others navigating professional and social situations more suavely.’
My replacement was my beloved and loyal deputy, Marcelle d’Argy Smith, with whom i’d worked for several years.
When i was deputy editor, she was the features editor. When i became editor, i promoted her to deputy. We were a team with overlapping and different skills.
We were also different characters. While i was reserved and cool, she was outgoing and fiery. While i was serious and not too good at jokes, she would have the whole office in hysterics.
in contrast to the settled relationship i was committed to, she was a single woman, living the Cosmo girl dream. in other words, despite my success in building circulation and winning an Editor of the Year Award, the thought kept popping into my head that she, not me, was the right woman for the job.
is that why, i wonder now, i refused to start maternity leave until three days before my due date? At the time i put it down to feeling healthy and energetic, but in retrospect i’m not so sure.
unlike paula in The replacement, Marcelle was unerringly on my side. She continued to consult me while i was on leave.
Like paula, she made some changes and introduced new ideas — but they were good changes and great ideas, so yes, go ahead, i said, perhaps a tad nervously.
All along, at the back of my mind, i kept thinking it was my deputy’s turn. i’d worked on Cosmopolitan from its launch in 1972 for six years, returning in the Eighties.
By the time i became pregnant, i’d notched up about 14 years and was starting to feel it was time to move on. As i was changing nappies i found myself dreaming up a magazine aimed at women like me — Cosmo girls who’d gone on to become mothers and wanted a magazine that reflected their changed lives, without giving up on glamour altogether.
When i went back after three months, it felt more like a nightmare than a happy return.
i survived on an empty fuel tank. Thomas was awake half the night with ear infections and fevers as well as needing feeds, so i barely slept. At the office i wandered into meetings bleary-eyed and wondering if anything i said made sense.
Then there was the nanny, whose room i discovered full of empty beer cans. i threw her out.
But if i’d been my own boss i’d have fired me as well, rushing home as i did at the end of each day to my baby, while Marcelle dashed off to after-work events instead of me. Who was doing the better job at the time? She was, no question. A year later, i left to re-launch She magazine as the magazine ‘for women who juggle their lives’. it was a great success.
My maternity leave indirectly resulted in Marcelle becoming the editor of Cosmo, a role in which she took sales to astonishing new heights. We stayed friends, and we remain so today.
But office politics have changed dramatically since then. Workplace pregnancy is common, but that doesn’t mean the position of mothers is more comfortable. in some ways it’s the opposite. The much-satirised sisterhood of the feminist Seventies and Eighties was not an illusion. Even if rivalries existed and competitiveness bubbled barely below the surface, we felt a duty and a desire to prop one another up.
We were fighting for women to be accepted in the workplace as mothers and so we behaved with that in mind. it could be seen as progress that women today can be as ambitious and cut-throat as men.
in a cat-eat-cat world, you might argue, it’s natural to use maternity cover as a chance to prove yourself, especially if you feel you’re more capable than the manager you’re replacing.
The minute your pregnancy is announced, the office atmosphere shifts. Your boss will be watching more closely, as will anyone who fancies your job.
There will be quips about hormones and people quietly noting how much time you take off for check-ups and throwing up. Will you, won’t you come back will be the source of speculation.
in the same way that TV’s Apple Tree Yard was an insightful examination of society’s attitudes to women and infidelity, The replacement highlights how we really feel about career women who get pregnant.
And the message is this: it’s not your bump you need to watch, it’s your back!