Does women’s lib really mean we’re free to fret about work AND home?

This time of year was busy for my mother. Wi t h seven children of her own and other family members coming to stay, Christmas was a full-time job. Actually, almost every day was a full-time job – it just wasn’t counted as a job.

had she been born 30 years later than she was, she might have found that as well looking after us, she was part of the 68 per cent of women in the UK who are now in some kind of work.

scotland goes one better than the UK as a whole, having the highest female employment level on record. Threequarters of scottish mothers now work, with only 28 per cent of mothers with young families staying at home.

Of course, some scots women have no choice but to work. however, current employment levels show that it’s not only necessity: more women are choosing to work and are encouraged by politicians to do so, despite the crippling costs of childcare and the added strains on family life.

Choice is a good thing and politicians have been quick to hail the opportunity to work as a narrowing of the gender gap.

Yet while the changes in the lives of individual women who, in modern parlance, ‘ have it all’ – ie those lucky enough to have both a decent job and children – have been well documented, less well documented is the enormous sea-change in wider society that is the inevitable corollary of the majority of women being employed.

i make no judgment on the changes as to good or bad. i simply remark that the changes are quite radical – and some slightly unexpected.

Take my mother as an example. A formidable galvanising f orce i n many charities, her days were full of care for others, from scrubbing floors to chairing meetings, all voluntary. When elderly relations came to stay, she looked after them.

When i go back to my parental home, i’m aware that i do none of the things she did – how can i look after visiting elderly relatives? i work! Yet the relatives still need looking after and the charitable work still needs doing.

i know many scots do look after their elderly and also volunteer, but the bank of women on whom relatives and charities could once depend is no longer large.

This may seem unimportant in a welfare state. But it’s worth flagging up because as the welfare state shrinks, volunteering is more crucial, not less. it also neatly illustrates a conundrum.

One of the things women often discuss is what they’d do if they had more time. Volunteering often tops the list. But we know it’s a bit of a pipedream since when you choose to work, you move into a world of two incomes from which it’s extraordinarily difficult to extricate yourself.

Lifestyle

i’m not talking about scaling down household expenditure. That would be relatively easy. The real difficulty is that since two incomes can sustain a higher monthly mortgage payment, the roof over your head may depend on both you and your partner being in work and staying in work.

ironic, isn’t it, that while choosing to work can bring an affordable house within your reach, keeping the house actually removes that choice.

And you certainly don’t want to fall off the property ladder, since one consequence of the two-income household has been the generational rise in house prices.

When women’s salaries are transformed from added extra to foundation stone, giving up work isn’t a personal choice: it’s a lifestyle choice.

True, if you asked many children, they’d say it was a lifestyle choice worth making – at least until they had to get the bus, the second car having vanished, or were told they had to wait until Christmas for the next Minecraft update.

Although it might be nice if Mum was home more, these days her presence comes at a price.

That’s the trouble with two incomes. inevitably, expectations are ratcheted up. scottish grandparents are amazed to find their grandchildren now consider two foreign holidays a year quite normal, with trips within the UK a bit dull.

Yet despite holidays, children are growing used to spending less time with parents, and, perhaps more worryingly, with seeing parents permanently exhausted.

When, during the strange new phenomenon of ‘quality time’, modern mothers describe their own childhoods and how their mothers were always on hand, to many children it might be a tale from ancient history.

Not that i’m averse to foreign holidays and all the good things that go with women in work. Greater family incomes have broadened horizons. Who cares if, for some, it’s only up to a Disney point? if money enables family enjoyment, it’s money worth earning.

Yet notwithstanding houses and holidays, it’s not all about enjoyment.

Latchkey children learn early about loneliness, with the internet proving a dangerous friend, and stress is the curse of t he working mother generation.

it’ s another i r ony t hat, despite decades of women’s lib, the 72 per cent of scots mothers of young children who are in work – half of them working full- time – will still be largely responsible for ensuring that childcare, food, laundry and pre and post school activities happen in the right place at the right time and for meeting the emotional needs of children who have also been out all day.

in most households, it’s women who preside over the domestic junction box. That’s hard enough – harder when you bring work worries home with you.

People used to speak with contempt of mothers who used the television as a baby-sitter. At least once, i did far worse: i forwarded the clock to bring on bedtime. What was i to do? i work from home and had a deadline.

Bad management, perhaps, although to people who believe that working from home is the answer to the family/work dilemma, i recommend trying it. Working from home has some advantages: you can speak on the phone while hanging up the laundry. But you never sign off.

Security

My speeding of the clock was a more old-fashioned solution than the television, but it illustrated the same point: whether you work outside or inside your home, work has changed women’s behaviour.

Our children are still our priority but in a 21st century scotland where working women are the norm, priority is an adaptable concept.

how many of scotland’s record number of working mothers will be wondering if this new record of f emale employment is a source of pride or a source of concern?

Whichever, the normalisation of the working mother is bringing about changes which will impact on scottish society. More material security and more freedom for women, but also more loneliness for children and stress for families.

it seems that we can’t have the ups without the downs and any politician who tries to persuade us otherwise can’t have much experience of family life.

As for my own mother, i think if you’d suggested she should work, her eyes would have momentarily lit up.

Then, if you’d shown her the pattern of life in a 21st century scottish working mother household, i think she’d have said ‘that’s all very progressive, but on the whole, i’m quite glad to leave it to you.’