We all need to justify our existence somehow. Earning the family bread is a simple way of doing it. It must be much harder if you are a full-time mother.
There comes a point, soon after a child learns to do up its own shoe laces, when the bulk of a mother’s work (contrary to popular wisdom) is kind of done. To working women that moment generally comes as a relief. To the non-working mother, whose sense of usefulness is pretty much dependent on her child’s continued need for her, it must present more of a challenge. Which is why even the most delightful children reared by full-time mothers never, ever load their dirty plates into the dishwasher. Have you noticed? Because their mothers feel it’s their job to do it for them.
The truth is that children with working mothers tend to do more for themselves because they have to. Since the main aim of raising children is to teach them autonomy, that must be a good thing.
Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t be so unchivalrous as to have pointed it out, although it has always struck me as pretty obvious. But the fragile truce between working and non-working mothers was suspended last week, thanks to a malicious survey which claims that a substantial proportion of full-time mothers think working mothers “give motherhood a bad name”. Well, now that the subject has come up, I think the reverse is more often the case. Especially if the end product is anything to go by.
As it happens I sat opposite a repulsive pair of children on the train from London to Scotland a couple of days ago, the form of whose repulsiveness clearly illustrated my point. Mothers, working and non, tend instinctively to be able to sniff out which camp the other belongs to, and even if I hadn’t eavesdropped on her conversation most of the way to Pitlochry I would have known the mother was a full-timer, not least by the ludicrous size of her handbag, packed as it was with kiddie titbits for the journey. No working mother would have had the patience, the strength — or the lack of confidence — to indulge her children so completely.
The repulsive duo must have been nine and 11, a girl and a boy, both with sullen, downturned mouths and that hideous translucent skin that so many middle-class children have nowadays from never being allowed to expose their precious bodies to the sun.
Despite the unending stream of treats provided for them, neither one of those children cracked a smile — or a thank you — for the entire journey. I stared at them from behind my computer, counting how many times their turbo-mother popped up to furnish them with yet more foil-wrapped healthy snacks, puzzle books, felt tip pens and little computer games.
The sport went out of it pretty quickly. It soon became clear that the silly woman had no intention of ever popping down. There was not a single point in the long, long journey when she allowed her attention to wander from her vital role as the perfect mum. If I hadn’t been so irritated by her ungrateful children I might even have felt quite sorry for her.
As the train drew in to Newcastle she delved once again into her voluminous Mommy Bag and produced a miniature DVD player.
She spent the rest of the journey negotiating with her children over which of the many films provided they might feasibly be willing to watch together. It took all my self-control not to reach across the aisle and crack the wretched DVD player over the skulls of all three of them. Or at least to grab the poor woman by her shoulders and yell at her to stop with the neurotic overparenting and go get herself a job.
Thinking back, I rather wish I had. I would probably have been doing future society a great favour. Because the way things were going it’s hard to imagine how such intensively reared children (so safely kept and so healthily fed that they’ll probably never die) are ever going to be able to fend for themselves. The pair of them, like so many of these fashionably over-mothered children, looked set to be a charmless burden on generations of taxpayers from the moment they leave their nest until the moment the world is submerged by melted ice caps.
There is a growing trend for middle-class women to sacrifice their independence at the altar of their children’s pleasure. In the quest for self-justification it seems that no effort is too great, no childish demand on them too preposterous. As I write, no doubt, thousands of highly educated stay-at-home supermums are dicing bits of carrot and wrapping them in silver foil for fear their brattish offspring is struck with a yen for a mini snack somewhere between the kitchen and the lavatory.
It wouldn’t matter much, except those same supermums are so far ahead in the PR game that (according, once again, to the malicious survey) almost 80% of working mothers believe they, too, would be happier and more fulfilled staying at home dicing emergency carrot supplies.
All I can say is, look closely at the final product before resigning. Because between them those perfect stay-at-home mothers are producing a generation of useless monsters. Which is fine. Of course. Takes all sorts.
In the meantime, please, let’s have no talk of who among us is giving motherhood “a bad name”. Because it’s the women who work who seem to be doing the job most effectively.
- Another sex scandal. Another political marriage bites the dust. Greg Barker, Tory frontbencher and father of three, it was revealed last week, had left his jovial-looking wife for an outrageously handsome interior decorator called Will. Poor jovial-looking wife. I hate to imagine what she is going through. Poor Will — with looks like that I am sure he could have snared somebody even more fabulous if he’d concentrated. And poor old Greg.
With all the fuss that’s being made I don’t suppose any of them are having a great week.
They should rest assured. Unless something new and filthy emerges, the media storm will blow itself out quickly. Leaving one’s wife in a stable and orderly fashion, even it is for another man, hardly even rates as scandal these days. We need rent boys, briefcases filled with unspeakable substances and MPs engaged in unreportable “acts of degradation” to get our juices going.
A shadow spokesman for the environment and his delectable interior decorator, discreetly locking lips over the Osborne and Little catalogue, seems really pretty cute by comparison. So, er, now what shall we talk about?
