Tales of the mother of all balancing acts
Tuesday, 31 March 2009
Miranda Green
HEN Cherie Blair used a press conference to make her apology for the Peter Foster affair in 2002, she struck a chord with many working women, choking back tears as she described the pressures of juggling work and family commitments like balls in the air, explaining that because she was "not superwoman" some of the balls got dropped.
But in admitting to less than perfection in keeping it all going as a senior lawyer, mother of four and prime ministerial consort, she also repelled some by seeming to ask for indulgence when she had chosen to play all these roles, personal, professional and public.
Any woman writing about the challenges that confront mothers who work faces a similar and possibly graver danger: staying silent about the dilemmas and divided loyalties is safer than exposing working mothers, warts-and-all, to the gaze of family values crusaders. Worse, male employers and colleagues may feel that the revelations confirm their worst suspicions: that an employed mother has competing priorities and is mired in compromise and muddle.
A small rash of titles has appeared recently dealing with the reality of modern women's working lives, hoping to explode the superwoman myth in a way that might help individuals and even improve understanding of the problems they face. Julia Hobsbawm's The See-Saw: 100 Ideas for Work-Life Balance, and Backwards in High Heels, by Tania Kindersley and Sarah Vine, both attempt to tread the fine line between practical advice, self-help-book inspirational insights and the occasional appeal for societal change.
They do not always succeed, not least because a slightly oppressive jauntiness and jokey self-deprecation show the authors to be aware they might be letting the side down if the book fell into the wrong hands.
Fiona Millar, once Ms Blair's special adviser in Downing Street, and a working mother of three, has taken a similar risk in The Secret World of the Working Mother, describing her own "20-year experiment with every working arrangement possible" -- and not just because of the revelation that her partner, Alastair Campbell , the former No 10 communications chief and right-hand man to Tony Blair, has a total aversion to sharing domestic chores.
Millar starts by acknowledging the necessity for most working mothers to keep schtum about the reality of their lives -- more than half say they would lie if a child or childcare crisis made them late for work, rather than undermine their professional persona. She recites some familiar statistics about how swathes of educated, trained, experienced female workers end up on a lower-paid, lower-status part-time "mummy track", while battling overload at home, not to mention the anxiety of leaving a young child with another carer.
So far, so grim -- and possibly so alienating for any male partner or employer seeking insight and solutions, and finding problems.
The publisher has done Millar no favours, either, since the book's title and cover photograph suggest a misery memoir.
But most of the book is in fact a serious attempt to survey and record the many and various ways in which the 70 per cent of British mothers who do some sort of paid work cope, fail to cope, and sometimes find ways to be happy and valued in both spheres of their lives.
Millar's extensive interviews with real mothers, as well as her own experiences, show that the obstacles facing women who want to return to work after having children can spur some to imaginative feats of reinvention - especially those who start businesses as "mumtrepreneurs" or push themselves through higher education or make a radical career change.
The current recession threatens not only to derail UK government plans to extend family-friendly employment legislation, but to undo some of the progress women have made in the workplace in recent decades.
Millar's pleas for more practical help for families are well argued: above all for widely available, high quality, affordable childcare, and employers who appreciate that flexible arrangements can mean "retaining happy, well-trained staff, motivated and in a position to give their best to the company".
But in the current climate, will anyone be listening?
HEN Cherie Blair used a press conference to make her apology for the Peter Foster affair in 2002, she struck a chord with many working women, choking back tears as she described the pressures of juggling work and family commitments like balls in the air, explaining that because she was "not superwoman" some of the balls got dropped.
But in admitting to less than perfection in keeping it all going as a senior lawyer, mother of four and prime ministerial consort, she also repelled some by seeming to ask for indulgence when she had chosen to play all these roles, personal, professional and public.
Any woman writing about the challenges that confront mothers who work faces a similar and possibly graver danger: staying silent about the dilemmas and divided loyalties is safer than exposing working mothers, warts-and-all, to the gaze of family values crusaders. Worse, male employers and colleagues may feel that the revelations confirm their worst suspicions: that an employed mother has competing priorities and is mired in compromise and muddle.
A small rash of titles has appeared recently dealing with the reality of modern women's working lives, hoping to explode the superwoman myth in a way that might help individuals and even improve understanding of the problems they face. Julia Hobsbawm's The See-Saw: 100 Ideas for Work-Life Balance, and Backwards in High Heels, by Tania Kindersley and Sarah Vine, both attempt to tread the fine line between practical advice, self-help-book inspirational insights and the occasional appeal for societal change.
They do not always succeed, not least because a slightly oppressive jauntiness and jokey self-deprecation show the authors to be aware they might be letting the side down if the book fell into the wrong hands.
Fiona Millar, once Ms Blair's special adviser in Downing Street, and a working mother of three, has taken a similar risk in The Secret World of the Working Mother, describing her own "20-year experiment with every working arrangement possible" -- and not just because of the revelation that her partner, Alastair Campbell , the former No 10 communications chief and right-hand man to Tony Blair, has a total aversion to sharing domestic chores.
Millar starts by acknowledging the necessity for most working mothers to keep schtum about the reality of their lives -- more than half say they would lie if a child or childcare crisis made them late for work, rather than undermine their professional persona. She recites some familiar statistics about how swathes of educated, trained, experienced female workers end up on a lower-paid, lower-status part-time "mummy track", while battling overload at home, not to mention the anxiety of leaving a young child with another carer.
So far, so grim -- and possibly so alienating for any male partner or employer seeking insight and solutions, and finding problems.
The publisher has done Millar no favours, either, since the book's title and cover photograph suggest a misery memoir.
But most of the book is in fact a serious attempt to survey and record the many and various ways in which the 70 per cent of British mothers who do some sort of paid work cope, fail to cope, and sometimes find ways to be happy and valued in both spheres of their lives.
Millar's extensive interviews with real mothers, as well as her own experiences, show that the obstacles facing women who want to return to work after having children can spur some to imaginative feats of reinvention - especially those who start businesses as "mumtrepreneurs" or push themselves through higher education or make a radical career change.
The current recession threatens not only to derail UK government plans to extend family-friendly employment legislation, but to undo some of the progress women have made in the workplace in recent decades.
Millar's pleas for more practical help for families are well argued: above all for widely available, high quality, affordable childcare, and employers who appreciate that flexible arrangements can mean "retaining happy, well-trained staff, motivated and in a position to give their best to the company".
But in the current climate, will anyone be listening?