How Not to Be a Perfect Mother by Libby Purves

Author:Libby Purves [Libby Purves]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007381838
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2004-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

1. Working away from home

Off to the office she goes! Designer Woman, briefcase in hand, dashes off importantly in the Volvo, kissing a row of rosy little smiling faces, briefing the rosy, smiling nanny on which homemade delicacies to take out of the well-ordered freezer for the children’s lunch. She trips off to work, where her secretary waits for the first batch of razor-sharp decisions on the morning’s post. What a Superwoman! Don’t we all admire her every pinstripe, as she grins confidently out of the advertisements and Working-woman Lifestyle Profiles at us!

Well, no, actually, we don’t. We hate her guts. We coo and burble to our babies until ten minutes before the train, pull on the least unclean clothes from the bedroom floor, stuff our feet into scraped and heel-less shoes, and tell the white-faced nanny that if her toothache gets worse, she is to leave the baby next door with instructions to pass him on to number 13 at four o’clock when next door has to get her own child from school, because she’s only got one baby-seat in the car, and that if the dentist says she has to have the tooth out tomorrow, Nanny must ring immediately before 12.30 so that Mummy can cancel the Goldsmith-Securities Conference and be able to stay home half the morning because next door would have obliged, only she’s got an incontinent auntie coming to stay and can’t do mornings …

Then we run for the train, and strap-hang, heart pounding, wondering whether the cat got fed, whether Nanny will faint with pain at her wisdom tooth while the baby crawls into the fireplace; we arrive hopeless and exhausted, fit only for coffee and a grumble, and find all hell broken loose because we decided to leave a meeting dead on 5.30 yesterday in order to be home for bathtime. We do all this, and curse Mrs Imaginary Superwoman’s imaginary calm.

Genuinely bombproof childcare arrangements do not exist. The rich do better: but even if you had a nanny and a housekeeper, the day would come when one had measles and the baby screamed in terror of the other. Even if you have the world’s best neighbours, the day will come when they have all gone off together to the Townswomen’s Guild Jam Tea, just as the au pair runs off with the coalman and Daddy goes on business to Peru. So the day will come when there is no option but to take a carrycot, or a toddler and a packet of crayons (pray God not a potty too), into the office for an hour or so. I have yet to work anywhere where it hasn’t happened once (although generally the mothers who do it most freely are those highest in the pecking order. Madam Boss’s baby is one thing; Miss Supersecretary’s baby is quite another). But if the human race is to continue, and babies are to be looked after kindly, and women with talents are to use them – then

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