Time for Parenting...

...because raising children is a full-time job

October 2003 Newsletter

Maternal Feminists

A career in motherhood? Helen Powell

"What's happened to you, then? You used to be so intelligent at university..." - this opening question, put to me a couple of weeks ago at a social event by the mother of a college friend, sums up many comments made or narrowly avoided over the last nearly six years since I gave up my job in a City law firm. These comments generally express concern at the 'waste' of resources poured into my education; indignation at my betrayal of the feminist cause by choosing a 'traditional' role; astonishment that anyone would voluntarily risk brain-death by spending their time with children; and a clear (and unfavourable) judgment on my consequent worth as a member of society.

I'd like to say straight out that I believe I am contributing more to society by ploughing time and care into the upbringing of my two boys than I ever did in my profession. My personal presence as an anchor in the young lives of my sons makes a huge difference to the way my boys think, feel, act and understand the world; whereas, to be honest, I can't kid myself that one more practising pension lawyer adds much to the sum of good in the world (those who are disposed to make cynical jokes about lawyers, please restrain yourselves!).

Want to know your job is worthwhile? Apply here. It may not always feel like that, and there are days on which it would be far easier to slip on a suit and pointy shoes and disappear to work during all their waking hours (which is what it would mean) - but when I balance my experience of work against my experience of motherhood, it's the latter which is of genuine and lasting significance.

Of course there is the salary thing - our income now is about one-sixth of what it was six years ago, and a much tinier fraction of what it would have been had my husband and I stayed in our City jobs. But what relevance does that have in the grand scheme of things? We have all we need and more, and we have time with our children, which will never come again. It is a privilege to be entrusted with shaping young lives - and they are so bound up in all they experience that I doubt I would understand half of what they talk about and refer back to, were I not there seeing it with them. The income which has gone has bought freedom to concentrate on this relatively short but priceless period in their lives.

And as for the waste of education and skills, I feel I am using now, in my various roles as wife, mother and chair of our local playgroup committee and toy library, many of the skills I acquired as a solicitor. It is not a small thing to keep young children stimulated and to satisfy their curiosity about the world; and there is also a vast amount of voluntary work needing to be done in the community by those with the skills and resources of time and energy to take up the challenge. I actually resigned from my job pre-pregnancy because I was fed up of feeling 'stressed but not stretched' - permanently pressurised, for far too many hours each day, over matters that were, from any real perspective, rather trivial. My feeling now is that I am often stretched - to juggle responsibilities, to exercise wisdom and diplomacy in the varied challenges my two boys create for me, and to work out the best way to take forward other projects I am involved with. But I am very rarely stressed in the stomach-clenching way of old.

I used to say that I had left law for a career with longer hours and less pay but better rewards - I assume I will go back to paid work one day, but it will have to be a job which fits around the things in life that are more important. Tomorrow we are holding a joint birthday party for our two sons, and tonight I have spent nearly fourf hours making and icing a cake with Thunderbird 3 on it. I could have bought one, but I have the privilege of having time to do this for them - and the memories and photos they keep of tomorrow's party will still speak to them in 30 years' time. It isn't really a cake, it's a block of maternal love covered in red and white icing. So, to come full circle, what's happened to me? I became a mother, and I want to be one full-time.