On International Men’s Day, won’t someone think of the fathers?

It’s been a hard year. Healthcare staff have been under immense pressure. Businesses have struggled. Many have lost loved ones, some without the chance to say goodbye. Lonely people have been lonelier and vulnerable people more vulnerable. Anxiety levels are through the roof – but worst affected by increased stress caused by the pandemic are fathers in their 30s, according to a study by Aviva Life and Pensions that was published on Tuesday.

Some will look at the survey results and worry about the plight of these poor men. Personally, I’m a little surprised that we need a survey to conclude that increased parenting responsibilities tend to add to your stress levels, and that unpaid house and caring work on top of a paid job does indeed take its toll. All over Ireland, there are mothers who could tell you that.

My husband and I struggled, too, with the home-schooling, the limitations and overall pressures of that first lockdown and six months of two primary-school age children at home. In the greater scheme of things we were luckier than many, but it was hard – probably one of the hardest things we’ve been through as a couple in years. And yet, I couldn’t help but wonder about all the research from my native Sweden, which has shown that couples are more equal and share the unpaid work more fairly after fathers spend a few months at home on parental leave. Maybe, amid all the awfulness of 2020, this would be an accidental but very welcome knock-on effect? It’s that age-old thing of not being able to unsee something once you’ve seen it. Once you’ve had a potty-training toddler on the toilet the moment you realise that you’re out of loo roll, you won’t forget to make a mental note the next time it’s close to running out.

Parents in Sweden are entitled to a total of 480 days, or 16 months, of parental leave paid at around 80% of their salary, and each parent has an exclusive right to 90 of those days. Anecdotally, friends of mine have acknowledged the difference it’s made to their relationships when their male partners have taken at least a few months of paternity leave: not only have the shared parental responsibilities become less of a burden and cause for arguments between them, but other household chores have subsequently been shared more equally as well. “It’s like he sees things now that he never saw before,” one friend told me. “I guess when I was always there, he never got a chance to really notice all these things. Now he’s got his own systems and his own ways of doing things at home.”

A report from last year, looking at all the Nordic countries, reveals as much: fathers enjoy far closer relationships with their children after extended parental leave and even feel like better fathers, and the relationship between the parents is improved and becomes more equal. But there’s more. The mothers’ careers see big benefits, including higher earnings. Their physical health improves, as does their mental wellbeing, and domestic violence becomes less prevalent. Interestingly, research has shown that the time when a couple first become parents is a good indication of how equal their relationship will be in the future; an equal share of parental leave in the first year of parenthood paves way for an equal future as partners and parents.

Things are different here in Ireland, not just in terms of policy, but culturally too. I’m not here to say that the Swedish model is perfect, nor that we should be copying it. It might be worth considering the lessons from the Nordics, though – and asking ourselves what that survey says about the reality of parenting in Ireland. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why fathers who are suddenly confined to their homes for months, along with their children, are suddenly experiencing unprecedented spikes in stress levels. Working from home while home-schooling, parenting and coping with the uncertainties of a global pandemic is stressful; it was stressful for almost everyone. But there’s a reason why it was more of a shock to the system for some than it was for others – possibly the same as the reason why our elected politicians (77.5% of whom are men) thought that it would be possible in the first place, simply assuming that parental responsibilities would magically sort themselves while we sit on Zoom meetings ignoring our children. Something tells me that they won’t rush into that kind of non-solution again. It’s that age-old thing of not being able to unsee something once you’ve seen it. There they are, in plain sight: the house chores and the responsibilities of running a home and raising a family. This International Men’s Day, I hope we can vow never to unsee them.

A waste of space of a man – on mammy memes and narratives of fatherhood

“Women are being edged out of the workforce,” says an article on The Lily that was doing the rounds at the beginning of the summer. In it, Aimee Rae Hannaford, a co-founder and chief executive of a Silicon Valley tech company, explains why she decided to dissolve the company and live off savings when the schools closed as a result of the pandemic, despite the fact that her son’s father was already on a career break at the time. “I can’t do it,” her husband had said. “I can’t watch him for this long.”

First, I rolled my eyes at this useless waste of space of a man. Then, I imagined the voices of Swedish feminists, asking who on earth would ever stay in a relationship with a guy like this, before going off to print T-shirts saying: DUMP YOUR BOYFRIEND. And then, I could hear Irish feminists step in: there are plenty of men like this out there, they’d argue, and they don’t exactly come with big, fat warning signs – so stop putting the blame and responsibility on the women who end up having kids with them; put the responsibility back where it belongs.

They live in different worlds, of course, the Swedish and Irish feminists. It’s not all that easy to walk away from a relationship in Ireland when you have kids, with childcare costs being what they are and most of the school system built on the assumption that there’s a parent at home on at least a part-time basis. Sweden is the country, after all, where there was talk of parents being paid 70-80% of their wages in the eventuality that the schools would be closed in response to the pandemic, which in the end they weren’t. Then again, recent research has suggested that Swedish mothers are working the equivalent of 2.5 full-time jobs – so maybe it’s not the gender equal bliss it’s painted out to be, and maybe those DUMP YOUR BOYFRIEND T-shirts aren’t selling so well.

Around the same time as the circulation of said The Lily article, Erica Djossa shared a meme on Instagram with the headline “The invisible load of motherhood: Working from home during Covid”, featuring 12 illustrations of the different kinds of challenging situations so many of us have suddenly found ourselves in.

Like added stress as a result of reduced capacity. Like constantly switching roles throughout the day. Like managing your children’s distance learning and meeting their emotional needs. And the thing went viral, as relatable memes do, and I sat there feeling… well, almost as confused as I did when reading Hannaford’s story.

I am but anecdotal evidence. I don’t expect memes to revolve around me, nor do I think that feminism works like that: that’s not my experience, so it isn’t real. I know, I KNOW. And yet, it has to be said: in the first month of lockdown, 100% of the home-schooling in this house was done by my partner, the father of my children; he does the majority of the bedtime routines at the moment, and that constant switching of roles throughout the day has been a far greater problem for him than it has for me.

And I know that there are plenty of men out there like Aimee Rae Hannaford’s husband, plenty of useless fathers who leave their partners burning the candle at both ends, spreading themselves so thin they’re only just about still there; I know this, and I get that, to their thinly spread partners, this meme is about motherhood.

Technically speaking, though, none of the 12 things listed relate specifically to motherhood. It’s called parenting. Unless we’re willing to resort to the same kind of rhetoric that calls fathers being with their children babysitting, this is parenting. Anna Whitehouse, a.k.a. Mother Pukka, summarised the same points pretty well: “The majority of men don’t just spunk and leave. Even if not living with their partner, they’re dads, parents and they aren’t ‘babysitting’, they’re raising their spaghetti hoop-encrusted child, too. It’s hard for everyone.”

So can a mother not vent anymore, is that what I’m saying? Are we not allowed to name the reality of the unfair division of emotional labour and more, which there’s plenty of research to back up? Hell, is it not our responsibility as feminists to name it, to visibilise it, to point at all this unpaid work we’re doing and the reality of what it’s doing to our mental as well as physical health, not to mention our careers and pensions?

Of course we can, and of course we should. Maybe we need more of it. And while I wish that more mothers would take this meme and stick it on the fridge and talk to their partners about it, I recognise and respect that the mother who ended up with a waste of space of a man and is now at breaking point is not going to be having that conversation with him, nor is he going to listen – and she, more than anyone, needs to be allowed to vent.

But still, I can’t get escape the feeling that the labels matter. If, when we vent, we make parenting synonymous with mothering, we’re doing everyone – not least mothers – a huge disservice. Because the thing is, if we want to change the reality of that The Lily article, we need to change the idea of what fatherhood looks like. If we want to change the fact that women are walking away from their jobs in droves because it just makes no financial sense for their higher-earning partners to quit, we need to change the notion of ‘woman’ meaning mother meaning maternity leave and sick days while ‘man’ means none of those things, ever. And if we keep labelling all the things that relate to children’s needs as motherhood, that shift just ain’t gonna happen.

And do you know what else isn’t going to happen unless we stop this stereotyping nonsense? Mothers aren’t going to stop feeling that guilt, and they’re not going to stop prioritising everyone else’s work while their own work accumulates. I’m so tired of that image of the naturally selfless, self-erasing mother in the periphery that I think I might explode – but then, sorry, that wouldn’t be very motherly of me, would it? Memes like this aren’t just relieving fathers of the duties (and joys!) of parenthood; they’re perpetuating the notion of mothers as altogether self-effacing and naturally, ceaselessly caring for everyone but themselves.

Want to see another mammy meme that made me want to scream? This one:

Just stop it. Stop telling mothers to ‘just keep going’. Stop making motherhood a competition in self-destruction. This is not what motherhood was meant to be, this relentless keeping going, putting up with stuff and burning out, and it’s certainly not what I want to teach my sons that they should expect of women.

I’m hoping that the way we are with our two sons, the conversations we’re having with them and the choices we’ve made, will make them into sensitive, caring, responsible fathers if they ever end up having kids. But I can’t help but wonder what they’d feel if they saw these memes. I wonder about the fathers-to-be who grew up with useless, absent dads and are looking to break the cycle, what’ll they take from memes like these and the many hundreds if not thousands like them.

I wonder if it would kill us, in the mammy groups, if we edited the headlines of the memes to talk about ‘the invisible load of parenthood’ instead. And in the groups that have consciously labelled themselves for ‘parents’ as opposed to ‘mothers’, if we talked about all these things we do without immediately and explicitly excluding fathers from the conversation, would the guesstimated 1.3% of members in there who are in fact dads perhaps feel a tiny bit less out of place as they try to do all these things they’ve been raised to view as women’s work? Might they even add their daddy friends to the parenting groups?

I think we can do both. I think we can name the inequalities, point to the statistics and complain about the injustice of it all and still label parenting for what it is, so that there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind: this thing is for all of us, for mothers as well as fathers. If you have a kid and you’re not trying to meet their emotional needs, you’re doing it wrong, and you’re the waste of space. That doesn’t mean that those of us who are already doing it should stop, or that we should suffer in silence – but it means that we need to leave that door wide open.

To the woman who told me all my child needed was a hug

You came into our lives at about 8.10am this morning. I was standing outside my house, my youngest kid kitted out and ready to go, his older brother screaming hysterically at the top of his lungs, quite possibly waking every single person in Drumcondra our side of Griffith Park. See, he didn’t want to go to school by scooter. “Awww,” you said, tilted your head and looked at my son, and I ignored you.

“Give him a hug,” you said then, with a tone that struck the perfect balance between empathy and demand. If my morning had started off in a bad way, it shot up on the crappy-morning metre at this exact moment, but I kept ignoring you. You couldn’t know that I’d had no more than four hours of very broken sleep, that I had a splitting head ache and was running out of patience as well as hugs.

Then you walked through the gate, into our garden, right up beside me to where my child was now hiding behind my legs from the strange woman suddenly practically in our home, repeating your “awwww”, and I couldn’t ignore you anymore. “I think I’d better deal with this myself – thanks,” I said, softly, and it suddenly became clear that you were not going to listen to me. “But the child needs a hug,” you repeated.

“You need to let me deal with this myself,” I said again, colder this time, possibly even raising a hand slightly. “Please leave now.” I was getting upset but holding it together. You were definitely crossing a line or five, but you couldn’t know that he’d had plenty of hugs and the clock was ticking and we’d reasoned it out and gone through options and choices, and I was desperate.

Then you turned around, returned to the path, stood there and looked at me: “It’s very clear he doesn’t want to go wherever he is going.” I don’t know what you thought I would do with this information; child doesn’t want to go to school, so child stays at home – was that your thinking? But the thing is, Sherlock, that the child did want to go to school, and he was starting to miss out. It was the scooter he didn’t want, and a long list of other things that had already happened and I could no longer do anything about, such as me having closed the door, us having had no ham for his lunch box, and a million other things that probably had very little to do with scooters and doors and ham but became really very important and hysteria-inducing at this very moment in time.

“I’ve worked with children for years, it’s very clear that…” and that’s when I lost it. See, I’m a great parent of other people’s children too. I know how to prevent their meltdowns, how to get them to eat what’s on their plate and maybe even sleep through the night. I know how to help them snap out of hysterical meltdowns and distract them through a long walk they don’t want to take. Perspective is a beautiful thing, but it requires exactly that – perspective; it can’t be passed down in a moment of desperation.

I was angry, shaking, and could no longer stop the tears. I told you that this isn’t how it works; you don’t get to go around giving unsolicited advice to parents in stressful situations, especially when they explicitly ask you to leave them alone. I told you that you didn’t know a thing about my morning, how long this had been going on, how many hugs I’d already tried and how we got to a situation where we were standing outside of our house waking the entire neighbourhood. And I put on quite the show. I had to, because you didn’t take a hint, nor did you get it the first few times I told you to take your unsolicited advice and shove it somewhere it hurts, far away from my sight.

So how did we get to a situation where we were standing outside of our house waking the entire neighbourhood? Why was the scooter so important, why had I run out of hugs, how did my son get so tired and overwhelmed that the only way he could communicate with me was through a meltdown over a scooter, and why, when things went from bad to worse, did we not simply step back in? These are all questions worth asking, and questions I’ll be asking myself for the rest of the day – note: I’ll be asking myself. Because as much as I believe in democratic principles in parenting, my parenting is not a democracy. You don’t get a vote. You don’t have to live with the guilt and regret either, so happy days.

I’m not proud of my performance as a parent this morning. I mean, it was definitely in my top-five worst parenting moments ever even before you came along, and by the time you walked away I think I can say that it had raced all the way up to the very top. I hope that makes you feel good. I hope you’re proud of approaching a mother who was just holding it together, and tipping her over the edge.

We made it to school, my son happily skipping in only about five minutes late – scooter in hand – and I said I was sorry and gave him a big hug, and he kissed me and told me he loved me. Maybe there’ll be extra hugs tonight. I’d say most certainly there will be extra hugs tonight – but not because you said so. My relationship with my child has nothing to do with you, stranger, and my hugs are not yours to give away. I know that the job of being a parent comes with a responsibility to provide endless hugs, and that by running out, I failed. I know that the first rule of parenting is never ever to be in a rush, but then life happened, and school, and lunch boxes and unexpected toilet trips and insomnia. I’m a person too, complete with feelings and frustrations and flaws and occasionally very insufficient patience – and I’d like to think that I’m teaching my kids that that’s OK. I guess I’m also teaching them that when someone crosses that line and starts to interfere with your business in a way you’re very much not comfortable with, you have every right to tell them to get lost. It’s kind of ironic when you think about it, isn’t it?

PS. A Freudian analysis of the above would quite possibly look back at my childhood and a moment when my mother threw me out the door into inches-deep snow wearing nothing but moccasins, and my snow joggers after me, in pure frustration. It would suggest, I guess, that I’m acting out trauma from childhood experience. Or, I don’t know, maybe it would simply say that I’m getting what I deserve. Maybe this is it: it’s payback time.  

Why have kids if you don't want to spend time with them?

A few days ago, I snapped at a friend I haven’t spoken to in years. It was on Facebook, which I guess just makes it less surprising and more pathetic, but anyway, I did*. She put up an article entitled ‘Why have kids if you don’t want to spend time with them?’ and I thought ‘finally a piece that rips that stupid question to threads!’ and clicked on it. But the article did no such thing; it was just another entitled article describing the selfish behaviour of parents who put themselves first sometimes, who want ‘me time’, who don’t cherish every moment with their children enough.

It’s worth talking about the choices we make and how they impact on our children. Actually, it’s crucial that we do. It’s important that we, as a society, have an ongoing conversation about the needs of children and how their many relationships affect them, not least their relationships with their parents. They don’t get a say in this, so we have to take that responsibility. Articles that ask why you’d bother to have kids in the first place if you don’t want to be with them, however, don’t tick that box.

The article in question was published in a Swedish tabloid, so it must be understood in the context of Swedish norms; childcare is heavily subsidised and all children over the age of one have the right to a full-time place in crèche, most of them funded by the local council, with the huge majority of parents working. Workers have a right to a minimum of two consecutive weeks off work, and most white-collar employees take at least a full month off during the summer, with the country almost going into shut-down for two months after Midsummer. This particular article was triggered by a crèche note about planning the summer season, reminding parents of the importance of giving their children a break and spending your holidays with them.

‘All this never-ending talk of me time. I hear it everywhere,’ the writer complained, insisting that the fact that a crèche even needs to remind parents to spend time off with their kids is a sign that our need for ‘me time’ has gone overboard. And I get where she’s coming from; it’s sad that some parents feel that their children are happier and more stimulated in crèche than they are at home, and it sucks that many parents are so exhausted that they’ll consider using their holidays for a break over time with their probably just as exhausted children. What pushes all my buttons is the question: ‘Why have kids if you don’t want to spend time with them?’

I went for a morning stroll by the sea the other day before I started working. I’m lucky that my job allows me to do that, and boy did I need it; it’s been a hectic few months. But it wasn’t without a moment of guilt – because I know how people talk, and I know people like the author of that article. Where were my kids? In childcare, of course. Other times, I’ll go for a run instead of taking a lunch break – again, I’m lucky that way. I could meet a friend for a coffee at 11am and work through my lunch; if I’m really tired and stuck for inspiration, I could even wrap up early, get some fresh air, and pick up work after the kids have gone to bed at night.

Not everyone’s lucky. Many people are stuck in their remote office building even on their breaks, can’t check in on personal messages and social media in work, and can just about leave five minutes early even in exceptional circumstances. When they’re run down and having a bad month, where are they supposed to catch their breath? Compare those who live in the same town as grandparents, old friends and cousins and can easily get a Saturday afternoon to themselves to run errands or hit the gym, to those with no family support at all. No one’s asking parents why they had children in the first place when they leave them with the grandparents for the weekend, do they?

The author of the article is clearly disgusted that some parents occasionally add a few hours to their children’s schedule when they’re not actually working – hours they instead spend cleaning, resting or just enjoying themselves. The children, she argues, are stuck in crèches with overworked staff who don’t have time for the children’s individual needs. Funnily enough, she doesn’t seem to take issue with the children being there on a full-time basis. She doesn’t argue with the fact that parents have full-time jobs. No, it’s when parents stop being productive, when they’re being selfish – that’s when the children come into view. Sure if we’re working, we’re working, right?

In Ireland, the situation is different. Childcare is a costly thing – a ‘second mortgage’, we’ve come to call it – and it’s far from a given that both parents in a two-parent household will work. As there’s no such thing as paid paternity leave, bar the recently introduced two weeks, the by far most common scenario is that mothers stay at home with babies and then choose whether to return to work or not. If they do, they tend to go back much earlier than Swedish mothers – and not always by choice.

Ironically, the ‘why have kids if you don’t want to spend time with them’ question is still a thing, but in Ireland mostly directed at mothers who work. It’s funny, that – isn’t it? Swedish norms allow mothers to work, because working is the done thing and not really deemed selfish, but as soon as they clock out they become greedy if they want to do anything bar being with their kids. In Ireland, because returning to work after having a baby is a new thing, comparatively speaking, that’s what’s seen as a mother’s road to freedom – her little bit of ‘me time’, her being selfish. Why have kids if you’re going to spend all day every day in an office? Unless you’re a man, of course. If you’re a man, who knows why you’d have children at all anyway, other than to make your wife happy.

I thought about the fact that the criticism of parents, or mothers, is the same despite the culturally different norms, and I realised that there is one very clear exception to the rule in both countries. Not once did I ever hear a straight couple asked the why-have-kids question when getting a babysitter for a romantic night out. Everyone agrees that relationships require a bit of effort every now and then; couples need make-up and nice drinks and a change of scenery to keep that spark alive. See, a night with your spouse doesn’t qualify as ‘me time’, no matter how much your kids are being minded by somebody else. A woman isn’t being selfish when she’s out with her man.

‘If you choose to have one or more kids, ‘me time’ isn’t something you can take for granted the first ten years,’ writes the mother-of-two, who works as an account manager for a big IT company and still lives in the town where she grew up. I don’t know how much family and friends she’s got nearby, nor do I know how many struggling single parents she knows, how much her friends talk to her about their post-natal depression or the fact that they regret having kids and can’t wait for the next ten years to pass. ‘Being with my children beats everything else in life,’ she adds. ‘I enjoy every moment they want to be with me.’ She’s one of the good mothers, in case you’d missed her point.

But seriously though: why have kids if you don’t want to spend time with them? To those of you desperate for ‘me time’, who had kids and fear that it might have been a big mistake, those of you who love your children above all else but would kill for a day away just to remember who you are underneath it all, who are stuck in the house and haven’t been able to get out for a drink in years, those who hate your jobs but can’t manage without the salary and love the weekends with the kids but would just like to be really, really selfish and alone for once – there’s the question you should ask yourselves. I hope it helps. 

*And here’s where I apologise for snapping and acknowledge that I do that to the people I love and admire all the time, because I suck at keeping my thoughts to myself and think talking stuff through is good and healthy – and, clearly, inspiring.

A feminist childcare model - and mammies doing it wrong

“Children of working mothers have better social and everyday skills,” read an Irish Times headline last week. A few days later, The Guardian reported on another study suggesting that mothers should spend as much time with their children as they can afford, and went with the headline “Child’s cognitive skills linked to time spent with mother”.

Such is the game of pitting mothers against each other: you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. This of course is nothing new; the stream of new studies seems never-ending, and media loves reporting on them – likely because new mothers never fail to fall for the clickbait, desperate for some sort of evidence that they’re doing something right in this most difficult job they’ve ever tried their hand at. But perhaps there’s no coincidence that we’re seeing two of these stories in two leading newspapers in such a short space of time in the build-up to Christmas. Guilt is a powerful marketing tool – not least as we are bombarded with images of mothers hard at work on delivering the perfect family Christmas: finding the best deals on those most sought-after toys; creating the perfectly relaxing yet fun ambience in the home; doing all the food shopping, perhaps ‘getting away with’ using a ready-made stock pot; then standing in a doorway somewhere in the periphery looking selflessly blissful while watching their loved ones enjoy themselves.

Timely or not, these types of studies would perhaps be at least somewhat useful if it wasn’t for the fact that few parents feel as if they have any choice at all in the decision of whether to return to work or not. At the very least, thinking outside the box will involve a significantly lowered standard of living for most.

In Ireland, as Minister for Children Katherine Zappone unveiled the government’s new childcare scheme as part of Budget 2017 a couple of months ago, the new programme was heavily criticised. Many highlighted the complete failure to support stay-at-home parents, along with anyone opting for childcare provided by a family member or neighbour, while some went as far as to refer to the full-time crèche subsidy as an incentive for the “institutionalisation of babies and toddlers”, citing studies of young children’s most basic needs.

Further north, said institutionalisation of children is in full swing: in Sweden, quality controlled, local government funded nurseries are available for all children from around the age of one, and a full-time place costs no more than 1,287SEK (about €130), or 3% of the gross household income, per month for the first child. The cost drops significantly for the second and third children in a family, and the fourth goes free. Forget about ‘a second mortgage’, as Irish parents have come to refer to childcare costs – these working parents have two salaries to spend.

With a feminist foreign policy, a ministry made up of 50% women, and parental leave in place of gender-specific maternity leave since 1974, including three months earmarked for fathers since earlier this year and an equality bonus for parents who choose to split the 480 days equally, Sweden may be the promised feminist land; yet choosing the longer-term stay-at-home route comes with a huge loss of earnings as that second disposable salary is lost. Moreover, crucially, I have yet to stop receiving messages on an all too frequent basis from friends who have had enough, who just can’t make emotional ends meet, who are burning the candle at so many ends they don’t even know what’s up anymore.

Institutionalisation critics, meanwhile, are mostly concerned with the failing confidence of parents; Sweden’s childcare culture has resulted in a generation of parents who think that they can’t keep their children at home during the summer holidays because they simply don’t trust their own ability to entertain and challenge them. When siblings come into the world, children in Sweden are entitled to between 15 and 30 hours in crèche per week, something that’s been heavily questioned: why would parents send their children away when they’re at home?

A quick recap: we feed parents an endless diet of academically proven ways in which they are most likely failing their children, and then we blame the childcare system for making them doubt their parental ability.

The feminist elephant in the room is of course unpaid labour: the emotional labour that pushes mothers working outside of the home over the edge, and the housework and childcare work that is stubbornly unseen, unpaid and simultaneously always criticised. Because all these critics have grand ideas about what children need, but no one’s asking how their mothers* are doing. Don’t get me wrong: the last thing I want is to play into the rhetoric that poses that happy mothers have happy babies, as if having a bad day or struggling sometimes is somehow a failure. But the chirpy ‘getting mothers back into the workforce’ spiel is starting to sound a bit tired. We’ve been working all along – and that work won’t go away just because society refuses to value it.

So what does a truly feminist childcare model look like? A good first step might be one that doesn’t tell parents that their most important job in this world is to be productive in the sense of contributing to economic growth; one of flexibility and lack of judgement, one that levels the playing field not just in a financial sense but also when it comes to equality of choice and wellbeing. And a feminist media? Alas, it’s a long road ahead. 

*And yes, to be clear: I do mean mothers, not parents. A close friend who became a father recently remarked when returning from a stroll with his baby daughter in the sling how easy it is to be celebrated as a super dad, what with all the smiles and encouraging comments. I’ve yet to meet a mother who feels quite that loved and supported by the general public. Also, refer again to the Christmas commercials. I rest my case.     

Pretty in pink and cool dudes in blue

‘Pretty in pink’ and ‘Cool dudes in blue’ read two of the three headlines in my first ever mailout from Mamas & Papas. High on excitement about becoming a parent, I had somehow gone and allowed myself to hope that it wouldn’t be like this, that things really can’t be quite as bad as they seem. The mailout, then, came like a slap in the face of my ideas about gender-neutral parenting, and I tweeted Mamas & Papas and told them to grow up and piss off. Needless to say, they didn’t respond.

A friend did respond, though, saying something along the lines of ‘no shit, they’re still playing that stupid colour game’. No shit. And sure, it is hilarious that in 2012 you still can’t go to a kids’ clothes shop without being told that it’s great that you know that it’s a boy so that you can stock up on blues and forget all about the yellows and other in-betweens. It’s laughable that Mothercare, despite having a non-gendered newborn tab in their drop-down menu for baby clothes, feel the need to add a caption below the picture of babygros in pink saying ‘for girls’ – just to make sure you don’t misunderstand and, god forbid, buy pink clothes for your unborn son. But it’s not about the colours, really, is it? I’d happily dress my baby boy in head-to-toe blues, even if it happens to be one of my least favourite colours. Frankly, I think good parenting is about much more than fashion.

But what’s in a colour? ‘Pretty in pink’ and ‘Cool dudes in blue,’ read the headlines. And no, it wasn’t the colours per se that made me explode in a tweet. The colours, of course, are just signifiers for gender stereotypes and the expectations we put on little girls and boys of what they should grow up to be. Dress your girl in pink as much as you like: it’s not until you start telling her how pretty she is that you really start to tell her what matters. When your son is labelled as ‘tough,’ it’s no longer about the colour of his t-shirt. And as Mamas & Papas describe your daughter as ‘precious’ and your little boy’s jeans as ‘durable,’ we’ve gone way beyond fashion as simply a visual experience.

Last year, it was discovered that Lindex, a big Swedish high street chain, produced clothes for boys that were bigger than the same size clothes for girls, despite using ‘centilong,’ a size directly related to the height of the child in centimetres. The rationale, a Lindex staff member explained, was that boys like to mess around more and need loose-fitted clothes. In other words, parents can’t be trusted to know their own children and decide how tight-fitted clothes they need; instead, a boy centimetre was made bigger than a girl centimetre. Pure logic.

So boys need durable, loose-fitted clothes, because they mess around; softer fabrics will tear, and tighter clothes will be restrictive. Girls, the implication becomes, are calm and quiet. And as a friend warned us that boys can be a handful as toddlers, more so than girls, I realised that this is a widespread preconception.

I’ve been told countless times since having my son that boys are more ‘hard work’ than girls, and that may be true – I really don’t know, and frankly I don’t care. I may be of the belief that we are pretty good at living up to society’s expectations of us, and that even kids become a lot like what people tell them they should be, but the thing is that even if I’m wrong, even if the majority of boys are born louder, messier and more active than girls, there will always be exceptions. There will be bold, lively girls and calm, quiet boys – so why the need to tell them to change, to presume that deep down they’re not naturally like that? Why the need to make them feel inadequate only because of their gender?

I don’t know what happens when we tell boys that they are tough and cool, but I can guess. I don’t know how girls respond to being complimented on their looks, but research on body image tells a tale. ‘Pretty in pink’ and ‘Cool dudes in blue’? Grow up and piss off, Mamas & Papas.

Let's talk about having it all

There’s a debate on twitter at the moment around the hashtag #havingitall: about the women who want to have it all, and about whether or not they can.

It’s funny how the having-it-all discussion gets stuck at greedy, career-hungry women who are stupid enough to think that they can do well professionally, lead a good life, and have a family at the same time. No one talks about the greedy, career-hungry men who are stupid enough to think the same thing. And, much more annoyingly, no one gets that, really, the discussion we should be having is about choice as opposed to greed.

Can women really have it all?, people ask. How about we change that to: Why can’t women choose from it all? Or, even better: Who’s allowed to choose what they have?

Arguing for women’s right to the opportunity to create a rewarding career for themselves while also having a family, or for men’s right to decent paternity leave and the opportunity to be a real presence in their children’s lives, is not the same as advocating a rat race kind of lifestyle where more and faster are better. Zen and mindfulness are popular enough at the moment for me to guess that most people have begun to think that less is more. You could almost say that most people probably don’t even want to have it all.

What we should be talking about is how to create a society in which every individual and family can choose for themselves. We should enable careerists to climb the ladder they want to climb and family people to spend a lot of time with their family, whether they’re men or women, while making sure that it’s actually possible to keep a job and do it well without having to neglect your children while you’re at it – if that happens to be what you want, that is.

Let’s not kid ourselves: the way things stand, not even men have that much freedom.

I don't know how he does it

“If you want to have it all, it’s your job to work out how to do it. If you can’t, give something up.” That’s David Cox’s advice to Kate, the high-flying fictitious character in the film I don’t know how she does it.

I suspect we’ll read many a harsh critique of the super-woman film, but I wasn’t quite prepared to read this in the Guardian. I’m not saying that this Hollywood plot doesn’t need some ripping apart – the have-it-all approach to life indeed deserves questioning – but your way of criticising something says a lot about your outlook on life. And I guess, somehow, I keep forgetting that even the most liberal publications in the UK look at parenting as a one-woman job.

Many would agree – and I’m sure I will too if I ever see the film – that the plot is nothing but a boring cliché. My idea of the real world, however, differs quite a bit from Cox’s. He answers the question of how she does it with the accusation that Kate uses her poor husband, a man who wishes to focus on furthering his own career but is forced to bring their injured son to the hospital when selfish mammy is at work. He explains her success by pointing the finger at the way she expects of her employer to be flexible, thereby, he suggests, somehow undermining the efforts of women who don’t need flexibility at work because they don’t have a family: they’ve had to make a sacrifice, means Cox, so why should we let selfish Kate get away with not making one?

“Motherhood is voluntary,” Cox reminds us. But “fulfilling all other aspirations at the same time may or may not be practicable.”

This is where I lose him completely. We’re supposed to look at Kate as a “scumbag” for wanting it all (but, he insinuates, not doing it well enough), yet her husband is described as a victim. Isn’t fatherhood voluntary as well? What does he mean?

Here’s what I think he means. Fatherhood isn’t that demanding, after all. Most fathers manage very well to combine fatherhood with successful careers, thank you very much. And so no one ever says, ‘I don’t know how he does it’. Why? Because parenting is a mother’s job. It’s a mother’s fault when a child is malnourished; the mother is the one who’s neglected a child who doesn’t learn to talk when other kids do. Laundry, school runs, hospital visits – it’s all done while the father’s at work. That’s how he does it: he’s got a wife.

About mothers, Cox writes that “if they can’t work as hard as their childless colleagues to get a seat on the board, they could manage without one.” But of course, a majority of the board members aren’t childless. They’re fathers. And fathers don’t have to make sacrifices, we all know that. Right, Cox?

[All of the above is of course based on yet another of the patriarchy's great myths: the idea that not getting to spend a lot of time with your kids isn't in itself a sacrifice for fathers. But that's another discussion for another post.]