We had another set of visitors from London this weekend – a young couple, smart, professionally ambitious; he a direct contemporary of mine from university. They came filled with their stories of life before babies, of work frustrations and future ambitions, of extravagant dinner parties and weddings at which they stayed out all night. This lifestyle is less that a year ago for us, aspects of it will be ours again all too soon. But right now, it all feels far away and I cannot help but hear these stories with some envy, however much I love our babies.
This envy is linked, I think, to the sense of apprehension I had when, last year, I started telling friends I was expecting twins. My apprehension was not about the pregnancy itself, rather, curious as this may sound, that I wondered how the news would be received. As a well-educated, professionally ambitious woman under thirty, I was doing things in a slightly different order to my contemporaries and, truth be told, I was worried they would think I was about to let my career dreams shipwreck on the rocks of motherhood.
How strange, when I was pretty certain that having children would do nothing to change my desire for something interesting beyond motherhood. How strange indeed, this worry, in these are modern times when we are so desperately keen for women to feel confident that careers and children are compatible. But women having children older and older leaves you wondering whether we feel that we must achieve our professional greatness before the babies arrive, rather than with them in tow. At the root of my apprehension, and now envy, was a niggling fear that this compatability was not to be as easy as I hoped.
One option to reassure my friends (and myself perhaps) would be to leap for the first fifty hour a week job that came my way and leave my six month old babies in somebody else’s care. I meet other mothers itching to get back to their Monday morning meetings and Friday deadlines. Fair enough, if this is how they see their lives working best. To me, this would feel like a distressing limitation on my experience of early motherhood – stressful, tiring and emotionally difficult for all of us. I enjoy being with my babies, and flatter myself to think that they rather enjoy being with me.
Another would be to work part time. Having been inclined to leave a full time job long past my contractual hours each day, this would likely be as much as a hardship but not as well paid. Then there are those work places with nurseries on site – perhaps I could find a job at one of those. Would that really make things any easier? My babies out all day in a place that is not their home, oh, but in the same building as me, though I am working too hard to go and see them.
There must be a better solution which does not involve this absolute distinction between life at home with children and a stimulating career. My day-to-day may have changed dramatically over the last year, but my hopes and dreams, professional and familial, have not. And why should they? I will have to be more imaginative to avoid falling for the first big compromise that pays me well.
So I shall use the time when my babies are sleeping or whilst I march round the park for the third time that day to think of an ingenious business idea that uses my mind and allows me to be at home for at least half of the day. And when I come up with it I shall tell all my friends so that they need not fear having babies before they have that all important job title at the end of their email sign off, or before they too are granted a spot in the company car park. I may also whisper that retirement is many years away but babies truly enjoying time at a nursery school is not.
With this in mind, I realised that my most recent envy was less rooted in the desire for a standard working day, but instead sartorial, for the pretty new coat our visitor was wearing. It gleamed of young professional about town and I would love to have it, if only it were not about to be ruined with baby sick. I shall buy it next year instead.
stillsonaive 