to think that Helen Wright, headtreacher, is a really good role model

[DuelingFanjo]

story, Daily Mail unfortunately

obviously she is also very lucky to have the freedom to take her baby into her place of work but I also think good for her for taking advantage of it!

". I think a lot of the anger directed towards me is anger at their own situations.

'What's surprised me is how much some women - most women, it seems - divide their lives into work and family. They almost seem to see work as something to escape from. I have never ever felt like that, and I'd be horrified if any of my girls go on to feel that. "

Bit easy to say that work and family ought not to be divided when you live where you work, no?

I think good on her, she's happy, all good.

But if she starts casting aspersions on other women's situations, when many, many women don't have the choices she does - not very classy, imo.

By calling her a role model, you are saying that going straight back to work is the thing to aim for. To admire. I think that what we should be aiming for is being happy for women to make whatever choice suits them.

So no, she's not a role model for choosing to go straight back to work. And someone who chooses to never go back into the workplace again is not a role model.

Let everyone do what they feel is right for them, their family, their situation.

See, I wouldn't want to return to work that quickly - but she quite clearly thrives on it, and she's able to take her children with her. It obviously works for her, so that's great.

As with everything parent-hood related, as long as it's right for you and yours, it doesn't matter what other people do/think.

I think if they were going to quote me they could at least have used my user name and given me the credit

ha ha I wondered who it was ROck !!!!!

my friend sent me this too. I think its horses for courses, its her 3rd child and she is clearly very very driven. If this is what she wants to do, well each to their own

But role model? No, becuase we have fought hard to get maternity rights and I would hate to have this behaviour encouraged as the "norm". I could not walk for 2 weeks anyway !!!! and with newborn sleep deprivation you could not have got any sense out of me for a good 4 months anyway, bet you this baby is good sleeper

I can just imagine the reaction if I took my newborn baby into my place of work and said "here I am, I am taking the example of Helen Wright, who is a role model for all women...."

No I think she's an idiot and setting an awful example. But I think her employers are worse as no mother is supposed to be allowed to go back to work within 2 weeks of birth.

I did have a go at her but it sounds so harsh they way they have picked and chosen their quote.

I just think that women have fought such a long hard battle to get decent maternity rights that it undoes all of the work when someone like her puts themselves up as a role model, particularly when they have such influence over a school full of teenage girls who may now feel pressurised in the future. It also plays into the hands of many men who think that maternity leave is one big skive. Women should be able to choose for themselves in their own circumstances.

What she does is up to her, a shame for the baby but up to her. I wouldn't want her being an example to my daughter though.

Maternity leave is a hard-won right that enables women (the only ones able to bear children and breastfeed) to take time off work legitimately, and not lose their job or their career progression.

If lots and lots of women feel pressured in any way to return to work very quickly (which seeing more women like this, and that French politician), it erodes this right, and creates an even more very uneven playing field between men and women.

So in that sense, I don't think she's that great a role model.

No, I think she is the exact opposite of a good role model.

And she is a very prominent role model to all the girls in her school. Shame on her.

I would not present her as a role model to my DD (still in utero at present...) on the basis that I would wish her to feel (a) able to take the full amount of maternity leave that she was entitled to if she chose to do so without feeling guilty or that she was somehow a 'failure' for wanting or needing that time; that (b) having a baby is actually quite a significant biological event and that the body needs time to recover (longer than 7 hours...); and (c) that returning to work 7 hours after giving birth is no more admirable than returning to work 7 hours after a heart bypass. If you love your job that much then but it's not something people should aspire to. Who the fuck cares?

I think she should stop crowing about it and just get on with bringing up her baby the way she chooses, just like the rest of us do.

What hunker said, all well and good when you live in your work and it is childfriendly. She doesn't actually have to leave her newborn.

Not so good for the rest of us when you would have ot leave the newborn baby with someone else wrt BFing etc.

She isn't a role model, she's a one off 'ooh look at this' story.

My DC don't board, but if they did, I think I would prefer a school where the head walks around breastfeeding her baby.

Boarding schools are an unusual environment, that mixture of home and work for the staff. So for other women working in a similar environment, I think she would be a role model.

I think she is a good role model, in that what she is saying is that a woman should have the choice to either return to work, or to take time off, and shouldn't feel railroaded into either route. I can see exactly why going back works for her - she lives in the school, and it is not 'physical' work, and she is not separated from the baby. She is also breastfeeding, I imagine in full visibility of staff and girls, and THAT is a great thing to establish as 'normal' in the girls' eyes.

Mind you, I had to take 2 of my 3 newborns to the place I had previously worked.

It was called home and it had one, and then 2, other small people I cared for on a regualr basis there too (they were called my children).

I sometimes wish there was such a thing as maternity leave for the mothers of toddlers!

Well she's clearly incredibly ambitious. Great.

Perhaps she could come and comment on the work thread I've had running in SN for the last few days. I think she might find in my situation something had to give. Would be interested in how she would combine work and family.

That's the point isn't it - not everyone has the option to make the same choices as her - most don't - (and tbh unless you're very very ambitious you are probably not going to want to).

I don't think she is a good role model.

I wouldn't want either of my 2 dd's to think that this was something to aspire to.

Also - and this came up on the SN thread - it's a lit easier to manage work and children if you're in charge if your own time which she is - in a way her staff will never be.

Interesting to read that she would encourage colleagues to do the same. Wonder how many of them could afford to have a nanny on standby? Presumably the school wouldn't be laying one on.

But what she's saying is that people SHOULD have the choice. Not that they currently DO, but that they SHOULD.

My mum took 1 day off when she had my brother, because she didn't have the choice to take maternity leave. That's not to say that just because she had no choice, that someone who does take time off is a 'poor role model'.

In fact she is in a unique position to show the girls in her care exactly what a newborn is like - they'll see it crying, feeding, filling its nappy at the most inopportune moments...

She lives in he r place of work and she can obviously juggle the work she does to some extent as it's just not possible for many people to have a baby sucking omn your breast while working.

It's a non-story. It's all for the sake of controversy. And to wind up mnetters probably.

Does she have any teaching responsibility?

Har