It is boring being at home. It's unremitting domestic toil so most mothers of under 5s now work and I am glad I worked full time when we had 3 under 5. RJ says in today's Sunday Times she was at home with 3 children under 5. More fool her I say. Why not instead ditch your guilt, get wonderful childcare for your children and have the best of all worlds she says men have secured in the last 50 years - success at work and time with the family. That's the way to go not to feel you have to be there as drudge and chief cook and bottle washer for 5 years with no gains for anyone. The only way we survived having 3 children under 5 and avoided the problem that does not speak its name or whatever RJ refers to Betty F calling it was by us both working happily and having the amount of child care and cleaning we could comfortably tolerate.
"Many congratulations to the alabaster beauty Nicole Kidman, who is due to hear the patter of tiny feet in July. Celebrity ?baby joy?, as it is invariably termed, always spreads the love around, and the so-called friends have duly announced that ?Nic and Keith [Urban] are riding the clouds? while Nicole?s publicist is confining herself to a press release that describes the gravid couple as ?thrilled?.
I?m as pleased as you are, and possibly even more pleased than Katie Holmes, who is married to Kidman?s ex, Tom Cruise, claims to be about it. But I have to admit to feeling that the predictable gush over one elderly primigravida, who happens to be an internationally worshipped movie star with bags of fairy dust and the world at her feet, threatens, as these occasions do, to obscure the less sparkly reality of early motherhood for many women, women whose lives cannot so gracefully gloss over the harsh truth that 40 is not the best time to start a baby; that most companies are structured around men with stay-at-home wives in mind; and that being at home all day in sole charge of babies and small children can be tiring, repetitive, isolating and indescribably dull.
When I had three children under four, I never knew how to answer when child-free friends called and asked, ?How are you?? So I would trill, ?Fine! Great!?
But in fact I felt exhausted all the time, to the point of delirium, and for about five years my proudest achievement was the time I managed to make a trip to the chemist without a double buggy, nappy bag and toddler ? and didn?t forget my wallet. But I never had postnatal depression, and in that sense and many others I recognise I was blessed. For the day after the Kidman-Urban announcement we learnt of Heather Finkill, 30, the newly delivered mother of two-week-old twins, Lacey and Isobel. Mrs Finkill left her Hampshire house at 7am and walked in front of a lorry on the northbound carriageway of the M3.
Her death is desperately sad and sounds like an extreme case. But actually such stories aren?t all that uncommon. Suicide is the leading cause of death in young mothers. One in five women, according to the charity Perinatal Illness UK, suffers from some form of postnatal depression. Even now. In fact, make that, especially now.
In 1963 Betty Friedan defined, in The Feminine Mystique, the feeling of frustrated, morale-sapping dread that many ? especially educated ? women feel at the onset of domesticity, housewifery and motherhood. She called it ?the problem with no name?.
In the 1970s Spare Rib, the feminist magazine, was inundated by manuscripts from women confessing to their loneliness and shame that they did not find motherhood the idyllic scenario that it was cracked up to be.
But in 2008, even though we have the equal pay act and flexitime and supposedly bags of paternal involvement, even though we have Harriet Harperson insisting that ?it must be the cultural norm for both mothers and fathers to work flexibly so they can balance earning a living while bringing up their children?, mums are still depressed. More than ever, it appears, if the one-in-five figure is right.
I hesitate to put this theory forward, but I will anyway. I think that what lies behind this sorority of suffering is that nothing has come along to make motherhood any easier since the dawn of feminism, and lots has come along to make it harder.
As well as the demands of pregnancy, childbirth and small children, women are now expected to work when they?re expecting and beyond. And when they?ve produced the next generation, they discover to their dismay that they have just taken on a second profession. They will be responsible for everything their child does, annually audited, and to blame for it.
Meanwhile their husbands have inexplicably declined the tempting new-Labour offers of flexitime and paid paternity leave to share parental duties. Studies show that while fathers evince genuine desire to be involved in their children?s lives, they make poorer primary carers for sons, think that spaghetti hoops three times a day can?t be wrong and have herd immunity to mess.
They want family time and intimacy with their children but are understandably reluctant to extend this involvement so it risks annoying the boss or involves being made to hand-wash the Weenee pouch pants.
?Fathers are fine with a day out but they are reluctant to take on the menial everyday tasks like the laundry, and studies show that they want to have the status of a job and paid work and to be able, on top of that, to come home to spend time with their children,? Dr Esther Dermott told me. A sociologist who specialises in ?contemporary fatherhood? at Bristol University, she is the author of the father-son study. ?The fact that new fathers don?t reduce their working hours also means that the burden of childcare is much more likely to fall on the mother, rather than being shared,? she said.
Mmm. If I hear the expert correctly, what she said is that, in modern society, it?s men who are validating themselves in the workplace, continuing their careers and returning home to the fragrant, pyjamaed children, to the hot supper. Not women. If that is the case, it turns out that the past 40 years have resulted not in mothers having it all, but fathers.
Well, what can I say? Well done, chaps. "