It’s all very well having a career, darling,’ my mother said, after I’d swanned by in my ‘working girl’ uniform of Next suit, high-heeled brogues, and opaque tights, circa 1992. ‘But don’t forget about marriage and babies.’
It is impossible to over-estimate my horror and confusion at her intervention.
I had been brought up among brothers, and my first job was at a pink newspaper where almost all the other journalists were male, and played cricket, all of which suited me fine.
And now my own mother was telling me... what, exactly? That I could either be a reporter, or a mother? The future was either/or? This seemed depressingly backward: a bit like the Chinese state media, which last week issued a series of bulletins describing educated, unmarried, professional women over 27 as undesirable ‘leftovers’.
Either/or future: My own mother told me was that I could either be a reporter, or a mother. It's made me wonder what I should say to my 18-year-old daughter when the question of her own 'juggling' act comes upDespite my horror, something my mother said must have sunk in. A year later, I was in Marylebone Register Office – in a hat – and pregnant.
I carried on working, but it’s made me wonder what I should say to my 18-year-old daughter when the question of her own ‘juggling’ act comes up, which (and I speak as someone already champing for grandchildren) I hope it will.
I would have to start by telling her that since my day, not much has changed. Then, as now, the breeding and career cycles clash irrevocably: one’s reproductive years dovetail with the key decades when one’s male peers are powering ahead, killing the opposition, nailing the pitch, becoming MPs and QCs and CEOs and PM, which brings us to my contemporary at university, David Cameron, who admits there is a yawning leadership gap in this country.
‘My wife likes to say that if you don’t have women in the top places, you are not just missing out on 50 per cent of the talent, you are missing out on a lot more than 50 per cent of the talent – and I think she probably has a point.’ I’m not sure I fully grasp Sam Cam’s gnomic utterance, but whatever she said, I’m with her.
More from Rachel Johnson... Rachel Johnson: My generation is soft? Tell that to a Cub leader from Cornwall 26/05/13 Angelina is rich, famous and human. Get over it 19/05/13 Rachel Johnson: Finally, The Firm has given Camilla the top job she deserves (and I don't care what the bigots say - even if they do scrawl it in green ink) 11/05/13 RACHEL JOHNSON: Gwyneth is so perfect it can make you feel sick - but her honesty is heroic 05/05/13 Let the Leveson Lovers pursue their passion - as long as the press can too 27/04/13 Rachel Johnson: A lesson from Maggie and Boston's heroes - bravery and kindness always win 21/04/13 RACHEL JOHNSON: Why dull, dumpy, divorced men are the new sex gods 14/04/13 Rachel Johnson: Aspiration is the best birth control... How the Philpott case highlights the plight of women trapped in a spiral of benefit, babies and predators 06/04/13 RACHEL JOHNSON: We need Hobbit homes, not 'Chelsea icebergs' 31/03/13 VIEW FULL ARCHIVEWomen are clearly not ruling the world – of 190 heads of state, nine are women. Of members of parliament globally, 13 per cent are women. In the corporate sector, the proportion of women at the top, with executive roles or board seats, is stuck at 16 per cent. It hasn’t improved for ten years; in fact, the numbers are getting worse. And given the hash that men are making of things, it would be nice, as Sam says, if women had more of a go.
I’d tell my daughter that despite the above, there has been some helpful tinkering at the margins to make combining children and career more doable. For example, IVF – wahey! – is to be made available on the NHS to women up to the age of 42, giving them an extra three years of ‘trying’. Or she could go and work for a progressive, female-friendly firm, such as McKinsey, which ‘wants its moms back’, or so I read in the Wall Street Journal, and is going after the women who left the firm or went part-time after having families.
But I’ll warn her. This groovy stuff doesn’t apply to 99.9 per cent of women and meanwhile, the success rate for IVF for women aged 40 to 42 is 12.5 per cent. In other words, these advances will benefit a vanishingly small number of lucky women. I’ll remind her that women, like men, mostly like and need to work, so she should find something she enjoys (in fact, we like it so much that we usually do two jobs, one at work, and one at home).
Even Heather Frost, the now famous 36-year-old eco-mansion’d mother of 11, told Daybreak: ‘I’d love to go out and work. I took a business plan to try to open my own shop and do my own business, but I fell ill.’
Women also like and need to have babies. This can get in the way of work. But not for long, I’ll say. When it comes to work, life stretches ahead for longer than ever: the pension age in 2028 will be 67, so we can work till we drop, and many of us, including my daughter, will have to.
Indeed, the over-60s were told last week by David Willetts that they were eligible for student loans, so they can go back to university, and retrain, and up-skill, and whatnot.
But, I will remind her, while McKinsey may change, Mother Nature never does. Our reproductive lifespan is brief, and only women – as things stand – can bear children, and it sort of helps to have a man around if and when you do. I might hand over to Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook here, who says ‘the most important career choice you’ll make is who you marry’.
Crop star: Michelle Obama shows off her new hairstyle as she explains the genesis of her new lookSo that’s what I’m going to go with, I reckon, given it’s tricky. And it’s never NOT going to be tricky. A woman’s drive for world domination will collide with the maternal imperative.
‘Darling, it’s all very well having a career,’ I hope I’ll be brave enough to end with, if she’s happy, single, employed and the ripe old age of 26, as I was.
‘But don’t forget about marriage and babies.’
.........................Men get a Ferrari - we get a haircutNobody Tells You: Men start their mid-life crisis at 40 and then never stop. So Michelle Obama speaks for us all when she explained the genesis of her new look.
‘I couldn’t get a sports car. They won’t let me bungee-jump. So instead, I cut my bangs.’ If you can’t go off on a late-life gap year to Cambodia, or buy a Ferrari, it’s OK, ladies. You may not be able to have a ‘Menoporsche’ – you’re too busy working and looking after your families – but you can always treat yourselves to an exciting new fringe!
.........................A house is better than a history bookDamn! Why didn’t I think of it first? Margaret Forster is writing a memoir, around all the houses she’s ever lived in. Clever.
Houses have much longer, more colourful lives than their tenants. In the Seventies, a family called Clutterbuck lived in a house in Regents Park Road, NW1, until my father bought it. We lived there for a time before moving to Belgium, where my parents divorced (Brussels does that to people).
My father sold it to former Times editor Simon Jenkins and Gayle Hunnicutt (who turned my bedroom into her shoe closet), and they sold the house last year to Mary Portas, Queen of Shops, who still lives there with her teenagers, her wife and their baby. A complete snapshot of sociological change over the past 40 years – in one Primrose Hill address.
.........................I hold a publishing record. My novel Winter Games first came out on November 30, and in paperback last week. That’s less than three months in hardcovers. I hope it’s not the literary equivalent of ‘straight to video’.
