Remember me?

So, where did I leave off?  That’s right, talking about myself, wondering if I were vain and realising that, in itself, is a form of vanity.

I suppose that realisation might be partly responsible for the radio silence, since, gosh, March. I started to wonder what I was doing on here and what purpose it served, other than validating my own opinions. At the same time, lots of people kept talking to me about the blog, about feminism, even apologising for doing ‘non feminist’ things and I realised the blog seemed to be losing its way. I wanted to explore all those grey areas of feminism, to explore how my generation of women were negotiating their place in the world. The idea was not to regurgitate the old debates or spout a hard line about the way women should be, but that’s how some people took it. ‘Feminism’ is a judgement-laden term it seems.

 But I thought it might be time to try again. Which, unavoidably, means talking about myself some more.

So what’s been happening since March?

1.     I got seriously unhappy. I felt I was drifting and didn’t really know what I wanted and seriously didn’t know how to get what I wanted.

2.     I snapped out of that and got my self a nice new job. Exciting school; more responsibility. Gulp.

3.     I formed a new 5 year plan. It involves spending a lot of money on holidays, at the same time trying to save up for a proper house and maybe, at some point, making a baby. Gulp.

4.     I got happy and full of the joys of life again.

5.     I’ve vowed to be more creative and so am working my way through the Guardian’s poetry workshop. The results are mixed.  My mum likes them though. She’s not exactly my harshest critic.

I am woman, hear me roar. Sometimes. Maybe. 

Let’s see if I can spin some comment out of that little lot.

Anxiety lies at the heart of it. Anxiety about whether I’m doing the right thing, whether I’m making the right decisions, whether I’m heading in the right direction, whether I’m making the most of my life. I do worry I’m letting myself down. Have I settled for being a teacher? Could I have a brilliant play or novel in me, if I just tried a bit harder? What is it that actually makes me LOVE being married so much? Should I have rejected that urge like so many of my friends seem to be doing? Will having a baby push me further into being a conventional woman when that's the last thing that really feels right for me? How can I stop that from happening? Shouldn’t I just get over myself and realise I’m not actually anything special?

How much of that is just a human experience do you think? How much of it is particular to women? Do more women than men feel the tug of seemingly opposing desires and priorities? Has this changed over the generations? Were our mothers and grandmothers just as anxious?

That’s a lot of questions. Does anybody have any answers?

Hearts and Minds

I wasn’t going to post today. I’ve spent twelve hours in a lightless, airless institution and frankly the will to live, let alone to write, seemed to evaporate little by little with the passing of every hour. But then I came home and my husband had laid out, very neatly,  the magazines from the Sunday papers for me. So I smiled, and read and smiled some more and the cogs started turning.

The Sunday Times magazine has a regular feature called ‘Relative Values’ in which two family members talk about their differing perspectives on the relationship. This week it is a mother and daughter. 76 year old Elizabeth tells us about “ambition, maternal guilt, missed sports days and atrocious cooking.” It struck a chord with many of the issues that have cropped up on my baby blog in the first week of its life.

“I’d have gone mad if I’d stayed at home, and I think that would have been worse than not being there.”

Yes! I firmly believe that happy women make good mothers. One of my greatest fears is that becoming a parent will create a seething resentment towards my children and towards my husband because the role of motherhood will push me into a corner I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to occupy. (I reiterate that I speak from an absolutely personal perspective and by no means think that the choice to be a stay at home mum is the wrong choice.)

My husband thinks this is a load of old tosh. He can’t conceive that I might one day wake up and realise I've accidentally become a suburban housewife.* He can't conceive that I'll ever live my life in a way that isn't essentially ruled by my own desires and needs. But isn’t that what we all think? That we’re somehow special? That it won’t happen to us? That we’ll forge a new way?  That we won't get bogged down by the weight of responsibility.

The fact is, in order for that all important ‘choice’ to be meaningful, women need men on board.  Dare I say it, that even our 21st Century society is deeply patriarchal and we do, indeed, still need men to ‘grant’ us our rights and freedoms, because they are still holding the cards. We need men who will be willing to share the household chores, to share the child caring roles, and men who won’t feel a petty emasculation in doing so. We need men who are also willing to fight our cause. We need men who are brave enough to call themselves feminists. We need men who are brave enough to recognise that they are nurturers too.

Today the coalition government announced their intention to carry out the Labour pledge of flexible maternity leave. For the first time, women will be able to transfer a proportion of their maternity leave to their partner (up to six months.) This is significant legislation and a step in the right direction. But a leap in mere law is not enough. I do wonder how much a change in the details of maternity leave will actually result in a change in the details of women’s lives.

This legislation will be rendered meaningless if the partners of women are not willing to give up work to stay at home with the baby.  This is a role men are told they can’t perform as well as women. A role they are told they shouldn’t perform if they truly value their masculinity. A role they fear they will be ridiculed for fulfilling. Parental leave is not just a matter of the statute book, it's a matter of culture.

I suspect the bigger battle still lies in winning the hearts and minds of men.

* To be absolutely fair to my husband, and I think I must, he has offered, when the time should come, to give up work to share the child rearing duties, either full or part time, depending on what we agree together. In intention at least, he really is a goodun.

Staying home

I herby ban the use of the phrase ‘Just a stay at home mum.’

My reasons are threefold.

1)      It’s judgmental. Lord knows, enough of that thing goes on already. And that judgment creates pressure on women (and enough of that goes on too.)  It’s also divisive. I am not necessarily a better feminist because I haul my ass out of bed at 6.30 every morning to go to work. If personal and political choice and freedom for women is ever going to be meaningful, we need to rid the discourse of this kind of prejudice.

2)      Because ‘staying at home’ doesn’t mean retreating from life. Want some proof? Check out Babybandito.

3)      And maybe, if we stopped bandying about this phrase, I wouldn’t be so petrified of what having kids might do to my self esteem.

(My mum, who’s a wise old bird, despite my last reference to her, always says she was better informed staying at home with her children than she was stuck at work listening to the inane twitter of office banter. She puts it all down to Radio 4. Yeah, even The Archers. )