Smash hit

Which is not to suggest the modern working mother’s lot is not a tough one. “Like it or not, we have created an environment where women simply have to work,” says Somerset Webb. “We need to find a way for women to fulfil their potential for the economy and themselves without taking them away from their homes and families quite so much.”

WHY RICH WIVES CAN HAVE IT ALL

By Deirdre Fernand

There’s something sleek and shiny about Juliana Farha. Step inside her west London mews house and a tableau unfolds that is wonderful to behold. Perched on a sofa, all glossy curls and manicured nails, she is poised perfection. Opposite, throwing her admiring glances, sits her husband, 42-year-old Kit Malthouse, one of Boris Johnson’s deputy mayors of London. Malthouse is a successful financier who also draws a salary of more than £100,000 a year from City Hall. Farha could take it easy. Yet, for the past two years, she has been putting in long hours building up a social networking site.

“Arguably, I could choose not to work,” says Farha, 42, a former journalist. “But I wouldn’t feel comfortable not contributing to our life together.” She grew up in Canada, helped run a successful family business in Toronto, and married Malthouse two years ago, becoming stepmother to his young son. “There was no expectation that Kit would hand me a life. I am not the stereotype of a politician’s wife, in that I am not an extension of him.”

Her site, Dilettantemusic.com, which launched last year, aims to be a hub for musicians and lovers of classical music. So far, it has gobbled up more than £500,000, money that Farha raised herself. Malthouse provides her with emotional and financial support. “I have to own up to the reality that I couldn’t do it without Kit. It is a luxury that lots of women don’t have.”

Luxury. We bandy the word about to describe anything from swanky penthouses that cost millions to scented bath oil for less than a fiver. But for women such as Farha, it means real choice, real privilege. And in today’s straitened times, that particular freedom — to work or not to work — appears the ultimate luxury.

Like Farha, Jill Kowal is a “multiple-choice” mother, a woman with many options. Married to a successful fund manager with whom she has three children under 12, she could afford to stay at home, but prefers to work. Kowal, an American, studied business and political science before settling in London with her husband. She works as a horticulturist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and is also studying for a master’s degree at Reading University.

“It’s hard and tiring, but I am completely stimulated by what I do,” she says. She employs a part-time nanny and a cleaner to help out at home. “I think that women of my generation have been educated to engage with the world, not just to let the world ‘happen’ around us,” she says. Many women, looking at Kowal’s life, would envy her freedom to choose to work or not, a fact she acknowledges: “You know, it’s ideal. And this privileged position allows me a greater freedom to pursue work I find meaningful and tangible, without worrying about the mortgage.”

Marilyn Davidson, professor of work psychology at Manchester Business School, believes that work is intrinsic to our psychological health, a natural antidote to the isolation that many full-time mothers, whatever their financial situation, can experience. “It satisfies our social needs. Even when people have no financial incentive to earn, they tend to get involved in some project after a while.” In particular, she sees passion as an important driver for women such as Farha and Kowal. “Their financial security allows them to pursue what they love. They have control over home and work and, if it gets too stressful, they know they can stop. I think the whole idea of choice is a wonderful buffer against stress.”

In these postfeminist days, biology may no longer be destiny of women, but it seems economics is.

DATING A MULTIMILLIONAIRE

Times recommends

• How I lost the gift of joy for a while
• How to get Coleen Rooney's post-baby body
• The A-Z of winter style rules