Madonna’s alleged marital problems were always going to make the news, but not
just because it’s Madonna. Her crisis on the home front — rumours of
divorce, her brother Christopher Ciccone’s claims that her career will
always win over her relationship — echoes a wider debate that is
increasingly defining our generation of women: can you have a successful
working life and maintain a happy family, or are you doomed to fail at one
or the other? More important, how do you judge a woman’s success — by her
job or by her achievements closer to home? Madonna was our role model. She
sandwiched it all in — the work with the workouts with the children with the
husband — and all without compromising her plan for world domination. And
yet, her brother’s words are being chewed over because of the growing
anxiety surrounding women’s role. The ideal is subtly changing, and the
definition of what makes a woman successful is shifting before our eyes.
Look at the emphasis that there is on having children in Hollywood. Do you
care about Jennifer Aniston’s career any more, or do you really only care
about the absence of a man to give her a child? And what about Kylie? All
that success — yet no man and no babies is the big story. How about
Charlotte Church, the new poster girl for the stay-at-home wife: “I wait on
him [Gavin] hand, foot and finger, and that’s the way I like it. His mother
spoiled him and now I spoil him,” said the multimillionairess recently (in a
separate interview, she was pictured ironing one of Gavin’s shirts just to
drive home the point).
All around us we see women celebrated more for their traditionally feminine
roles and lifestyles, or their marriages to rich men, than for their own
achievements. Society is bored with “career women” and often view women with
high-powered careers who spend little time at home with contempt. There is a
feeling that work is now a woman’s right, sure, but to be wholly successful,
she must excel as a mother and wife, too. So is this backsliding, or could
it be the beginning of a new episode in feminism: “The one where women
finally work out what they want and get the balance right, and stop feeling
like they are selling everybody short”?
This issue of what women need to be happy has become a political hot potato in
America, with the pro stay-at-home moms on one side and working moms on the
other (a nasty slanging match that has been dubbed the Mommy Wars). Most
recently in this magazine, the American feminist Katie Roiphe, who rejected
the life of a stay-at-home mom, lamented the fact that we have not shrugged
off the stereotype of the ideal mother, despite the efforts of her mother’s
generation: “We remain enamoured of the traditional ideas of what a mother
is. I still find myself getting up at 5am to make cupcakes for my daughter’s
birthday . . . These old-fashioned ideas still have a huge hold over us.”
Others are not so convinced that domesticity is a trap, among them Fiona
Neill, the British author of The Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy (a book that
Roiphe, weirdly — given its title and comic content — accused of presenting
a romanticised view of stay-at-home motherhood). “The truth is that domestic
life is not necessarily unrewarding,” says Neill. “When we have children, we
discover a softer side to ourselves, which a lot of feminists don’t want to
admit even exists. I think that feminism gave us one angle — breaking
through the glass ceiling and asking for an equal salary — but it didn’t
give us all the answers.” And boy, do we need answers. As Neill says: “I
don’t squabble with my friends over who is getting it right. But now we’ve
got to the point where, however you do it, you lose. That’s how I feel.”
The Canadian psychologist Susan Pinker is at the forefront of the attempt to
establish what women really want and how they can achieve the right balance.
Her book The Sexual Paradox has caused controversy for suggesting that women
are biologically programmed to operate differently from men. “My take on
this is that the majority of women have multiple, more balanced goals. Not
that long ago, being at the top of the managerial chain was the highest rung
on the ladder for women. They were expected to want what men had always
wanted, no matter what. Now, one generation after second-wave feminism, I
think younger women are moving beyond that constricted view. More women want
rewarding family lives and rewarding work lives.”
In other words, women thrive when they are allowed to be flexible and
accommodate all of these roles, rather than conforming to the male model of
what a successful life involves. Mary Portas, of Queen of Shops fame, an
undeniably powerful and successful businesswoman, is passionate about a
woman’s right — and need — to fulfil herself both at work and at home: “My
idea of hell is the ballsy Apprentice kind of businesswoman, living life by
some blokeish code. Women are aware that the nurturing part of their make-up
is essential. I think that my greatest achievement is mothering my two
children. If I boast about anything, it’s that I always leave work on time
to pick up my kids, and I make a loving home for them. I think all women
need that, and I don’t see any contradiction between that and having a
successful career.”
The truth is that the alternative — subscribing to the rigid male model and
somehow squeezing it all in — is not working for a lot of women. Sarah
Jackson, chief executive of Working Families, a charity that offers support
to parents and employers, says: “We put all the value on getting out there
and working, but we are beginning to see that there is a contradiction in
that. Now that men and women are both working, who does the caring?” She
puts the timing of this mood shift down to “a cultural temperature change.
I think it is to do with all the debate around global warming and the idea
that we should eat better and live better. It’s the quality of life stuff
that we are struggling with. When the zeitgeist puts into sharper relief the
areas that we are not doing well in, that’s when you notice it more. And
that’s when you feel a sense of failure”.
Daisy Goodwin, author and founder of the production company Silver River,
agrees that women are no longer prepared to deny what makes them tick. “I
was shocked when the BBC ran that series, Delia’s How to Cheat at Cooking.
Women have realised that they can’t cheat with their food, or their kids, or
their work. And they don’t want to. We have moved on from the Shirley
Conran, “life is too short to stuff a mushroom” school of thought. Most
women want to work and stuff a mushroom. I make jam. I knit. I think you get
enormous pleasure from doing daily manual tasks.”
She believes working women can easily find the balance between being
homemakers and mothers and excelling at their jobs. The only thing standing
in their way is perception, notably the bad press given to working mothers
and the male-centric way in which most work organisations are run. That’s
where the guilt and the stress come in. “Women tend not to rise to the top
of big corporations because there isn’t the option to run things their way.
They leave to set up their own companies because they realise their values
and skills aren’t really recognised.” Jackson agrees that, increasingly,
women are gravitating towards workplaces that enable them to be employees
and carers: “Businesses have started to take this seriously because talent
is walking out of the door, simply because they haven’t adjusted the way
things are organised.”
Meanwhile, the prevailing ethos is that whatever it takes, you work, and work
comes first. “When we wrote the first editorial for Spare Rib, we said
liberation was about choice,” says the journalist and author Rosie Boycott. “What
is wrong with the society we live in is that success is all about money. We
see people who aren’t working flat out as failures. We have to shift away
from that viewpoint, not just for the sake of women — so that mothering is
valued — but also for the sake of the planet. I was lucky because I had a
nanny at home, but I see young women, stressed beyond belief, who get called
into meetings called at 6.15pm when their bosses know they have to go home.
That kind of attitude deeply devalues motherhood.”
If and when we have sorted out the practicalities of work, the next challenge
is to let go of the idea of being perfect or of recapturing some lost golden
era of domestic bliss. “We have raised the bar really high,” says Goodwin.
“We have to have the big job, the beautiful house, the perfect kids and
stuff the mushrooms. We are hugely self-critical and perfectionist.”
Besides, the idea that women are not attaining the same standards of caring as
previous generations is largely a myth. “If you look at the amount of time
women spent with their kids in the 1960s, it was certainly no more than they
spend now, because then they were doing so many hours of domestic chores,”
says Jackson. “There is this invented past. Women have been liberated from
domestic chores. The challenge now is to let go.”
But there are new reasons to beat ourselves up, too. Neill says: “It’s not
about women wanting to chain themselves to the sink again, it’s to do with
trying to reassure and comfort ourselves in a world that feels out of
control. All those domesticated things we are drawn to do are
psychologically comforting.” She also makes the point that a lot of mothers’
guilt is related to the way that psychotherapy has infiltrated everyone’s
lives. “Mothers used to be responsible for their children’s basic wellbeing,
seeing that they were fed and clothed. Now they are responsible for their
psychological and emotional wellbeing, and if anything goes wrong, it is
laid at their door. My mother didn’t worry about our diet, paedophiles,
education, getting a good GP. Now it feels like we aren’t getting the
support, and we are responsible for so much more. It’s really hard not to
feel like you are failing on some level.”
If there is a solution, it is that we have to stop seeing things in black and
white. “There is no perfect formula for happiness for women, just as there
is no Santa Claus,” says Pinker. “Expecting that there should be one route
to fulfilment explains the continuing vituperation of the Mommy Wars. And
indeed, a woman’s priorities may shift over time.” Since almost all of us
live in dual-income households, it is likely to be tough, however you play
it, and the best place to start is by accepting that doing the best you can
is good enough.
“The middle of the road is an unfashionable place to be, but it might be the
right place to be,” says Neill. “There is a lot to be saidfor being just
good enough at everything, because that’s the only way you are ever going to
be happy.”
