Rabu, 04 Juli 2012

Lorraine Candy: A great mum has pants on her head and shouts 'I'm the tickle monster!'

Lorraine Candy: A great mum has pants on her head and shouts 'I'm the tickle monster!'

By Lorraine Candy

PUBLISHED: 16:18 EST, 4 July 2012 | UPDATED: 16:18 EST, 4 July 2012

When will it get better? a colleague asks me. Her tired face is tear-stained and she squeezes a crumpled tissue in her hand as we sit in my office.

She’s just returned to work from maternity leave with her first baby. She’s in that fragile raw state of daily loss, suffering the pain of what I call ‘the littlest bruise’.

Every working mum probably has one. They’re not life-threatening, but the littlest bruise never heals. I don’t tell her that, obviously, even fashion magazine editors have feelings.

Baby bond: Early separation can be hard for working mothers

Baby bond: Early separation can be hard for working mothers

And it would be too cruel to explain to her that even after ten years of parenting four children, I’m still bruised by the predictable agonies of returning to work after giving birth.

The relentless internal questioning and the tiresome stress of working out exactly what I need to feel guilty about each day, according to the latest survey or headline.

I’m not asking for sympathy (God forbid a working mum should deserve that, and after all I do choose to work), I’m just chronicling the conflicted nature of motherhood that I witness hourly in my entirely female work environment.

It’s damned annoying (and actually painful) that we’re still wrestling with the ‘When will it get better?’ question â€" even those of us who know we made the right choice in going back to work.

It is, of course, much harder for those who have no choice; that’s not a bruise, ladies, that’s a wound.

So there we sat in the glass goldfish bowl that is my office, wondering if maybe someone else may know whether or not it gets better, because it was obvious from my friend’s face that I was a useless sounding board.

Maybe we should ask Twitter, I suggested. Isn’t that what people do now? Or Mumsnet? Grandma? Kirstie Allsopp?

Like so many first-time mums, my colleague assumed the answer would be in a book (apparently, we read an average of eight baby books when we’re pregnant).

She thought maybe there would be rules about this kind of emotional minefield, some wisdom from the millions of women who had gone before us. Solutions, even.

But there’s nothing, is there? As I am prone to say: It is what it is, you just have to deal with it in your own way. When you can’t, if you can afford it, you quit.

And every woman is different, every child is different. Individuality makes this an almost impossible dilemma to resolve.

Nose kisses and running round the house wearing pants as a balaclava shouting ‘I’m the tickle monster’ may be my kids’ idea of great mothering, yours may be entirely different.

The point is that what works for me may not work for you due to the variables of individuality, and that’s the reason for the lac k of ‘how tos’ on this particularly difficult part of the emotional journey from woman to mother.

Anyway, I tell her, life gets busy and you don’t have time to keep shining the light on this dark corner, believe me.

When I’m not at work, I’m doing any one of the following: going to three sports days, stopping baby Mabel consuming the eldest’s collection of ‘new stones’, listening to Beyonce’s greatest hits with her biggest fan (my five-year-old son), plaiting dolls’ hair, removing nail varnish from a variety of surfaces, reading and rereading Winnie the Pooh, wiping Sudocrem off other surfaces, face-painting, looking for Sellotape/glue, wiping noses/ bottoms.

I am also holding tiny fingers tightly, feeling small hearts beating softly against my chest as I doze with sleepy infants, and laughing.

There’s plenty of laughing in between the trampolining, swimming, picnicking and Monopoly games.

Focus on that, I tell my friend. It’s a learning curve, but you will always feel a little bruised. If you stayed at home and gave up your job, you’d be on a different but probably no less tricky emotional path. 

‘Being a parent is hard,’ she concludes wisely.

But is it? When the screenwriter Norah Ephron died last week, I came across this quote from her on parenting: ‘A parent is a person who has children. Here’s what’s involved in being a parent.

‘You love your children, you hang out with them from time to time, you throw balls, you read stories, you make sure they know which utensil is the salad fork, you teach them to say please and thank you, you see they have the occasional haircut, and you ask if they did their homework.’

Sounds easy, doesn’t it?

Lorraine Candy is editor-in-chief of Elle magazine.

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As someone said Working mothers can't have it all, but they can nearly have it all if work is what they choose

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Cazza Scotland - ouch!

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Lovely now how about some femail articles that don't revolve around motherhood? Not all women can or even want to be mothers and the endless working vs. stay-at-home mothers debate is astoundingly boring now. Men's magazines/websites barely touch on fatherhood, why aren't we women allowed to have careers, interests and passions outside of being mothers? It's a bit depressing.

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Yes, maybe women should just give up work altogether and claim benefits, maybe there should be a law passed that says women shouldn't be allowed to leave the house and should just stay there looking after their children and cleaning. No way am I having children, I'd rather be a lonely old cat lady ANY DAY than have DM idiots judging me for wanting a life outside my children and being told what I'm doing wrong, God forbid a woman have interests other than her children.

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Woman CAN go back to work without feeling guilty and without feeling as if we've abandoned our Children!. Find yourself an excellent Registed Childminder who embraces ones family inclusively and have the best of both worlds. Your child will have all the comforts of home as well as a structured pre school routine at a much competitive cost than Day Care Provision. Our children benefit from belonging to hard working Parent's if they have good quality, caring Childminders.

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I have been dreading going back to work and leaving my 11 month old at home with a nanny or god forbid a nursery! A week before the end of my maternity leave i got told I was being made redundant. It seemed like the problem got solved on its own but then I wished I wasn't dreading work so much. Children do grow very quickly. They yearn for independence, if you sacrifice yours, there's not much left for you at the end.

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Some people are not cut out to be stay at home mums, some are. There is no point judging other people's choices, being a parent is hard enough without being judged left right and centre. I am a first time parent about to return to work after maternity leave - putting my child first, to me, means making sure he is exposed to a variety of different things, learning to be around other children and having quality time with his parents in the evenings and weekends. If I were to stay at home, he would spend the next four years stuck at home with me or going on pointless trips to the shops because we wouldn't be able to afford to do anything fun. Putting one's child first means different things to different people, and neither are any less valid.

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i gave up my high flying career to stay at home with my children and I don't regret it for a second. Wearing pants on your head being the tickle monster is what my kids' uncles do when they come for a weekend. My job is to pick my weary six and three year olds up from school and say 'you know what if you feel tired and cross its ok ,come and have a cuddle, tell me what the problem is' .. but I guess your nanny does that for you lorraine or maybe, just maybe, she doesn't bother.... and we wonder why we have a huge increase in mental health problems in this country. Put your own kids first cos no one else will. - ex-tv producer, cheshire, 04/07/2012 22:11 I think you should be more concerned with why your 3 and 6 year olds are so miserable all the time and have problems that need discussing! Maybe if you spent more time running around with pants on your head having fun with them like Lorraine than you do holding therapy sessions they would be happier...

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i gave up my high flying career to stay at home with my children and I don't regret it for a second. Wearing pants on your head being the tickle monster is what my kids' uncles do when they come for a weekend. My job is to pick my weary six and three year olds up from school and say 'you know what if you feel tired and cross its ok ,come and have a cuddle, tell me what the problem is' .. but I guess your nanny does that for you lorraine or maybe, just maybe, she doesn't bother.... and we wonder why we have a huge increase in mental health problems in this country. Put your own kids first cos no one else will.

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I can understand a mother leaving her baby for dire financial reasons (going without a holiday is not a sound reason) but to choose to leave your babies is madness, they are only little for a few years, surely mothers can spare them that time out of their so called important lives. Personally I can't think of anything more important than a child, men need to step up to the mark and support their families again.

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