A psychotherapist once told me that around half her patients were middle-aged women trying to come to terms with not having children.
As someone who almost missed motherhood myself, I was struck by this and began wondering why my generation of female oldies had been so easily seduced by the idea of having it all when, simply, we could not.
When I arrived at Cambridge University at the end of the seventies, there were still far fewer women than men. Those of us who’d somehow barged our way into this male-dominated bastion were made to feel like high-achieving pioneers, convinced we’d go on to have glittering careers, unlike most of our mothers.
My mother, a highly intelligent, competent woman, neither attended university, nor worked. She was so in awe of my ability to enter a hallowed academic institution, an opportunity never presented to her, that she didn’t think it was her place to discuss life’s basic but important concerns with me. Only very occasionally did she suggest I should not leave it too late to have children.
After university and a sojourn in movies and pop videos, I became a documentary director. I travelled the world with my camera, congratulating myself on having a fascinating, fulfilling career. I’d bought a one-bedroom flat with a small mortgage in my mid-twenties and was earning enough to take holidays in nice hotels.
One day, I was filming in an African village and a group of women asked me how many children I had. I confessed that I had neither children nor husband.
‘Oh no! So then you having nothing!’ they wailed with pity. I ignored the niggling anxiety this exchange rendered and instead regaled guests at my 40th birthday party with the story, insisting friendship was the only necessary ingredient for having it all.
Allison Pearson’s 2003 book I Don’t Know How She Does It shed a harsh, unforgiving light on juggling motherhood and career. Wealth buys nannies and a supportive infrastructure, but it can never buy back those precious moments watching children’s first steps, the school plays, the sports day mini-triumphs.
For me, the book was proof that I’d made the right decision not to have children. Yet it was an omission rather than a decision, and, for all my stimulating, globe-trotting job, I was miserable.
It was with joy that I discovered I was pregnant and gave birth to a daughter and inherited a stepdaughter in my forties. I thought my freelance career would be flexible enough to grant me the best of both worlds, but all too fast I floundered.
I was once filming a Chinese takeway on an Essex council estate under siege from a gang of racist boys. It was around 1am and the children, aged between ten and 12, were becoming increasingly rowdy, threatening and taunting the beleaguered brothers who ran the place. I already had some good footage but I knew if I stayed another hour, I’d capture some even better, harder-hitting shots. Yet I left, yearning to return home to my baby. I hadn’t done my best work, but then arrived home too late to be of any use. I’d failed at both job and motherhood. To be a good film-maker demands you grab your camera and leave the house whenever the story demands.
Even with all the nannies in the world, who as a mother is ever really emotionally ready to leave a child’s bedside, birthday party or piano recital?
What no one tells you is how soppy motherhood makes us. I used to be tough enough to point my camera at almost anything and made numerous films about female genital mutilation. With daughters, I’d become fearful, upset and emotional.
I became a journalist instead, believing this would allow me more time at home and less stress. I underestimated how hard it was to break into the world of newspapers and magazines. On top of that, print journalism was floundering, migrating online. Pay was – and remains – pitiable.
There are of course many mothers in lucrative, leading roles today. My generation’s have-it-all pin-ups are Nicola Horlick and Ursula von der Leyen, with their big broods of children. But lockdown made millions rethink their work-life balance. Now, as costs spiral and the recession bites, what’s really going to make us happy? A huge job will keep a decent roof over our heads but it detracts from the time with family and friends that keeps us sane.
Socrates had it right all along: ‘The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.’
My daughters face paying half their salary on rent and crippling university loans. They can’t envisage ever earning enough to buy a flat. Despite their generation’s collective anxiety, their expectations are more realistic than ours were.
Without such an emphasis on over-achievement, they could well end up being happier. My life has demonstrated that striving for it all is a sure route to failure.
