Can careers and babies ever mix?

My work is taking outfits selfies in the lifts

When Kemi Badenoch said that maternity pay is ‘excessive’, her comments were so ridiculous I could dismiss them with a full 360 eye roll.

But when the former Sure Start adviser Naomi Eisenstadt recently shared her thoughts about nursery not being the best place for little ones, the news story snagged my brain more. According to The Times, Eisenstadt is advocating a year’s full parental pay, saying ‘For under-ones, in my view, care in the home is better than a nursery’. She said that for over-twos, nursery can have social benefits, leaving a mysterious void on her views regarding kids between one and two – although I can’t imagine she’d say what I want to hear, which is ‘oh yes, it’s absolutely brilliant for one-year-olds to be in full-time nursery and away from their parents’.

Underneath the news story, the comment section was more forthright. ‘Mothers should all be at home with children until they start school’ declared one man, while another said putting kids in childcare before the age of two is ‘criminal’. The more sympathetic commenters wrung their hands over the fact that while of course mothers would want to stay at home with their children, most people’s monetary situation means that’s not possible.

Of course, finances are a factor – with the cost of food, fuel and mortgages at the moment, most families (including mine) need two salaries just to get by. But I get frustrated that the return-to-work narrative offers endless versions of “oh these poor ladies, they’d love to stay at home with their kids for longer but sadly they can’t afford to”. It makes those of us who actually want to go back to work feel slightly deviant - because what kind of mother would possibly prefer to be in the office than at home with their darling offspring?

The truth is, I’d be a terrible full-time mum, and stepping back from my career would feel like losing an essential part of myself. I love my job, I’ve worked hard to get it, and I resent the fact that people assume I’d give it up in a heartbeat and stay at home if I could afford to. No one ever expects that of dads.

At the same time, I feel very guilty about having my kids in full-time childcare. Because if I’m honest, I agree that being in nursery five days a week probably isn’t the ideal, and sometimes feel like a bad, selfish mother because I’m not prepared to give up my career aspirations to be at home with them.

I often say I need to clone myself; one me to go to the office and fulfil my journalism dreams, one to stay at home and potter around with the baby and be there for every school pick up. More realistically many women I know either go part time (not feasible with my job, and you invariably end up doing all the work for less money) or have grandparents who parachute in from another part of the UK every week. Weirdly my mum is not feeling a six-hour round trip on the M4.  

So I’m left in this uneasy place of choosing the full-time career I love, but feeling guilty about the childcare situation. To mitigate this, I cling to the memory of a therapist I once interviewed, who told me she’d never seen anyone screwed up from being in full-time nursery, but she’d certainly seen the negative consequences of having a resentful and unfulfilled mother. Were I to give up my job to look after kids all day, I’m sure I’d be a terrible grump, and that’s no good for anyone in the family. Or perhaps I’m simply justifying my dodgy decisions again? It’s annoying that we have to choose.