“Enough about saintly working mothers. What about me? I’m a working dad.” That’s the headline emblazoned across the front page of Times 2 today, trailing a piece by Hugo Rifkind that sticks up for working fathers. His gist is that society isn’t treating fathers equally. “… when she gets up many hours before going to work to deal with our children’s poos and pees and frankly unreasonable moonlit demands for ...keep reading
The news that Conservative MP Louise Mensch is stepping down from her parliamentary seat will reignite the “can women have it all?” debate. I’ve long thought that the answer is probably “no,” and I reckon that Mensch, the mother of three young children, has decided the same. A hugely successful chick-lit author before winning the Corby and East Northamptonshire seat for the Tories in 2010, Mensch has had to juggle ...keep reading
The head of a leading girls’ schools association has called for girls to be “ambitious” in their relationships and to choose husbands who’ll “share the load” at home. Helen Fraser, chief executive of the Girls’ Day School Trust, told the trust’s annual conference yesterday: “I was intrigued by Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg’s comment in a speech last year that ‘the most important career choice you’ll make is who ...keep reading
Working late last night, I finished the piece I was writing and keen to get it out of the way, clicked send. I was stunned ten minutes later to get a reply from the person who’d commissioned the article. It was 10pm! Whatever happened to the far-flung days when we’d all finish work at 5.30pm and skip merrily out of the office, safe in the knowledge that we wouldn’t be ...keep reading
My jaw drops with astonishment when I see pictures of high-profile women just a few days after they’ve had their babies. Svelte in designer outfits and killer heels, they look like they’ve come straight from the health spa rather than the maternity unit. When my daughter was born it took weeks for me to have the oomph to leave the house, let alone contemplate getting dressed up to the nines and going ...keep reading