Despatches from a mother who started late (and is running to catch up)

Of pregheads and jealousy

Reading a nasty piece by Minette Marrin in The Times about pregnant newsreader Natasha Kaplinsky, I was tempted to write that women are so often their own worst enemies. But then it occurred to me that no bloke nowadays would dare say what Marrin does, which is that Kaplinsky is selfish and contemptible for getting pregnant before she started a £1m a year job as the 'Face of Five News'. A man might have thought it, but only a woman could (almost) get away with saying that.

"If I were running Five I would be beside myself with rage," fulminates Marrin, a woman who looks like a) her childbearing years are memories b) even in her full reproductive glory did not see much uterine action, though I could be wrong about that; despite laying into Kaplinsky, Marrin does not volunteer details of her own parity.

Of course, as you might expect, Marrin expands her grouse to include all women who expect to combine work and having children. "The proper word for all this is exploitation," she rages, admitting that back in her more fertile years she was grilled by her own employers about her plans for children. Maybe that's why she's so nasty to Kaplinsky, envy of the (slightly) greater career opportunities women have nowadays compared to her time. She glosses over the fact that Kaplinsky won't receive a penny in maternity pay from Five - being a freelancer.

She also, predictibly enough, has spiteful things to say about the very state of pregnancy:

"Meanwhile, instead of the ferociously sexy on-the-ball babe that Five hired, Kaplinsky will be becoming larger and mumsier, she may have a nauseous or difficult pregnancy requiring lots of time off, and at some point her brain will be affected by the amnesia of pregnancy. This is a phenomenon that is now widely admitted, even by feminists (although it is equally often denied when inconvenient); there is even a nasty new fashionable word for a woman  in this state - preghead."

Small point here - aren't all pregnancies nauseous and difficult? Just by their nature?

Underlying Marrin's attack, no doubt motivated by jealousy that Kaplinsky combines a career with good looks, happy relationship and, now, to Marrin's horror, a baby on the way, lurks this assumption that childbearing can and should be scheduled for a lull in our diaries. Life, nature, our bodies, relationships; none of them work like that. If we waited for the 'perfect' time to get pregnant, we'd be waiting forever. Until 'fashionably late' was too late.

There's always going to be something that might warrant delay in trying for a baby - new job, a book to write, promotion, holiday, family crisis, lack of money, fear we won't be 'good enough'. My feeling - and this is just my personal opinion - is that you have to block everything else out and go for it. If I hadn't I'd never have dared have a child. And who knows what Kaplinksy's real circumstances are? She might have suffered a series of miscarriages over the past few years. Or she might have feared (wrongly, as it turns out) that she was infertile. Lay off her, I say.

Posted 07 April 2008 14:05

Fashionably Late - the book News Older mother

• StumbleUpon
• Delicious
• Reddit
• Facebook
• Digg