WE ARE FAMILY
“I don’t want it all, I just want what men have” said Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, international lawyer, mother of three and wife of Nick Clegg. If I still owned a pencil case, her name would be etched on it for she has voiced what many haven't – motherhood is, in fact, about parenthood.
It’s not about what he wants, or she wants – it's about jointly (and equally) navigating those parental potholes as one. It was Sheryl Sandberg [the Chief Operating Officer at Facebook] who said, "the most important decision in your life is who you have children with". I am yet to be disproved of what the woman worth $1.1 billion has to say.
Project procreation is an undeniable joint affair: bump uglies and nine months later the human vanity project emerges. Then there’s the early post-partum period – a time when I was found in our local supermarket clutching a pineapple with a solitary tear meandering down my face.
Team Keep The Baby Alive may feel like it’s been pummelled by a 100-cap Rugby League player at times, but it’s winning because everyone is still alive. Despite the ravaging effects of sleep deprivation and a slightly reluctant vagina, there’s a sense of achievement. There may even be high fives.
The simple act of tea drinking from boiling point to full imbibing; the moment you sleep for more than five hours straight and want to cuddle strangers with the fervour of someone recently released from Guantanamo. These may be inconsequential snippets, but they’re ultimately big wins because the parental unit is triumphing – one cuppa at a time.
It’s not about a mother’s wants or father’s needs – it’s essentially about what’s right for the family. And every family is different: different incomes, different DNA, different support networks, different skills, different penchants for organic spuds and different obsessions with Candy Crush. Whether a working mother, a stay-at-home-Dad or the reverse, it’s a family decision and one that can’t be laid out on the public (or even social) chopping board.
The UK’s national “well-being” index suggested that stay-at-home mothers have a stronger sense that their lives are “worthwhile” than the rest of society. I am sure the Office for National Statistics are a reputable bunch and I know hordes of friends who would concur, but there’s also a tribe of working mothers who are doing OK, too. How to statisticize when there’s such an eclectic abundance of folk just trying to Keep The Baby Alive?
It shouldn’t matter who does what as long as the good ship is sailing in the right direction with limited leakage and an undercurrent of mirth and laughter – whether it’s a rogue poo deposited by a gurning urchin in the bath, an infant mewling the minute you attempt to have sex or a leaking mammary, leaving you resembling a Fembot.
Sure everyone has those grey periods – when you feel so distanced you wonder if you sourced your partner on Gumtree – but if the white outweighs the black on the monochrome spectrum, then whatever you’re doing, whoever is earning the crust or baking the bread, its working.
More than anything, Miriam reckons it’s about having a strong enough relationship with your partner – or yourself – to be able to say what you want out of life. If that is to be working 9-5, munching on chia seeds, while teaching your spawn Japanese, having just made a broccoli smoothie with your new Nutribullet, then that’s OK.
But, equally, it’s fine not having it all – as long as it’s a joint decision. A decision that’s ultimately not about men, women, mothers or fathers. A decision that is simply about family. And a decision made by parents. Miriam 4 eva.
