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on reproductive panic
I'M not saying it's impossible for a thirtysomething woman to be completely unaware that fertility declines with age. I mean, in theory, you could have missed the whole 'forgot to have a baby? tsk...
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no children were harmed in the making of this blog
So my son has been fast asleep for a good hour, and the packed lunches were done before I started typing. Bear with me while I feel the need to tell you this, for tweeting/blogging/Mumsnetting mothers...
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Friends (The one about why you haven't seen them for ages)
Never has this family approached a weekend so organised. The fridge is stuffed with three days' worth of meals cooked in advance, birthday presents and cards for the next three weeks are wrapped and...
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big fat belated weddings
I do love a wedding: pretty much anyone's wedding, really. I like the hat wearing aspect, and obviously the champagne: I like the suspension of cynicism for a few magical hours, all that hope and...
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school's out (for, um, not sure how long)
LATELY I have been having a recurrent nightmare, which always wakes me in a cold sweat. It is that I've muddled up the dates for the forthcoming home visit from my son's prospective new teacher, and...
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on househusbands
IF you want to get ahead, maybe get a househusband. Or so, apparently, says the woman behind a new initiative to get more women into the boardroom.The City fund manager Helena Morrissey, whose own...
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the true cost of news
UNTIL now, I can't remember a time I haven't felt proud of being a journalist. We can't all be heroes, of course, so for every Watergate, there's a million parish council reports: for every atrocity...
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in defence of the yummy mummy
LIKE most people who occasionally sneer at them, I'm still not really sure what a 'yummy mummy' is, apart from universally scorned. I vaguely think of them as women with blonde highlights (tick);...
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cometh the hour, cometh the woman
LAST week, I chaired a meeting at the House of Commons on the perennial topic of why there aren't enough women in politics. We were running through all the usual stuff - lousy working hours, sexist...
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Why some men hate women
WHEN I started this post, I thought I wanted to write about why neofascists so often hate women. It's impossible, after all, to read the deranged manifesto left by the Norwegian mass murderer Anders...
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what's the point of hiring women?
THIS morning's fuss over news that the prime minister's chief strategist suggested scrapping maternity leave isn't, luckily, quite what it seems. Steve Hilton is famous for having nine faintly mad...
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Lessons in guiltfree living
ALL week long, I've been trying to work out why I didn't cry. After all, the first day of primary school is supposed to bring a tear to the flintiest eye: all those anxious little faces, swamped by...
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not staying mum
WHAT feels now like light years ago, when my son was around two months old, I met an old friend for coffee in the little cafe down the road. Baby perched on my knee, I told her airily that having kids...
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the truth about tortoises and hares
THOSE, like me, of a nerdy disposition may just remember a storm in a teacup earlier this year when the higher education minister David Willetts triggered outrage by suggesting feminism was to blame...
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something for the ladies
IT'S that special time again, the one women look forward to with such enthusiasm: the few days a year when politics suddenly falls over itself to notice we exist. Panicky memos on what female voters...
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what I'm reading
THIS was meant to be a blog about what I currently want to read, for National Book Week - if I'd finished writing it before National Book Week ended. Ah well. I used to be a voracious reader once, but...
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what I'm reading (out loud)
ONE of the reasons I don't read as much as I used to, as I said in yesterday's post, is that having kids doesn't exactly leave you with hours on end to curl up with a book. But actually that wasn't...
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the dangers of 'don't ask, don't tell'
IT's her greatest strength, but perhaps her greatest weakness. What makes the Conservative MP Louise Mensch so unusual is her apparent belief that the rules of politics somehow don't apply to her. She...
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on ambition
WHAT happens to ambition, when you have children? I've spent the weekend pondering this one, preparing to debate it on the radio with the formidable FT columnist Heather McGregor, author of a new book...
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the third shift
“People always ask me how long it takes to do my hair. I don’t know, I’m never there.” There are many good reasons to like Dolly Parton, but that quote sums up most of them. There's something wickedly...
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the work-workless balance
WHAT happens to the idea of work-life balance, when it's too little work and not too much that's the problem? After a week in which unemployment has hit 2.68 million with scary talk of three million by...
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should childcare be tax-deductible?
HIGHLIGHTER pens! Architects' fees! Room service dinners on overnight trips! (Bear with me: this gets more interesting). Bank overdraft charges! Fax running costs! (But not, strictly not, fax...
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sons and daughters
"I felt they were both drowning, but I could only save one."That line is from a rather haunting piece last weekend by the Times writer Janice Turner, describing her feelings about coping with both her...
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beauty and the brain
I HOPE it isn't true, I really do. And there are reasons to suspect it might not be entirely true - or not irreversibly true - that, as this story today claims, nearly half of young women would rather...
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Why 'part-timer' isn't an insult
IT's one of those jolly office jokes that, for some of us, never quite manages to be funny: yelling 'part-timer!' at anyone leaving before midnight/taking a holiday/nipping out of the office for five...
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