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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

My heart aches for what I can't have
My daughter's boyfriend is the man of my dreams.
By Clea MacAllister
[04/04/00]

Generations of servitude
Once, my grandmother worked as a domestic servant. Today, I need to hire help -- but I can't take the guilt.
By Pamela Toutant
[04/03/00]

The hired men
When it comes to "the help," I need a guilt exorcism.
By Nancy W. Hall
[04/03/00]

I believed in the breast
And then the control freaks at La Leche League buried me in bureaucracy, bare breasts and too much LLLove.
By Sue Robins
[03/31/00]

No bottle feeders, no spankers
Attachment parents stick to their guns.
By Amy Brill
[03/31/00]

Complete archives for Mothers Who Think

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Talk about pressure. I wasn't even a zygote before it started. Of course when Daddy happens to be Tony Blair, a prime minister up for reelection next year, this sort of thing is bound to happen. It was inevitable that his doctors (spin) should collude with hers (gyn) to make the most of me. Too bad their marketing skills are about as well-developed as my lungs.

First there was all the excitement about my existing at all, as Mummy is 45 years old. (Crikey, it's not like she's a 65-year-old Italian widow carrying test-tube triplets.) Then came a lot of titillating tabloid speculation over whether I was conceived on vacation in Italy or in France or back home in the prime minister's residence at No. 10 Downing St. (I, of course, have access to this information, which I will offer for no less than 30,000 pounds as soon as I am able to speak.)

Then, as gossip of a sexual nature began to die down, historians discovered I would be the first baby at No. 10 in 150 years. Someone else then pointed out that my family doesn't actually live there at the moment, but next door, as there is more room. Now it looks as though we'll be kicking out Uncle Gordon Brown, who's chancellor of the exchequer and the official resident of No. 11, from his apartment in our proper house so that I can move in. (Think "Noises Off" with lousy actors.)

Next there was great public tut-tutting followed by earnest medical reassurances when Mummy decided to fly off to Israel and various other exotic locales whilst pregnant. An embarrassing demonstration, I thought, of this country's hopeless traditionalism or desperation for news -- or both; I'm not sure as I haven't lived here long at all.

But all that was nothing compared to the kerfuffle about whether Daddy should take time off from being prime minister to help look after Mummy and me. They call it paternity leave, though Mummy refers to it as "a basic human right" and Daddy, privately, calls it "a bloody nuisance."

It all started with Mummy -- Cherie, a hot-shot attorney in her own right -- telling an interviewer that Mr. Paavo Lipponen, the prime minister of Finland, has twice taken paternity leave. She went on to say, "I, for one, am promoting the widespread adoption of his fine example," thereby reading Daddy the riot act and airing her elastic-paneled dirty laundry in public.

She'd been going on about it for weeks at home. "Tony, you didn't take one single day off when Euan, Nicky and Kathryn were born. I break my back reeling in female votes, which got you elected last time, and now, you ungrateful prat, you can't even take a few weeks off to be with us and bond with the baby, not to mention change a few nappies -- FOR ONCE!!"

It's usually about this time that Daddy interrupts in his best, deeply concerned, leader-of-his-country mode and says how impossible it would be for him to take four weeks off, at which point Mummy says that four weeks is the absolute minimum and then, just to put the fear of God in him, she usually mentions that female members of Parliament are currently agitating for minimum male paternity leave of 13 weeks.

Then Daddy says that his polling shows that only 2 percent of men would take up the option for even one week, let alone 13, and Mummy says that's because it's unpaid leave and you would still get your salary. And Daddy says, "Yes, and what an outcry there would be then," and Mummy says, "Give it to charity or whatever you want, but I want you here with me even if you are a spineless wanker."

And then they don't talk at all for a long time.

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