Is it time to call time on The Mummy War?

Every time I think the so-called Mummy War has gone away, it reappears somewhere in some stale form. This time it was a piece that appeared in online magazine Slate, in which the author admitted to regarding stay-at-home parents with secret disdain.

 

Enough already. Can we move on, please? I know I’m beyond weary at the various lines of fire; the stay-at-home mums smugly running the school bake sale while bitching about the non-attendance of working mums; the working mums sneering at the no-career mums wasting their lives lolling about at home.

 

I’m sick of it because it’s a make believe war of generalisations. In The Mummy War, only the most extreme opinions can be expressed. Working women selfishly farm their babies out to strangers in a blinkered pursuit of career. Stay-at-home mums are coffee morning, brain dead saps who have lost the ability to string a grammatically correct sentence together.

 

Instead of any constructive conversation about how to make life better for all families - better access to affordable, high-quality childcare anyone? - we’re left with a destructive, vicious sniper volley of words about who’s better.

 

Well I’m sorry, but The Mummy War does not represent me, or the people I know. Amongst my friends there are mums with au pairs, mums with children in day-care, mums who stay at home, mums working part-time, and one mum working while dad stays home. And, shock horror, we don’t spend our limited time together fighting in eternal battle over who’s the best mum. We’re not at war.

 

Different situations require different approaches. There are pros and cons to all situations - we know that. No one has the perfect life all figured out. 

 

What stay-at-home mum hasn’t been frustrated by the monotony of domestic life or has worried about their stalled careers? What working mum hasn’t been exhausted by the juggling act of keeping children, bosses, partners and child-minders happy? 

 

We don’t always get it right; our decisions are complicated, compromised and not always our ideal choice. Life is not one-size-fits-all. We know that.

 

So here’s my proposal: those wishing to continue The Mummy War shall arrange to meet up in a field somewhere and lob pencil cases at one another until one side concedes.

 

The rest of us will go for a cuppa and have a chat about ways to improve everyone’s lot. .

Daisy Wilson is a freelance writer who lives and works in West Cork. Mum to an almost-teenager and a toddler who is striding through the terrible twos with a glint in her eye, life is noisy, fun and covered in fingerprint marks.