British Family, Gender Roles and Consumerism (abridged)
Family in the UK
According to the 2011 census, the total population of the United Kingdom was around 63,182,000. It is the third-largest in the European Union (behind Germany and France) and the 22nd-largest in the world. Its overall population density is one of the highest in the world at 256 people per square km, due to the particularly high population density in England. Almost one-third of the population lives in England's southeast, which is predominantly urban and suburban, with about 8 million in the capital city of London, the population density of which is just over 5,200 per square km.
The United Kingdom's assumed high literacy rate (99% at age 15 and above) is attributable to universal public education introduced for the primary level in 1870 (Scotland 1872, free 1890) and secondary level in 1900. Parents are obliged to have their children educated from the ages of 5 to 16 (with legislation passed to raise this to 18), and can continue education free of charge in the form of A-Levels, vocational training or apprenticeship to age 18. About 40% of British students go on to post-secondary education (18+). The Church of England and the Church of Scotland function as the national churches in their respective countries, but all the major religions found in the world are represented in the United Kingdom.
The UK's population is predominantly White British. Being located close to continental Europe, the countries that formed the United Kingdom were subject to many invasions and migrations, especially from Scandinavia and the continent, including Roman occupation for several centuries. Historically, British people were thought to be descended mainly from the different ethnic stocks that settled there before the 11th century: pre-Celtic, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Viking and Norman. Although Celtic languages are partially spoken in Scotland, Cornwall, and Northern Ireland, the predominant language overall is English. In North and West Wales, Welsh is widely spoken as a first language, but much less so in the South East of the country, where English is the predominant language.
In 2012 the UK's total fertility rate (TFR) was 1.92 children per woman, below the replacement rate, which in the UK is 2.075. In 2001, the TFR was at a record low of 1.63, but it then increased every year till reaching a peak of 1.96 in 2008, before decreasing again. The TFR was considerably higher during the 1960s 'baby boom', peaking at 2.95 children per woman in 1964.
Statistics for 2013 live births in England and Wales:
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· total fertility rate was 1.85.
· 47.4% of children were born to un-married women
· average (mean) age of mother at birth was 30 years
· 26.5% of children were born to mothers born outside the UK
Other statistics:
· 64.4% of children born in England and Wales in 2005 were recorded as White British.
· in Scotland, in 2007, 78.4% of live births were to mothers born in Scotland, 9.2% to mothers born in England, 1.6% in Poland, 1.1% in Pakistan, 0.9% Northern Ireland, 0.7% Germany, 0.6% India, 0.5% Ireland, and 6.9% other countries
· in 2009, in England and Wales, 25% of births were to women under 25, while 20% of births were to women 35 and over/ 52% of babies born in 2012 in Northern Ireland were to mothers aged 30 or over
· 6% of babies born in Scotland in 2010 were to mothers under 20; 18% to mothers 20-24; 27% to mothers 25-29; 28% to mothers 30-34; 16% to mothers 35-39; 4% to mothers 40 and over.
· 51.3% of babies born in Scotland in 2012 were born to unmarried mothers
· in England and Wales, in 2009, of the women born in 1964: 20% did not have any children; 12% had 1 child; 38% had 2 children; 19% had 3 children; 10% had 4+ children
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· The UK family: In statistics
Families are changing shape and facing up to new lifestyle challenges. The facts and figures below give an idea of what the typical UK family looks like in the early 21st century.
· WHAT IS A 'TYPICAL' FAMILY?
· There were 17.1 million families in the UK in 2006 - up from 16.5 million in 1996.
· Most were still headed by a married couple (71%), although the proportion of cohabiting couple families had increased to 14%, from 9% 10 years earlier.
· Although two children remains the most common family size, the average number of children per family in the UK has dropped - from 2.0 in 1971 to 1.8.
· WHERE FAMILIES LIVE
· More young people are living at home for longer. In 2006, 58% of men and 39% of women aged 20-24 in England still lived at home with their parents.
· There is a larger than average concentration of single people living in London, whereas married couples and families tend to be concentrated in the centre of the country and around the outskirts of major cities, according to research by Professor Danny Dorling of Sheffield University.
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· His map is based on data drawn from the 85 constituencies used for the European parliamentary elections in 1999, each containing roughly half a million people over the age of 18 in a similar geographical area.
· The areas are categorised, for example as predominantly single, where the number of people living on their own is the most unusually large group compared with the national average.
· Figures were not available for Northern Ireland.
· WORK-LIFE BALANCE
· In most families with dependent children, the father is still the main wage earner and the mother often works part-time.
· According to the BBC/ICM poll, 33% of women still do the bulk of household chores, but 35% of respondents said both parents shared childcare duties.
· SPENDING HABITS
· The average family income is £32,779 before tax.
· According to ONS figures, an average household - made up of 3.9 people - spends £601.20 a week, compared with a couple's average spend of £527.30. In other words, the household spends £155.60 per head, compared with a couple's spend of £263.60 per head.
· Published in 2007/ Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/7071611.stm
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British Family, Gender Roles and Consumerism (abridged)
Aleksandra Kovrlija for http://www.interestingarticles.com/social-issues/british-family-gender-roles-and-consumerism-3493.html
Nowadays, Great Britain is a contemporary society with multi-national and multi-confessional families. For instance, an individual may have a mixed ethnic family background resulting at one level from intermarriage at various times between English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh people. At another level, there are immigrant minorities with their own ethnic identities who have come to Britain. They may have sometimes intermarried with the indigenous population, or maintained their own separate ethnic culture or eventually acquired a formal British identity through naturalization. These historical developments have created a modern society with multi-national, multi-ethnic and multi-confessional families. A great variety of other nationalities from all over the world reflects the society`s human diversity and family diversity as well.
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There are various debates and views on the term “family” in today`s British society. We can say that a family consists of a unit of people that are related, either legally through marriage or biologically. Nowadays, there are many different types of families (nuclear family, single-parent family, childless family, cohabiting couple, extended family, blended (reconstructed) families and same-sex family). Nevertheless, families can be divided into two groups which include conventional families and non-traditional families. Conventional family can be described as a network of interpersonal rights and obligations resulting from marriage and birth. Family ties are understood as binding together people of all ages and sex categories into groups whose members feel obligation to provide constant support for each other. Such interdependence within families is seen as the moral foundation of society.
On the other hand, non-traditional families reject all group conventions and insist that family arrangements are a private matter to be freely negotiated among those people who choose to share a household. Personal choice and autonomy are regarded as being fundamental values in these families. The advocates of non-traditional families in Great Britain usually do not belong to ethnic minorities. They are often young and childless. Alternative family culture also leads to the loosening of family expectations on men. The “male breadwinner role” is regarded as an old-fashioned phenomenon, while women`s economic independence is viewed as an acknowledged advantage.
Throughout the 20th century, the traditional British family was the nuclear family (two parents and children living together). However, statisticians predict that nuclear family will be outnumbered by other types of families. For instance, there is a considerable number of cohabiting couples in Great Britain. Many of these relationships are stable and long-lasting. They reject social conventions and consider traditional families, and especially conventional division of domestic chores, as sources of social inequality and injustice. Besides, one of the most striking changes in family structure over the last twenty years has been the increase of single-parent families. Due to high divorce rates and adults choosing not to marry, this family form is growing rapidly. Most of these families are headed by women. However, some of these families often have reduced living standards and are dependent upon social benefits.
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The number of non-martial (illegitimate) births is increasing as well. The number of under-18 single mothers has also grown considerably. These facts have caused controversy on moral and cost grounds. Illegitimacy retains some of its old stigma. But the legal standing of such children has been improved by removing restrictions on areas like inheritance. Statisticians also point out that family size is expected to decline. There are several reasons for low birth-rate. Child-bearing is being delayed, with women in Britain having their first child when they are almost thirty. Some women are delaying even longer for educational and career reasons and there has been an increase in the number of single women and married/unmarried couples who choose to remain childless.
Britain has a high percentage of working mothers and wives (almost half of the workforce), Many women are returning to work more quickly after the birth of a child. But although Britain has a great number of employed mothers and wives, provisions for maternity leave and child-care are low in European terms. The various families and single unites have to cope with increased demands upon them, which may entail considerable personal sacrifice. Most disabled children and adults are cared for by their families and most of the elderly are cared for by families or live alone.
The burden upon families will grow as the population is aging, state provision is reduced and the number of disabled and disadvantaged may increase. Nowadays more people choose to live alone; there has been an increase in one-parent families and non- martial births; the divorce rate is comparatively high; more people are living longer and there are more working mothers and wives; more cohabiting couples. British attitudes towards the acceptance of the same-sex marriage reveal some liberalisation of public opinion in recent decades. Since 2005, The Civil Partnership Bill has enabled many same-sex couples to register as civil partners. Civil partnership is a separate union which provides the legal consequences of marriage.
Several churches (the Unitarians, the Quakers and Jewish liberals) support the marriage between two men and two women. On the other hand, the Church of England continues to oppose same- sex marriages. UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, resolute to demonstrate Conservative Party has certainly modernised, said of the reform: ``I think it will be passed and passed with a big majority``. Extended family, (several generations of the same family living in the same household or in near vicinity or neighbourhood), has become increasingly rare. But, blended family, (joining of two adults who have children from previous relationship via marriage or cohabitation), is becoming more prevalent.
In contemporary Great Britain gender equality is a reality. Women have become an integral part of the labour market. Women are often more educated and given more opportunities to enter new fields of employment. They have access to higher education and consequently to the professions that are traditionally male-dominated, such as medicine, law, politics and business. Gender equality has transformed many social, economic and political aspects of British society. Marriage has become less of economic necessity for women.
There have also been marked changes in people`s attitudes towards marriage in recent years. As a result, fewer people are getting married. Women`s economic independence has also contributed to the increased divorce rate over the last four decades. Greater overall prosperity makes it easier to establish separate households after breaking up. Individuals seek higher expectations of personal happiness and self-fulfillment.
Great Britain has always attracted settlers and immigrants from all over the world. That`s why the contemporary British families are consequently composed of people of diverse origins.
A survey carried out in a number of London schools in 1980 found that only 15 per cent of pupils spoke what their teachers considered to be standard, or ``correct`` English. The rest spoke twenty different varieties of English from the British Isles, forty-two dialects of overseas English and fifty-eight different world languages. These languages, moreover, are closely related with the ways in which people perceive themselves and their role in British society. For although the United Kingdom is a state, many people within the state think about themselves, their families, and local communities in quite different ways. One way of describing these individuals and the groups to which they belong is in terms of ``ethnicity``. (Story and Childs, 2002: 211).
Ethnicity is a very complicated concept. Some families who belong to ethnic minorities maintain their own separate ethnic culture. Since assimilation or integration process are not always successful, controversial questions continue to be asked about the meaning of ``Britishness``.
For a typical modern British family, the most common pastimes are social or home-based, such as visiting or entertaining friends, trips to the pubs, bars or clubs, visit to restaurants, gardening or watching television and reading books and magazines. The most popular leisure activity for all people aged four and over is watching television. Some authors point out that ``on average, people in Britain spend four hours watching television every day, which is more than in any other European country``. (Story and Childs, 2002: 151). Home has become the chief place for family and individual entertainment. Nowadays, people can buy things without leaving home and can be influenced to purchase by turning on their televisions.
Consumerism has a very strong presence in British society and can be a means by which people create their identity. It is taking place everywhere and affecting almost everyone. The truth is that obsession with possessions has become a way of life in British society. Britain has changed over past sixty years. Most British people now enjoy greater prosperity and opportunities than in the past, so that poverty today is a relative, rather than an absolute, concept. But opinion polls suggest that greater prosperity has not brought greater happiness for many Britons. Consumerism has helped transform Britain. Along with the development of the mail-order catalog, advertising has become a focal point of British mass media.
There are many facets of consumer culture that reach from retail and merchandise and to sports and leisure. Wherever people go and whatever they do, consumerism is praised as the answer to all people`s problems, an escape from some of the harsh realities of their lives. The main topic of conversation in a typical British family is shopping. While it may be argued that life would be rather boring without consumerism, the fact is that it is literally everywhere in modern British society and it is a bit overwhelming. Because it is so hard to avoid, it is up to the family and the individual to use consumerism to benefit them instead of letting it hurt them, before it destroys the family structure. Sellers are creatively successful when designing a persuasive advertisement for increased profitability. In a normal household, it`s the parents who have the financial obligations; therefore, it would be wise to grab their attention. On the other hand, it takes less than a strategic mind targeting children because the simplest thing fascinates them. Marketing`s effect is more powerful through the vulnerable minds of children. The effects of consumerism damage a child heavier than an adult; therefore, every society should have laws protecting children from being commercialized. Adolescents and teenagers are also obsessed with consumerism.
Many authors point out that ``the typical British teenager is viewed as the consumer `par excellence` and is seen by some, often older commentators, as a fashion victim``. (Story and Childs, 2002: 144). The members of youth subculture groups, (punks, hippies, crusties, bikers, skinheads, etc.), dress differently and buy different clothes. Besides, black subcultural styles are very popular with the young. However, these groups differ from each other. These subculture groups have their own established modes of behavior and sets of values, often perceived by older generations as significantly unconventional and different from the dominant pattern.
There is no doubt that many British teenagers and adolescents are a source of trouble for their families. For instance, increasing alcohol abuse among young people is typically caused by the so-called “peer pressure”. When they socialize with their friends, they feel that they cannot say no to alcohol. Another reason could be linked to family environment. A lot of young people are affected by their parents` alcohol problems. Some teenagers and adolescents feel they have to drink in order to relieve the stress they have (bullying or some other kind of abuse at school or at home).
Some young people drink alcohol because of boredom, or to satisfy their curiosity on the effects of alcohol and to feel grownup. However, many people believe that teenagers and adolescents have too much money and they can afford going out and buying alcohol. Their parents give them money, so they can support their habit. It is evident that their parents are too busy and too preoccupied with themselves and that they neglect their children. Another serious problem is drug consumption. It was estimated recently that about fifty per cent of young people aged between 10 - 25 had been using drugs, which are very appalling results. However, a number of social groups use drugs. These groups range from young teens to high-class older individuals who have different reasons and different acceptable standards of behavior. They often use recreational drugs.
By recreational drugs they mean such substances as marijuana and even heavier and more addictive drugs as heroin and cocaine. The common misconception that only youths use drugs has become out dated and inaccurate. Recreational drugs are not limited to any particular group in society, meaning that a wide variety of people choose to use drugs, including teenagers, parents, business people and often very dedicated students. These drugs are a serious issue that must be dealt with. People in affluent societies are more prone to drug abuse because they are able to buy drugs. Drugs affect families by overtaking the user`s life and the user therefore neglects his/her responsibilities towards his/her family.
Contemporary British society reflects British families. This society has seen a decline of traditional certainties. Because of that, British families became more mobile, stressful and conflict-ridden. The people are now more nonconformist, multi-ethnic, secular and individualists than in the past. Opinion polls suggest that the British themselves feel that they have become more aggressive, more selfish, less tolerant, less kind, less moral, less honest and less polite. Their society is sometimes portrayed in research surveys as one riddled with mistrust, coarseness and cynicism in which materialism, egotism, relativistic values, celebrity worship, vulgarity, trivialization and sensationalism constitute the new models of behavior.
On some levels, such developments have led to a visible increase in divorce rate. Social fragmentations, instability, isolation and the disintegration of communities affect British families which show a considerable increase of alienation, serious alcohol and drug abuse, and lack of understanding within the family. Questions are asked whether the existing family types may cope with the needs, complexity and demands of contemporary life.
Consumerism, multi-ethnic growth, greater individual freedom and more tolerance for alternative lifestyles have helped to change British families, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.
Bibliography
1. Hilton, Mathew. (2003). Consumerism in Twentieth-Century Britain - The Search for a Historical Movement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2. Story, Mike and Childs, Peter. (2002). British Cultural Identities. London: Routledge.
3. Wintour, Patrick. (2012). Tory backlash against same-sex marriages. Retrived December 18, 2012 from http://www.guardian.co.uk./society/2012/dec/gay-marriage-tory-backlash
Having it all
Viv Groskop
The Guardian, March 3, 2008
Twenty years ago, a book called The Compleat Woman defined the meaning of success – a long marriage, at least three children and a top-flight career. But do such women still exist, is the goal even realistic - and what is the secret to achieving it?
If a woman has a serious career, how many children can she get away with? And how do women with large families manage their careers – and their marriages? These were the questions Valerie Grove set out to answer in 1987 in The Compleat Woman: Marriage, Motherhood, Career – Can She Have it All? Long out of print, the book gave an extraordinarily intimate insight into the home lives of 20 women, some of them are household names such as Fay Weldon, Sheila Kitzinger, Margaret Forster, Barbara Mills QC and Mavis Nicholson. These were the women who, supposedly, really did “have it all”. Does this kind of woman even exist any more?
To qualify as “compleat” 1 (compleat – an archaic variant of spelling for the word “complete”; (the title was a play on Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler), they had to have been married for more than 25 years, have had three or more children and a stellar career. In the late 1980s, with accelerating divorce rates, women secure in the workplace and the birth rate plummeting, V. Grove wondered whether these working mothers of three or more were an endangered species: “The kind of mothers I write about here may well prove to be the last of their kind”.
In some ways she was right. At the time the book was published, the two-child family was the norm; now the average has dwindled to 1.7 and large families are even harder to find – because nowadays women are less likely to be married or become mothers at all. And those who do are far more likely to divorce. “I wasn’t intending to imply that anyone who didn’t have these things was incomplete”, says V. Grove. The definition, however, is what many girls still grow up expecting – a marriage that lasts a lifetime, the number of children they would like, the career they want. But statistically very few in the current generation are likely to achieve more than one of these, let alone all three.
The rise of divorce has made the Compleat Woman an endangered species in the past 40 years. The number of marriages in England and Wales is at an all-time low. (Although divorce rates dropped by 7 per cent in 2006 to the lowest level since 1984, this is thought to be a result of fewer people being married in the first place). The average age for divorce is 40 for women and 43 for men. People divorce on average after 11Ѕ years of marriage. For one in five, it is a second divorce: twice the proportion compared with 25 years ago.
At work, one-third of female managers downgrade to less skilled roles if they go part-time after having a child, according to research published last week. On the domestic front, the proportion of households consisting of only one person aged 16 to 59 has tripled in the past 30 years. Between 1971 and 1991, the average household size decreased from 2.91 to 2.48. The number of lone parents with dependent children has doubled. The average family size was 2.4 children until 2002. There are anecdotal reports of a middle-class baby boom in recent years (families of three or more) but these probably stand out because they are unusual. The trend would need to be far more widespread to show up in the statistics. The overall trend is one or two children - or none.
V. Grove, now 61, had the idea for the book when she herself had four children under the age of seven and was working full-time as an editor at the London Evening Standard. Married to Trevor, now 63, also a journalist, since 1975, at the time she did not know anyone else in her situation. “I proposed this book because I thought, who else has done this?” Between them, her interviewees had 90 children. Some were inspirational but their lives were just about imaginable: Dr Jill Parker, a GP with four children; Barbara Mills QC, a barrister with four children. Some were famous: writer Fay Weldon (four sons); birth campaigner Sheila Kitzinger (five daughters); the philosopher Mary Warnock (five children). Others were simply extraordinary: writer and painter Alice Thomas Ellis had seven children, as did Professor Elizabeth Anscombe, then professor of philosophy at Cambridge University. The historian Lady Elizabeth Longford had eight.
It took months to get the interviewees to talk to her about the minutiae of their private lives and the results, Grove agrees, were mixed. Not one gave her the advice she craved: the secret of how to do it. There was no real consensus on how to make it work: all their lives were too different and, usually, quite odd. “There is a sort of aura of strangeness about the whole book and I realised very quickly afterwards that I always felt more rooted in ordinary life than any of them. Initially the working title was Impossible Women because they really were so strange and unusual”. Some of the women – whose ages ranged from 47 to 82 – came from bohemian, semi-aristocratic or academic backgrounds and had extremely high expectations of themselves. For many, there was definitely an element of privilege in their situations.
More than 20 years on, six of Grove’s interviewees have died, several are widowed, two have divorced. There is a new generation of Compleat Women, however, who already show subtle differences: they usually married slightly later (still in their 20s, though) and came from a generation where most women – not just the most extraordinary – were expected to work. The biggest difference in their generation is the social acceptability of divorce. For Grove’s women – born in the first four decades of the 20th century – their greatest achievement was work. For the current cohort, it is the length of their marriage which is often seen as the most unusual thing about them.
Television producer Isabel Morgan, 56, has been married for 29 years to Rob, 56, a lecturer. They met at a student cheese and wine party in 1972. They have four sons aged between 15 and 26. She agrees that it is difficult to define what makes a marriage that lasts. “We were 21 when we met and we didn’t get married until we were 28. So there was a long time before we decided to get married. Maybe that helped. Looking at my friends from the time, there are more that have stayed together than have divorced. I don’t know what the secret is”.
Although her husband is one of five children, initially she didn’t imagine she would necessarily have any. “This was the 1970s and it was all very feminist. There were a lot of reasons to think that would not be a part of your life. I thought I wouldn’t necessarily be able to combine career and children”. By the age of 30, she realised she would regret not having children – and soon found herself with three under the age of four. “It didn’t trouble me at all – even though I had a lot of travel, shift-work, working late. I had huge amounts of support from Rob, from my mother and from nannies. I didn’t have the luxury of sitting at home - we needed both salaries coming into the house - but I really didn’t want to not work. I think I have been very lucky because I had the sort of career I wanted”.
Novelist Penny Vicenzi, 68, says that fighting off accusations of smugness has been the bane of her life. “There was a stage when I found it quite embarrassing because all our friends were getting divorced and having these exciting new relationships. But now I’m quite proud of it”. Married for 47 years to Paul, 70, a former advertising executive, she has four daughters, now in their 30s and 40s. She was a journalist during their childhoods, working full-time in offices until her eldest child was seven, when she went freelance and later began writing novels. “There is no perfect solution. Women with babies don’t want to work full-time and yet they want to work. If you’ve got half a brain, however much you love your children you want to work”.
She missed the 1960s, she says, because of her children – “We were not doing wild drugs. We were at home babysitting” – but has no regrets. “I was an only child and I realised that I was going to have a lot of children. If Paul hadn’t called a halt I would probably have had six".
Her contemporaries consider her situation unusual. “When we had the second batch (her third daughter was born 10 years after her second), people just couldn’t understand it. They said, “You’re mad. You’re going back to nappies and broken nights”. If only I had known ... The nappies and the broken nights were fine. What I didn’t realise was that I would have to do adolescence twice and that is much worse”.
Her marriage has survived because of traditional views, she says: “I was brought up to look after my man. My mother told me that if I didn’t, he would be off. I grew up in the 1950s mentality that it was your job to look after your husband and the children. I would no more have woken him up in the night to feed a baby than gone to the moon. And he would no more have ironed a shirt than walked down the street naked. Men just didn’t”.
Corporate headhunter Moira Benigson, 53, has a less traditional setup, as her husband took sole care of the children for eight years. She runs her own executive search business, working with companies such as Liberty and French Connection. Married to Victor, 54, for the past 28 years, they have three children, Helen, 22, David, 19 and Isaac, six, who came as a surprise when Moira was 47. She worked full-time throughout: nannies – and Victor – did the childcare (he now works in her company).
She did not set out to be a Compleat Woman. “I came out of the feminist movement in that I thought I could do it all. I wanted to go to the office and work, so we had a nanny. I think if you want to do it, it’s absolutely possible. When I had my first two children I didn’t have any friends who didn’t work – not one. A lot of them were, and still are, extremely successful. And all their children are fine – they don’t have problems because their mothers worked. In fact they are richer for it”.
Having Isaac more than a decade later has made her realise that things have changed, though. “There has been a backlash and people want to be at home with their children and their friends. They feel it is their right. Politically now the feminist movement is 40 or 50 years old so you don’t have to prove yourself any more”. Now she knows a lot of mothers who can afford not to work. “Twenty years ago when I had my kids it was bloody boring to stay at home. There was one playgroup. Now you have the Internet, you have a gym on every corner, you can go to the movies with your children.” Personally, though, she could not live without work.
Mary Perkins, 64, co-founder of Specsavers, agrees. Married for 40 years to Douglas, 64, joint MD of Specsavers (they met on their optometrists' course at Cardiff University in 1962), they have two sons and a daughter, who all work in the family business. “I didn’t stop work for more than 10 days with any of them”, says Mary. “We got a nanny in. When you’ve got your own business, you don’t think about it – you just work around the clock. I never thought about it. People do now – there is all this discussion about whether you should be there at bedtime. People didn’t think like that. You either worked or you didn’t and you got on with it. Everybody I can think of worked”.
She sees it is different for the next generation: “I think there is a tremendous amount of pressure nowadays. The only way people can afford a house is to have two incomes. It’s much more pressure than I ever had. That’s why it’s good to have flexi-time now. My daughter Cathryn has three girls and she finishes work every day at 2.30pm”.
As for marriage, hers has lasted, she says, because they have “equal and joint roles. Our paths don’t cross at work because we’re doing different things. You just slot together like a jigsaw puzzle. I don’t even stop to think about why it works”.
Perhaps these women are so busy having successful marriages that they don’t analyse what everyone else would like to know: how to make it work.
Wanting to do something – and wanting it so badly that you don’t question it – is an extremely powerful motivation. The one thing the Compleat Women in 1987 have in common with those of today is the extreme desire to get on and do it. Without exception they all said that they could never have imagined a life without three or more children and they would never have dreamed of stopping working. Similarly, they all speak warmly of their husbands and could not imagine life without a partner. So there does seem to be a mindset at work here: one that does not allow doubt. They have done it because they decided to – it’s as simple as that.
What is most obvious from both sets of women is that there is no point in being sentimental about childcare. If you want this number of children and you want to work full-time, you need to face up to this. As Drusilla Beyfus, a mother of three who was an editor at Vogue at the time the book was published, puts it in the original Compleat Woman: “Someone has got to spend time with your children: if it isn’t you, who is it going to be? Whatever your answer, you have to take a course of action that leaves you feeling that you can somehow face yourself”. It will not be perfect, though. She employed nannies, she adds. “And everyone was perfectly happy, except me. Because when I was with the children on my own I realised how strong my feelings were about wanting to bring them up”. She continued to work. “But on the whole I think I am a mother who worked, rather than a career woman who happened to have children”.
Do we still care how long professional women have been married and how many children they have? We rarely ask these questions of men. In the 1987 introduction to the book, Grove quotes Fay Weldon, “If you are talking on a platform and you are a woman, people find it impossible to concentrate unless they know your marital status and how many children you have. The audience cannot settle until they know. It colours the expectation: is she a cosy homebody? Or does she partake of the male role?” Old-fashioned though this sounds, I suspect this is still true: the first thing a working woman often asks of another is whether she has children.
It is doubtful that many of today’s women would really want to match up to the Compleat Woman. In a way, Allison Pearson’s 2002 best-seller I Don't Know How She Does It was the modern riposte– and, tellingly, her heroine (who had only two children) gave up her career. Of course, it is still not difficult to find “compleat men” in successful, full-time careers with three or more children – most of them will have wives who stay at home or have part-time careers. With today’s divorce rates, however, the marriage part may well be trickier – especially as most divorces after the age of 50 are now initiated by women.
But there are indications that in future generations the Compleat Woman may yet resurface in force. Our most illustrious Compleat Woman has to be Cherie Blair (four children, married 27 years). And there are high-profile examples on their way to their stripes, married for one or two decades already: Victoria Beckham, Trudie Styler, Tana Ramsay, Yasmin Le Bon, Jane Goldman (Jonathan Ross’s screenwriter wife). Perhaps for the next generation the only surefire way to be “compleat” – to have the big family you want and your own career interests – is to make sure your husband is at least as rich and famous as you.
Reading Comprehension Check
1. Do you think it is reasonable to aspire to “have it all”?
2. How many working mothers do you know? Do they manage to juggle family life
and work?
3. Why do many British people still want to have families and children?
4. How do working mothers and fathers staying at home change the essence of family
life?
5. Do you know any “compleat” women or men living in the Republic of Belarus today?
6. Are there many Belarusian families with three and more children?
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