British author's new book looks at working mothers

By Roxanne Roberts
Washington Post

Kate Reddy is exhausted. Kate Reddy is crazed. Kate Reddy is guilty, torn, resentful, loving, frazzled, desperate, bitchy, defiant and resigned. Kate Reddy is a working mother.

"Allison Pearson has created what is possibly the best portrayal of modern motherhood I have come across in years," declared London's Guardian. Vogue gave it seven pages of its September issue. People, New York and Bazaar magazines jumped on the bandwagon. Miramax scooped up the movie rights. In the same way that Bridget Jones defined single women, Kate Reddy is becoming a symbol of 21st-century maternity.

Which presents a problem for millions of real mothers who juggle job, kids, husband, friends, dog, parents, in-laws, sleep. They struggle every day with choices, tradeoffs, conflicting loyalties, hopes, fears and everything else that keeps them awake at 3 a.m. And they somehow remain good people.

Unlike, say, Kate Reddy, who neglects her children, her marriage, her friends. She's too busy to phone a dear pal dying of cancer. She lies to her boss. She mistakes guilt for action. Her frustrated husband leaves (and comes back because he loves her so much).

But it all works out in the end because Kate sees the light, quits her high-powered job and moves to the country — where she's rewarded with a dream business that makes her even more successful.

No wonder it sells. It sold back in 1987, when brittle business executive Diane Keaton gave up her career and found peace (and Sam Shepard) in the movie "Baby Boom." It's selling "I Don't Know How She Does It" 15 years later with the same subtext: work bad, mothering good.

Out of sync with reality

Fictional characters have the power to capture the imagination, especially when they symbolize an important social issue. And it certainly doesn't take much to get women riled up about this subject.

"This whole question of 'Should women be working or not?' is out of sync with reality," says Jill Kirschenbaum, editor in chief of Working Mother magazine. "When mothers work, the work is always discounted. The assumption is that this is a frivolous choice on her part, that's it's only about her ego and sense of well-being. The fact is that mothers who work are important providers in their households, and they are working to ensure their children are safe and fed and clothed — the same reasons that the fathers work."

There are 26 million mothers in today's work force; 60 percent of women with children under 3 years old are working outside the home. Most are not spoiled yuppies with six-figure incomes.

"The truth is that most working mothers need their jobs, so for them it's something of a luxury to talk about ambivalence — because they don't have a choice," says Kirschenbaum.

Ah, but how much more fun to talk about the "mommy wars," in which selfish workaholics and smug stay-at-home moms vie for moral superiority. So deliciously ... bitchy. New York Magazine drew the battle lines in a cover story just last month: the spoiled vs. the stressed, locked in a desperate bid for respect.

There's always the latest study saying working mothers stunt their children's physical, psychological and spiritual growth, which completely contradicts the previous study saying these kids are smarter, healthier, more independent and will always call their mothers on their birthdays.

All of which ignores the bottom line: The genie is out of the bottle, and she's not going back in. Women are in the work force to stay. The real question now is what to do when they have children.

Grace Paine Terzian is vice president of the Independent Women's Forum, a nonpartisan think tank on women's issues. Women tell her that they don't want to stop working, but do want more options. "Women are very valuable workers, and if more of them piped up with these requests, more industries would try to find ways to make it work."

They are piping up, and getting more family-friendly policies. Working Mother's October issue lists its annual 100 Best Companies; each ranking includes the percentage of women employed, child care centers and subsidies, flexible hours, maternity and paternity leave, company culture, and advancement of women.

Baby-boom mothers greet this all with a weary gratitude, the just spoils of a long-fought war to get a foot (and daycare) in the door. Younger women, on the other hand, look with a mixture of pity and amusement at the exhausted old moms who don't quite have the courage to demand a sane support system at both work and home.

Gen-X mothers (27 to 38 years old) are not using the same playbook as boomer moms, says Kirschenbaum. "They're saying, 'I'll make my own rules.' If that means taking a year off after having a child, so be it. Gen X-ers, men and women, have a much bigger sense of entitlement. When it comes to their jobs, they're saying to their employers: 'I have a life.' "

It's not about her

Kate Reddy doesn't have much of a life. Her creator, on the other hand, has a quite nice life.

Pearson, 42, is a thoughtful, friendly, sweet-looking blonde. She's a British celebrity journalist, married to New Yorker magazine film critic Anthony Lane, mother of a 6-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son. The reported $2 million package (not nearly that much, she says) of the novel and movie rights will buy plenty of time to be a mother.

While doing research for her column in the London Evening Standard two years ago, Pearson read a Good Housekeeping survey that said what many women really wanted for Mother's Day was time for themselves. Just time. "The thing that really struck me was that it said they thought they had tougher lives than their own mothers had had. ... I thought: 'My God. Is this where it's got us?' "

She was shocked that working women were forced to do so much, and said so in her column. The responses poured in: e-mails, letters, notes detailing the very real burdens of running a family and having a job. "It was a yelp of recognition," says Pearson. "It was like opening a door into a secret world where millions of people live with this unacknowledged feeling that it's all too much."

The fact that this "secret world" had been seriously studied for two decades did not deter Pearson from tackling the subject, and Kate Reddy debuted in November 2000 in a series of columns for London's Daily Telegraph. The book came out in England earlier this year.

The novel is a "tragedy written at the pace of a comedy," Pearson says. "I thought if you wrote it straight, it would almost be unbearable to read." Pearson plunked her heroine in the male-dominated milieu of London's financial world, where she is the top female money manager in her firm. Kate's husband is a part-time architect who is very hands-on with their 5-year-old daughter and baby son. Kate also has a nanny she resents for spending so much time with her children.

But Pearson stacks the deck in Kate's favor. All Kate's employed friends are funny and supportive, so she finds plenty of time for cute e-mails bemoaning her crazy life. All the stay-at-home "Mothers Superior" are petty, competitive snobs. Her husband is passive and incompetent, her in-laws meddling, the nanny sullen.

She's a star at work, and even when she screws up, she wins. She gets drunk and ends up in a hotel room with a sexy American client. Does he take advantage of her and then throw her off his account? Nope. He's such a great guy that he tucks her into bed, hangs up her clothes and leaves a sweet note.

To wit: The one nonworking mother whom Kate genuinely admires is Jill Cooper-Clark. We first hear about Jill, who has been diagnosed with breast cancer, when she pops up on Kate's to-do list. "Call Jill Cooper-Clark!!" For six months, Kate can't quite find the time to check on her sick friend, who of course dies.

When it is pointed out that this slips from merely busy into appalling selfishness, Pearson shakes her head. "That's the whole point," she says. "The reason that's there is because I remember asking Tina Brown what was it that went in her life, and she said, 'Calling friends. Personal phone calls.' "

And Kate Reddy, Working Mother, never lifts a finger to change herself or her workplace. Although she is one of the top executives in her firm, she always lies when she arrives late or leaves early for child-related activities. She never turns down a project or a business trip. She never asks for flexible hours, never organizes other parents, never initiates any change.

She feels frustrated. She feels guilty. She feels like a martyr.

The situation comes to a head when her poor neglected husband leaves, not for a sexy little chippie, but because he just can't take it. This is just the jolt she needs, and before you can say "Mary Poppins," she quits the job. The End.

Pearson makes no apologies for the fairy-tale conclusion. "Is it a failure of feminism?" she says. "Absolutely not. Why are women always blamed when things don't work? ... The fight now needs to be to get companies to see that a mother is not a liability."

Harder to argue, of course, when the heroine of her novel abandons her career and lives happily ever after in the country.