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Authors: Sue Margolis
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work. There was also a smattering of Labor MPs who took the view that if one represented the working classes in Parliament, one should live among them.
If you discounted the hippie-dippy women with their waist-length graying hair and children called Windsong and Patchouli who had fried their placentas with onions after giving birth and never went anywhere without their Rescue Remedy and Gingko biloba, on the whole Debtford folk were down-to-earth types who holidayed under canvas or in rented RVs and served spaghetti Bolognese and bottles of Tesco £3.99 Sauvignon at their dinner parties.
It wasn’t just money that separated Debtford women from their Richmansworth neighbors. In Debtford nobody criticized a working mother for leaving her children with a baby-sitter or at a nursery. It was assumed that she needed to work to pay the bills. By the same token, nobody accused women who chose to stay at home of not fulfilling their potential or letting down the sisterhood.
It wasn’t like that in Richmansworth. There, as in many other middle- and upper-middle-class areas, stay-at-home mothers and working alpha mothers were practically at war.
A stay-at-home mummy—role model: Angelina Jolie, motto: “The best academy, a mother’s knee”—believed that by being permanently available, she was raising well-adjusted children who would blossom into delightful, angst-free adolescents and emotionally stable adults. So she devoted her time to finger painting and making low-sugar wholemeal cupcakes with her brood. She fed them a careful balance of carbs, protein, and vitamins. She was also a firm believer that small children shouldn’t become overburdened by too many after-kindergarten activities. Her kids were encouraged to pursue destressing pastimes such as kiddie yoga, Kindermusik, and tending the plants at the Tots Herb Garden.
An alpha mummy—role model: the former prime minister’s wife, Cherie Blair (lawyer, author, mother of four), motto: “In it to win it”—believed that by combining motherhood with a high-flying career, she was achieving the goals that her teachers and university tutors had set down for her. Moreover, she was proving to the next generation that it was possible for women to have it all. “Discipline” and “determination” were her watchwords. The first thing an alpha mummy did after giving birth was phone her CEO. These days she was on the treadmill by six, making shopping lists at half past, and on the phone to the Shanghai office by seven, checking the Far East markets. These mothers lived to work. Their offspring—twin boys being coached for Eton, a pretty girl with a part in the new Harry Potter film—were simply another project, to be managed and organized with the same steely efficiency and determination that they used to pull off a takeover or merger.
Because an alpha mummy believed that free time was wasted time, her children were made to fill their after-school hours with mind-improving activities. The nanny was constantly ferrying them between Mandarin, chess club, and Suzuki violin.
Amy assumed that apart from school functions, alpha mothers and stay-at-home mothers rarely met. Their paths certainly didn’t cross at Café Mozart since the alpha mothers were already at their desks by the time the stay-at-home mothers arrived. Their mutual loathing was, of course, well known. God forbid the two groups should ever lock horns. Amy imagined naked mud wrestling with briefcases and breast pumps flying.
Of course, it went without saying that jealousy was responsible for the groups hating each other. Amy would have put money on there being nights when both sets of women cried themselves to sleep, each craving what the rival group had. She had no doubt that despite the day and night nannies, the gardener and the housekeeper, life for alpha mothers wasn’t as remotely glamorous as it was thought to be. Alpha mothers knew that “having it all” came at a price. That price was permanent
If you discounted the hippie-dippy women with their waist-length graying hair and children called Windsong and Patchouli who had fried their placentas with onions after giving birth and never went anywhere without their Rescue Remedy and Gingko biloba, on the whole Debtford folk were down-to-earth types who holidayed under canvas or in rented RVs and served spaghetti Bolognese and bottles of Tesco £3.99 Sauvignon at their dinner parties.
It wasn’t just money that separated Debtford women from their Richmansworth neighbors. In Debtford nobody criticized a working mother for leaving her children with a baby-sitter or at a nursery. It was assumed that she needed to work to pay the bills. By the same token, nobody accused women who chose to stay at home of not fulfilling their potential or letting down the sisterhood.
It wasn’t like that in Richmansworth. There, as in many other middle- and upper-middle-class areas, stay-at-home mothers and working alpha mothers were practically at war.
A stay-at-home mummy—role model: Angelina Jolie, motto: “The best academy, a mother’s knee”—believed that by being permanently available, she was raising well-adjusted children who would blossom into delightful, angst-free adolescents and emotionally stable adults. So she devoted her time to finger painting and making low-sugar wholemeal cupcakes with her brood. She fed them a careful balance of carbs, protein, and vitamins. She was also a firm believer that small children shouldn’t become overburdened by too many after-kindergarten activities. Her kids were encouraged to pursue destressing pastimes such as kiddie yoga, Kindermusik, and tending the plants at the Tots Herb Garden.
An alpha mummy—role model: the former prime minister’s wife, Cherie Blair (lawyer, author, mother of four), motto: “In it to win it”—believed that by combining motherhood with a high-flying career, she was achieving the goals that her teachers and university tutors had set down for her. Moreover, she was proving to the next generation that it was possible for women to have it all. “Discipline” and “determination” were her watchwords. The first thing an alpha mummy did after giving birth was phone her CEO. These days she was on the treadmill by six, making shopping lists at half past, and on the phone to the Shanghai office by seven, checking the Far East markets. These mothers lived to work. Their offspring—twin boys being coached for Eton, a pretty girl with a part in the new Harry Potter film—were simply another project, to be managed and organized with the same steely efficiency and determination that they used to pull off a takeover or merger.
Because an alpha mummy believed that free time was wasted time, her children were made to fill their after-school hours with mind-improving activities. The nanny was constantly ferrying them between Mandarin, chess club, and Suzuki violin.
Amy assumed that apart from school functions, alpha mothers and stay-at-home mothers rarely met. Their paths certainly didn’t cross at Café Mozart since the alpha mothers were already at their desks by the time the stay-at-home mothers arrived. Their mutual loathing was, of course, well known. God forbid the two groups should ever lock horns. Amy imagined naked mud wrestling with briefcases and breast pumps flying.
Of course, it went without saying that jealousy was responsible for the groups hating each other. Amy would have put money on there being nights when both sets of women cried themselves to sleep, each craving what the rival group had. She had no doubt that despite the day and night nannies, the gardener and the housekeeper, life for alpha mothers wasn’t as remotely glamorous as it was thought to be. Alpha mothers knew that “having it all” came at a price. That price was permanent
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