You’ve heard of the minibreak – now meet the mummy-break: a brief but life-giving window during which a woman goes somewhere without her children.
It can be a business trip, long weekend or simply a couple of hours. Perhaps yours used to be your commute. Chances are, over the past year, your mummy-breaks have become something of an endangered species. When my toddler’s nursery closed during the first lockdown, the only moments I spent alone was the time it took me to pee before being interrupted. All too often the interruption came before the wee did.
In life pre-Covid, wedding invitations provided the perfect cover for a mummy-break. At first, you’d feel a slight indignation that your pals hadn’t made allowances for your beloved babies in their numbers – “they’ll realise when they have their own” – but then… The giddy-making realisation that this means the freedom to finish a meal at your own pace, to converse without them pulling on your tights. The luxury of putting yourself first. No, more than that: a chance to figure out who you are again.
I am better at caring for my kids when I know I can fulfil other aspects of my personality too.
That’s partly why, in my new novel The Wedding Night, resentful, overworked barrister and mother of a small child Anna is so keen to go to her friend’s nuptials in the south of France – despite the fact they’ve been cancelled. Who can blame her? Weddings are a guilt-free excuse to leave your children with somebody else and wear clothes you wouldn’t want them to touch. Thank God they have started happening again. Thank God for grandparents.
Since restrictions have lifted, I know friends who have booked themselves a single room in a Travelodge for the night or barricaded themselves into their bedroom for a silent retreat of a Saturday morning (books, nails, Love Island on catch-up). I even know someone who told her husband she had to self-isolate for a week on the top floor of their house. She’s feeling far less full of rage for the break; he still thinks she was pinged by the NHS app – who says a small amount of deception can’t be good for a marriage? Rather a mummy-break than a mummy broken.
This isn’t me whinging about looking after my children (both of whom are brilliant company) but making the important case for mothers getting a bit of time to replenish themselves. I am better at caring for my kids when I know I can fulfil other aspects of my personality too.
Soon after lockdown first hit, I wrote a piece for The Times(where I work as fashion editor) about how intense it was going from working mother with childcare and a cleaner to full-time worker, full-time mother and trying to fit the housework in around everything else. You’d think from the Twitter lynch mob (mainly men and people without kids, I might add) that I’d admitted to beating my children and forcing them to work down a mine. This is how the internet reacts to women who dare to point out they are more than just mums.
Eighteen months on and it is a recognised fact that women – their pay, their progression, their presence both in offices and at home - have been hit harder than men's by the coronavirus crisis. I am lucky to have had resources and a supportive partner, but it is time to stop asking mothers, working or not, to check their privilege when they speak out about the pressures they face.
The other good thing about going to a wedding without your kids, of course, is that you are so hungover the next day that you don’t want to do it ever again - or for six months, at least.