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Supermum or superman?

18th January 2007 by Helena 7 Comments  

All this and more...This week’s big news, apart from Big Bother, is the fact that a high-flying City worker is expecting her eighth baby. “Supermum” cried the headlines as everyone marvelled at this woman’s capacity to breed and earn more money in a month than most of us do in four years.
I beg to differ. Anyone in her position has enough money to employ help; lots of it. I bet she hasn’t seen an ironing board since her early twenties. Does she even know that the Dyson has taken over the world? Also she has what sounds like a husband who was genetically modified in the womb by a radical feminist group. He is a Zen Buddhist monk who has given up any hope of a normal life to look after their children aged 18 months to 15 years. In their household it is the saintly Mr Morrissey who deals with nappies, gym kit, adolescent tantrums and emptying the dishwasher (I would imagine around four times a day, unless they have an industrial one).

For me the real supermums are the ones who do it all the time. As I changed my son’s sheets this morning I thought, thank goodness I don’t only have this to do. Children are lovely; but let’s be honest, looking after them on a daily basis is often drudgery. Imagine if you had nowhere to escape to, no civilised adult conversations on the horizon, no decisions to make that didn’t involve which brand of nappies to buy or what to cook for the little angles to throw all over the kitchen? I, for one, would go mad. There is nothing I love more than my children, but I don’t need to be with them at all times. I haven’t told my husband (though I think he does the same) sometimes when he takes them all off to school in the morning and I’m left alone with only the prospect of work ahead of me I jump for joy. I feel like a bit of a prat jumping around the kitchen on my own shouting ‘yippee’, but Max the cat seems to enjoy it.
I think most working mothers if they were honest would admit that at times getting to the office is an absolute joy. One working mother I know, now retired, said she used to look forward to Monday mornings. I wonder who in the Morrissey household shares that sentiment?

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007


Filed Under: Children, Family, Women, blog --> Tagged With: superman, supermum

7 thoughts on Supermum or superman?

  • snusmormor says:
    18th January 2007 at 10:43 pm

    Maybe your husband could become a buddhist monk as well?

  • helena says:
    18th January 2007 at 10:56 pm

    Good plan! Does that mean I have to have eight children? Hx

  • Jackie Hosking says:
    19th January 2007 at 9:33 am

    Hi Helena,

    Just spend a lovely time browsing your blog – thanks for leaving a comment on mine – very exciting to know people all over the place are reading it.

    Oh and don’t feel a prat jumping around the kitchen – if I knew how to cartwheel – I would!

    Take care,

    Jackie

  • Irene says:
    20th January 2007 at 12:45 am

    Well, hello Helena,
    I am currently reading you book on How To Be Impossibly French. It makes so much sense of things, plus I shamelessly laugh out loud to the surprise of my husband when present nearby!
    Your book resurrected the dormant francophile in me. I even think of starting yet another blog, in French this time!

    I couldn’t agree more with your post. I have stayed at home for two years when I first got married. Sometimes I “revert” as dear hubby puts it, to wanting to be a housewife. (Too much American influence, I suppose…). Then I come to my senses.
    I think it is not so much a matter of nannies etc. although they might help (I don’t have a nanny out of convinction), as it has to do with exploring one’s potential. Then of course that implies that one has one…

    Thank you for the wonderful time you are offering me.

    Oh, and Happy New Year (it’s only January!)

  • helena says:
    20th January 2007 at 7:03 pm

    Thanks Irene and Happy New Year to you too, I’m thrilled you like the book, it was such fun to write.

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi-based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor-in-chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She is working on a thriller set in Sweden as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

In 2022 her short story The Japanese Gardener came second in the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize. One of her stories was also shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize. When she’s not writing, she works as a headhunter for the media and entertainment industry for the Sucherman Group. 

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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