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Who has the best deal here?

21st August 2007 by Helena 3 Comments  

Here is one of my favourite poems by Dorothy Parker:

By the time you swear you’re his,

Shivering and sighing,

And he vows his passion is

Infinite, undying

Lady, make a note of this:

One of you is lying.

The reason this came to mind today was not that I have shivering or indeed sighing in some lothario’s arms. No, I have been being a full-time mother. And after just half a day it strikes me that one lie we all live with is that looking after a home and children is a doddle compared with working all day.

This is the typical scene. Man gets up to go to work. Woman makes his breakfast, feeds and dresses the children, he dresses himself (in shirts she has ironed), goes off to the office where he may have some stressful moments and he may not. Then he comes home to a home-cooked dinner, kisses the children goodnight and watches the football until turning in.

What you can be sure of if you’re looking after children all day is that you WILL have stressful moments (as well as some fun ones of course). I have just managed to escape for five minutes to my desk and it feels like a haven. Upstairs anything could be demanded of me from wiping bottoms to acting as peace envoy to avoid any (more) blood spilling.

When we were at my mother’s house in Devon I took on the role normally allocated to men, that of main bread-winner and worker. I worked while she looked after the children. She washed and ironed. I shopped and paid for it. She took the children to the park, I wrote a few emails. There is no doubt at all that of the two I had the easier job. In fact I can’t think of a job that would be tougher than looking after children, except perhaps mining or long-distance lorry driving across Siberia.

So if your husband comes home today and grumbles that he’s had a tough time in the office here’s what you should do. Hand him the kids and say ‘welcome to my world honey’. Then go and lie down for half an hour, you deserve it.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007


Filed Under: Children, Family, Women, blog -->

3 thoughts on Who has the best deal here?

  • Gigi says:
    21st August 2007 at 9:00 pm

    Hmm. I’ve been saying this for years. Then my husband p****d off and left me to do the breadwinning AND bring up the children. And now I do each thing only half as well as I could do…

  • Arthur Burland says:
    22nd August 2007 at 10:06 am

    Most women are truly marvellous: wonderful with children, patient, and, so often, show acts of extreme bursts of familial juggling. I wonder at it and am in awe of it. As a male I am not capable of it. How do you do it? Did you develop these gifts or were they thrust upon you by a knowing creator, and, if so why?

    If I was to be stuck on a desert island for the long haul I think I would choose a woman out of all the people I have ever known, but please not Hasel Byers, my mother, or my sister, nor my wives. I’m told Rachael Welch was very pleasant and rather a warm character, but fear she had faults. What to do?

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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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