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Status Anxiety

Toby Young

Wednesday, 2nd April 2008

Spending time with my children makes me appreciate my wife. How does she stand them?

The one thing to be said for board games is that there is only a finite amount of mess that children can make with them. The same is not true of Moon Sand, an alternative to Play-Doh that is currently all the rage. Billed as ‘sand you can mould’, it is essentially common-or-garden sand that has been treated with some chemical that leaves it permanently damp. Unfortunately, the batch we have is not quite damp enough, so any attempt to shape it into a castle is doomed. When you lift up one of the brightly coloured buckets it is supplied with, the sand inevitably ends up all over the floor. Since nine-month-old Freddie has just started crawling — and consumes everything in his path — this means I have to spend the entire time on all fours, armed with a brush and dustpan.

I have to confess that spending time with my children has given me a renewed appreciation for Caroline. How on earth can she stand it? In the past, I have scoffed at the notion that being a housewife can be considered ‘work’, but now I know better. It is actually a form of hard labour, the domestic equivalent of breaking up rocks with a pickaxe. No wonder Arthur Scargill managed to persuade the miners to go on strike in the face of pit closures. It wasn’t the prospect of unemployment that spurred them on, but the thought of having to spend more time with their families. Compared to childcare, disappearing into a pit for nine hours a day is a holiday in the sun.

Will it get any easier as the little monsters get older? I am told by those in the know that once they reach the age of five they become a lot more fun to be with, though it all starts to go downhill again when they are about ten and doesn’t let up until they are well into their twenties. Given that my wife is pregnant with number four, and exactly five years will separate our youngest from our eldest, that means I have at least 20 years of misery ahead. Does anyone know of any cheap offices to rent?

Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.

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Fergus Pickering

April 3rd, 2008 12:19pm

A long time ago I lost my job. It was all Maggie's fault or alternatively it was all my boss's fault. Anyway I lost it and then we had a kid and then we had anotherkid and I never gotthe job back. Fifteen years full time work and the rest of my life part time and kids. Well not kids now. And I tekll you what. Looking after kids whacka bloody working. Particularly with creche and school and all those nice people who do it for you. Wor is hell.Kids are, well actually they are ALL RIGHT even if they do all the thibgs you say they do. And they do. Hell, do you really mind losing at snakes and ladders, even if it is an invented snakes and ladders. Get a life.

Ann

May 16th, 2008 5:18pm

I gave up work for 10 years to care for my children. Then I worked from home and my husband joined me! It pays off Toby, I have 3 fantastic children. Teenagers who go to school, do their homework without being asked, revise ditto and do their fair share of household chores with barely a murmer. They are coherent, intelligent human beings, a pleasure to live with and who make me very proud. Enjoy I say!