Miriam Cates and I have a different idea of what Thatcherism was all about. To me, the Lady T era was more feminist than any other before or after because it included all people, including women, in its vision of work, wealth, power and success. It did so without all the carry on about menstruation and endometriosis and menopause and who knows what else that comes with female empowerment discourse today.
‘I felt like nothing more than a drudge,’ said Thatcher in a 1954 interview in Forward, a Conservative pamphlet, of being at home with two babies and the housework after the mental stimulation of chemistry and law. Later, she would extol the virtues of women’s role in the home as doting mothers and responsible housekeepers and decry ‘women’s lib’. But Thatcher had a quintessential belief in women’s ability to get to all the top tables, and she was among the few Conservatives to vote in favour of universal abortion (and the decriminalisation of homosexuality).
The ‘no one can replace mum’ idea seems naive and uncreative, strongly rooted in Victorian ideas of domesticity
But to Miriam Cates, Thatcher’s laser focus on incentivising economic ambition for all members of society is at odds with all that is good for women. The Tories, she told the Telegraph’s Chopper podcast last week, need to finally break free of the influence of the Thatcher years which, she said, were ‘unconservative’. She criticised Jeremy Hunt’s childcare reforms for handing incentives to working parents, not stay at home mums, and argued for tax-breaks for full-time mothers as recognition for their ‘investment in society’. Cates spoke scathingly of ‘outsourc[ing] that unbreakable bond to institutional childcare’ and added: ‘no one can replace mum’.
It’s true that Cates is espousing a standard Conservative narrative about the glories of 24/7 motherhood, of being there for every burp and gurgle and first word, of the dignity of women’s charge over warm pies and their unique role in forging lovely traditional family bonds and a cosy hearth. But I prefer Thatcher’s more sophisticated approach: on one hand, to speak warmly of women’s role in the home and on the other, to put policy energy into encouraging everyone to have the best careers they can, leaving them to work out the rest.
What Thatcher knew is that everybody likes money (even lefties), especially money they’ve earned themselves. Creating an environment in which people can reap the rewards of their work, or their wealth, was something she could do. But, beyond guaranteeing freedom of sexuality and the right to abortion, she also knew that foisting philosophies of gender (‘no one can replace mum’) or the politics of personal choice (what value to place on marriage and reproduction) was not the best use of the state, especially the fiscally liberal one Britain urgently needed.
Speaking as someone whose mother worked full-time while raising two children, the ‘no one can replace mum’ idea seems naive and uncreative, strongly rooted in sentimentalised Victorian ideas of domesticity. It’s also a little misleading: no one is replacing mum. But someone, or some people, are allowing little Juno or Oscar to be looked after brilliantly. Meanwhile mum can continue to build her career, retain professional confidence, stay sane, and help shore up family finances, which will in turn help when little Oscar wants to go to an expensive university.
Children can love many people at once. Mum will always be front of the queue, but there’s room for nursery staff, babysitters, neighbours, grandparents, au pairs and nannies – and even, god forbid, dad. It is a huge mistake to think that children need their mothers there all the time. What they need is to feel safe, secure, and loved and the two are not necessarily the same thing.
A true feminist, a la Thatcher, might figure that it doesn’t hurt for a child to see their mother building a thriving career; seeing mine do so was inspiring and made me more confident. It’s true that one can argue over how well Thatcher’s children turned out, but there are never any guarantees whether you’re a housewife or a stock broker – or the most important PM in post-war British history.
Perhaps the most serious political problem with the Catesian perspective is that on one hand it encourages mothers to ‘lean out’ of work and the world of professional ambition, to quote the much-maligned but excellent Cheryl Sandberg, and then to blame patriarchy when women are still relatively absent from the top tables of business and global affairs. But I don’t think you can have it both ways.
For this reason, Rishi and Hunt’s childcare policy – aimed at making it easier for women to go back to work after having children – is a good one, exactly because it channels the spirit of Thatcher.
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