An odd set of messages this week from some of the right-wing press: the Mail, the Express and Telegraph all ran pieces criticising Nick Clegg for taking his children to school, while being essential to the smooth running of the country.
In a classic bit of pandering/flamebait (delete according to taste), they variously criticise Clegg for not working 24 hours a day before concluding that he is “powerful”, “Co-Prime Minister” and “the second most senior politician in the land”.
The Express’s Virginia Blackburn likes to think of Clegg as “a commanding figure, a statesman, a diplomat representing his country on the global stage.”
So what’s prompted these admissions? It’s an interview by Miriam González Durántez in the latest issue of Grazia magazine, in which Nick Clegg’s wife gives a glimpse of their family life. The fact that both parents work long and often unsociable hours, while protecting some normality for their sons, has made journalists let slip their admiration for the DPM before reverting to plain old shame-dumping.
Former Lib Dem staffer Louise Philips wrote this week at the Huffington Post that Miriam González Durántez should be applauded “for showing that there is a role for bright, successful women with families that extends beyond window dressing”:
…All of these articles essentially boil down to the fact that these writers believe a woman’s place is to support her husband, and not to have a career of their own. Or at least, have a career unless your husband is successful (because if he’s earning money why would you want to work? Surely women don’t really want careers! They want to be at home with the children!).
Now, Miriam González Durántez (as Mrs Clegg ‘insists’ on being called), is a very clever and incredibly successful woman, who doesn’t need me to defend her. But these articles are espousing outdated and frankly damaging stereotypes.
Leaving aside the casual misogyny that is the main focus of these pieces, the suggestion that as a successful and wealthy man, Nick Clegg should neither have nor want any part in his children’s daily lives is ridiculous. The fact that our DPM wants to spend time with his family is surely a good thing. Implying that men shouldn’t care about their offspring and should just concentrate on their jobs is just as bad as saying the opposite about women.
During last year’s General Election when I was working for the Lib Dems, Miriam did not give up work to join Nick on the campaign trail. Not just because she has a successful job (and frankly, who has the luxury of taking a month off work at a time), but because she thought that women should not be there to provide window dressing for their husbands’ careers. Several of my friends (who like me were in their mid-20s and childless) contacted me to say how refreshing this was.
Read Louise’s full piece at the Huffington Post.
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8 Comments
I think Nick is setting a good example here. He is doing an important job, but that shouldn’t mean he can’t find time to pick his kids up now and again. Given he will often be expected to work unsociable hours, often at meetings outside the normal 9-5, being available at school pick-up time is not an indication he’s not putting the hours in.
There are people who, in less important jobs, work long hours every day, week in week out. Now, putting in extra hours is fine a crisis points in a project. But if you’re an employee of a reasonably sized organisation and you’re doing it all the time then you’re either overloaded, or not working effectively enough. In a malfunctioning workplace culture, people consistently putting in extra hours are promoted and given pay-rises rather than taken on one side and told to ease off a bit.
I feel it’s important to promote healthy workplace culture, and Nick’s example does this, possibly inadvertently. I suspect the sort of psycho boss who thinks my idea of a healthy workplace culture is namby pamby nonsense would be a keen reader of the Mail, Express or Telegraph.
I think some comments on Schools should suit working parents touch on issues that may also be relevant here.
I think I would like to see him working for the Lib Dems for a change.
It’s not the Telegraph’s Virginia Blackburn, Helen. It is Daily (and for all I know Sunday) Express readers who are treated to a continuous diet of her opinions and observations such as those here on Miriam Clegg, whom she declares “an irritating-looking woman if ever I saw one.”
But that may be because Miriam Durantez doesn’t fit the Blackburn stereotype: “everybody aims to be famous nowadays”, she trilled in a recent Observer article. Her piece was in defence of her right to hack into the lives of Katie Price and the late Jade Goody, with salacious and distressing ‘inside stories’ masquerading as biography.
The Mail’s Quentin Letts reputedly churns out this waspish drivel when he’s stuck for anyone to talk to in the interval whilst doubling as that paper’s theatre critic.
Actually, the Telegraph’s criticism is by Judith Woods who is more informed but just as opinionated and even more spiteful, invoking memories of Franco as Miriam Gonzalez apparently jets around business class oblivious to her husband’s attempts to arrest Italy’s looming debt of £43 billion etc. And that ‘s just the European angle!
Miriam Clegg….now that sounds much better to these three. But do their readers really care?
Thanks Sean, now corrected.
I think Nick and Miriam are leading by example.
As far as I can make out, the tone of these articles is to set up a model of how family life should be constructed and then to criticise a family that diverges from this.
This is both illiberal and impracticable. Every family, faces its own challenges in how it gets things done and manages relationships. Most families do this reasonably most of the time, and should be let get on with it. Help should be available when there are temporary or permanent difficulties they cannot solve themselves, but that is not the same as laying down the law on how they should work.
“working 24 hours a day” is a silly idea. Some top jobs require that priority to them may require priority 24 hours a day, but excessive hours actually spent working will result in fatigue and reduced ability to function. Likewise, living only “in the bubble” can result in decisions that outsiders easily perceive as silly.
It’s about work-life balance, which is about giving a fair deal to both work and life.
It is a good thing that Nick enjoys spending time with his children and does his fair share of taking them to school, particularly given that his wife has a successful career of her won.
It is also a very good thing that Nick doesn’t see his role of DPM obliging him to work silly hours.
It would be far better for the country if senior politicians all managed their work-life balance better, and didn’t feel the need to spend all their time coming up with even more legislation, believing they need to run everything, and filling every cable news channel with comment.
We have far too much central government in this country and if Nick is doing his small bit to reduce it then good for him.