At a charity event in south London this week, the Duchess of Cambridge made an observation about parenting: “It’s so hard. You get a lot of support with the baby as a mother particularly in the early days, but after the age of one it falls away. After that there isn’t a huge amount – lots of books to read.” I wasn’t there, but I like to think she tailed off after “read …” expressing only with her eyes the unspoken wail: “I don’t want to read a sodding book about the magic of a two-year-old’s developing brain while it’s having a tantrum because its shoes are the same colour!”
The duchess has always been relatively open about motherhood, and spoken about the loneliness of it. While these are all anodyne, relatable statements, they are also incredibly courageous. If there is one thing mothers are even less allowed to do than complain, it is to have tons of money and then complain. It is the peculiar privilege of motherhood to be simultaneously idealised by society – in the sense that, if you don’t get round to it, you’re seen as deviant – and comprehensively slated for any sign that you are insufficiently appreciative. The ire always concentrates its force on the rich mother, who cannot possibly know the emotional burden of child-rearing, since she could always afford someone to “do all that stuff for her”.
It is a complete and 360-degree misunderstanding of the nature of the under-fives: the whole problem is that you don’t want anybody else to take over, nor do you want to do it all yourself; you don’t want to be lonely, but on the other hand, the outside world can’t get a look-in – an absolute contradiction that money has no answer to. It is a beautiful, eerie phase suspended outside of time, the only threads connecting you back to reality being the freedom to moan throughout.
