Kirstie Allsop and feminism – have we missed the point?
I must have missed the whole furor about Kirstie Allsop. A few weeks ago Bryony Gordon interviewed her for The Telegraph about the death of her mother at the beginning of the year and during their conversation she said:
“At the moment, women have 15 years to go to university, get their career on track, try and buy a home and have a baby. That is a hell of a lot to ask someone. As a passionate feminist, I feel we have not been honest enough with women about this issue.”
…and her world exploded in a torrent of abuse about her being the ‘world’s worst feminist’.
I must have had my head in the sand(pit) because I didn’t really notice all the commotion until I read about it in this fab piece by Alice at More than Toast today and a wave of emotion knocked me for six. I ran straight to the interview and read it word for word. And it struck me immediately that there is so much more to Kirstie’s point than the two lines above. They need to be put in the context of what she said before and after:
“Women are being let down by the system. We should speak honestly and frankly about fertility and the fact it falls off a cliff when you’re 35. We should talk openly about university and whether going when you’re young, when we live so much longer, is really the way forward.
“At the moment, women have 15 years to go to university, get their career on track, try and buy a home and have a baby. That is a hell of a lot to ask someone. As a passionate feminist, I feel we have not been honest enough with women about this issue.”
“But I don’t say it from a position of smugness. I only whistled in there by a miracle when it came to children. This isn’t something I’ve just decided in an arbitrary way. [Fertility] is the one thing we can’t change. Some of the greatest pain that I have seen among friends is the struggle to have a child. It wasn’t all people who couldn’t start early enough because they hadn’t met the right person.”
For me the key word here is fertility (and I’ve added my own emphasis in the quote above). And Kirsty is absolutely right. Fertility IS the one thing we can’t change. Ok, we’re living longer but by waiting longer to have children we’ll be lucky to see our grandchildren married. If Curly Girl has a child when she is 36, as I did, I will be 72 when it is born and 90 (if I’m lucky) at his or her eighteenth birthday. In all likelihood I will not see my great grandchildren. And my husband is eight years older than me.
You do the math.
The point Kirstie was making, I think, is that as women we need to be better educated about the realities of our bodies. I wanted it all in my twenties and thirties. I went to university, got a good job as a PR and grabbed life with both hands. When OH and I met children were the last thing on our minds (I was adamant for a long time that I didn’t want any at all). We were terrified at the thought of getting pregnant and thanked our lucky stars whenever we had a ‘scare’ that I might be. We wanted to ride our motorbikes around Europe, go clubbing in Barcelona and sit under the stars in the Maldives, not change nappies and mash baby food. So that’s what we did.
But when our thoughts DID turn to children we got the shock of our lives. One of the ironies of fertility is that I spent so much time trying NOT to get pregnant when in reality there was probably less chance that I could with each year that passed. Those lucky enough to fall pregnant without trying probably wonder what all the fuss is about – I totally get that if you haven’t had to jab a needle into your own stomach once a day or into your bum at night then it might be hard to understand.
I’ve written before about our long and winding road to parenthood – it took us years of patience, fertility drugs and treatment in China to finally arrive at our destination – and if I could write a letter to my younger self I’d write in bright red block capitals across the middle of the page
don’t leave it too long!
At the risk of being lambasted myself I will not perpetuate the myth of modern womanhood that we can do it all, have it all before we’re 40 and have dinner on the table, two point four spotless children and perfect nail varnish too. When we sell ourselves this image of perfection we risk our sanity and that of everyone around us. One of the amazing things about the blogging community is that these myths are eroded. In reality we stumble through life doing the best we can whether we had our children at 20 or 40, married or single parenting, career girls or stay at home mums.
The point for me is that we need to know the facts to MAKE THE CHOICE. When Curly Girl is old enough to start planning her way in the world I will sit her down and tell her the real facts of fertility – that she might be one of the lucky ones who falls pregnant straight away – but she also might not.
That said, in my opinion, the unfortunate reality is that while I agree with Kirstie that it would be nice be able to have our babies when we’re young and then go off to University and learn and have a career later (skipping as we do so), in our society that isn’t the norm and if I turned up on the doorstep of most corporations at 45 with no work experience I think it’s likely they’d laugh at my face as they closed the door in it.
Was Kirstie being anti-feminist saying what she did? I don’t think so. For me feminism is about taking control of our lives, standing up for equality, embracing our womanhood and being able to make choices. Some choose to have children young and some later. More power to all of us. But without more education about the real facts of fertility the next generation of 20 somethings won’t be able to make that choice an informed one.
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