I Can't Be Bothered With My Own Children

So says Helen Kirwan-Taylor:

Helen Kirwan-Taylor, a 42-year-old writer, lives in Notting Hill, West London, with her businessman husband Charles and their sons Constantin, 12, and Ivan, ten. Here, she argues provocatively that modern women must not be enslaved by their children.

"Enslaved" sounds pretty serious. Perhaps she will argue that parents shouldn't bend to a child's every whim. That's reasonable. But no:

Invitations to attend a child's birthday party or, worse, a singalong session were met with the same refrain: 'I would love to but I just can't spare the time.'

The nanny was dispatched in my place, and almost always returned complaining that my son had been singled out for pitiful stares by the other mothers.

Well, perhaps Helen was doing something important...

I confess that I was probably ogling the merchandise at Harvey Nichols or having my highlights done instead.

Oh. Interesting that she finds shopping and sitting in a chair while someone highlights her hair more interesting than her kids.

To be honest, I spent much of the early years of my children's lives in a workaholic frenzy because the thought of spending time with them was more stressful than any journalistic assignment I could imagine.

Kids are supposed to be fulfilling, life-changing, life-enhancing fun: why was my attitude towards them so different?

Egomania.

While all my girlfriends were dropping important careers and occupying their afternoons with cake baking, I was begging the nanny to stay on, at least until she had read my two a bedtime story. What kind of mother hates reading bedtime stories? A bad mother, that's who, and a mother who is bored rigid by her children.

Emphasis mine.

My children have got used to my disappearing to the gym when they're doing their prep (how boring to learn something you never wanted to learn in the first place).

They know better than to expect me to sit through a cricket match, and they've completely given up on expecting me to spend school holidays taking them to museums or enjoying the latest cinema block-boster alongside them. (I spent two hours texting friends throughout a screening of Pirates Of The Caribbean the other day).

Interact with my children? Take them somewhere? Egads! Are you serious? I don't have time to support them and teach them a bunch of boring crap. How would I maintain my me-time? I must have maximum ME-TIME!

Am I a lazy, superficial person because I don't enjoy packing up their sports kit, or making their lunch, or sitting through coffee mornings with other mothers discussing how Mr Science (I can't remember most of the teachers' names) said such and such to Little Johnny and should we all complain to the headmaster.

At this point in the conversation, my mind drifts to thoughts of my own lunch and which shoes I plan to wear with what skirt.

Yeah, thinking about shoes is way more interesting than thinking about your kid's teachers. There are like so many different shoes. There are high heels, flats, wedges, kitten heels, and on and on. Endless fascination. In school there's what, maybe 7 or 8 subjects with only one teacher for each? Booooooring. Why think about your children when you could be thinking about outfits?

The other mothers tease me for my inability to know anything about school life. But since when did masterminding 20 school runs a week become an accomplishment? Getting a First at college was an accomplishment.

I doubt they're teasing. Probably more like chiding disguised as teasing. The last time this woman was in college was probably something like 24 years ago! What adult still keeps his score by what he did back in school? Perhaps it's time to stop resting on those past laurels long enough to realize that you're failing in the present.

Arabella Cant, an art director with two young children, admits that she considered jumping off a bridge in the early stages of her career in motherhood. 'Bringing up children is among the most boring and exhausting things you can do,' she says.

Her solution was to avoid subjugating her own life to that of her children's. 'I'm certainly not traipsing around museums or sitting on the floor doing Lego if that's what you mean by being at home,' she explains. 'I'm loving it, but my children fit into my life and not the other way around.

I shouldn't have to do anything for those brats. If they want a trip out of the house, they can go to my hairdresser. I don't do kid things. It's all about me me me mememememememememe.

Psychotherapist Kati St Clair has listened to the frustrations of scores of mothers. 'Women now feel great pressure to enjoy their children at all times,' she says. 'The truth is, a lot of it is plain tedium. It's very unlikely that a mother doesn't love her child, but it can be very dull. Still, it takes a brave woman to admit that.'

All us bored mothers can take comfort from the fact that our children may yet turn out to be more balanced than those who are love-bombed from the day they are born. ...

This, of course, makes mothers like me — who love their children but refuse to cater to their every whim — feel vindicated.

To assuage one's guilt, it's best to equate normal parenting with obsessive parenting. Those who aren't neglectful are all obsessive. There is no middle ground.

Frankly, as long as you've fed them, sheltered them and told them they are loved, children will be fine.

Children need no more care than the family dog. In fact, because children are smarter than dogs, you don't even need to show them any love or interest in them. You can just tell them that you love and are interested in them, and they'll understand.

Mine are — at the risk of sounding smug — well-adjusted, creative children who respect the concept of work.

You can thank your nanny for that. The same nanny who acts as their mother by reading them stories, taking them places, caring for their needs, and showing interest in them. The same nanny who you ignored when she encouraged you to be more involved. The same nanny who has taken your place.

They stopped asking me to take them to the park (how tedious) years ago. But now when I try to entertain them and say: 'Why don't we get out the Monopoly board?' they simply look at me woefully and sigh: 'Don't bother, Mum, you'll just get bored.'

How right they are.

Pathetic.

Has the me-obsessed culture really come to this? People who can't even be bothered with their own offspring? Perhaps her children will find her boring and not worth borthering about when she gets older and expects them to visit and care about her.