Well done, all the new mothers who cram a full day\u2019s work into their child\u2019s nap time. But let\u2019s not pretend it\u2019s easy<\/p>\n
I might be particularly attuned to this stuff, but I feel I\u2019m always reading about women \u2013 mothers \u2013 I admire powering triumphantly through the very real obstacles of early parenthood, creating and innovating in nap times, evenings and early mornings. \u201cThough time for writing is now more scarce \u2013 she mentions the \u2018in between\u2019 moments snatched in the car and the office \u2013 motherhood has made her a \u2018better writer\u2019.\u201d That\u2019s a recent interview with the author Kiley Reid<\/a>. A Vogue article on motherhood and creativity last year had several examples: \u201cI found motivation and grit I had never felt before,\u201d one interviewee announced; another \u201cwrote her first book<\/a> between the hours of 4am and 6am during the first two years of her daughter\u2019s life\u201d. Caitlin Moran expands on the idea at length in How to Be a Woman<\/a>: \u201cIn the tiny windows of time that your child is asleep or someone else is looking after her, you find yourself becoming almost superhumanly productive. Give a new mother a sleeping child for an hour, and she can achieve 10 times more than a childless person.\u201d<\/p>\n These women aren\u2019t boasting; they\u2019re exploring some variation on \u201cHow do you do it?\u201d or \u201cHow has being a parent influenced your work?\u201d (questions almost never asked of fathers). It\u2019s a vital corrective to the long-held assumption that a working mother is less-than, distracted and conflicted; to what Vogue called<\/a> \u201cthe common perception that once a woman has a baby, she will automatically have no time or energy left for writing\u201d (or for whatever her job is).<\/p>\n Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well done, all the new mothers who cram a full day\u2019s work into their child\u2019s nap time. But let\u2019s not pretend it\u2019s easy I might be particularly attuned to this stuff, but I feel I\u2019m always reading about women \u2013 mothers \u2013 I admire powering triumphantly through the very real obstacles of early parenthood, creating … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}