My working woman's guide to surviving family life

12 April 2012

The head of St Paul's Girls' School has decided that London's brightest and best females need parenting classes - a privilege previously reserved for the Vicky Pollards, now to be extended to the Sophies and Ambers. Clarissa Farr says families with high-flying, work-orientated parents can end up lacking a settled family life.

1. Children don't care where you are when you're not there. Don't get upset that you're thousands of miles away: it looks the same on a Skype connection as being in a hotel in Aberdare. So my call home earlier today was greeted not with, "Gosh, mum, how fab to be in Szechuan, what's the food like?" but "You missed the last episode of Spooks and the fridge is making that banging noise
again."

2. No one else will organise the things you didn't do because you had to go somewhere vital for work. So prepare to email paint-ball bookings on dodgy connections from internet cafés and shout down the mobile, finger in ear, "Did you say the entrance test is tomorrow?"

3. If you work very hard, your truculent child will say: "All you care about is your job." If you trade down your aspirations, they will say: "Alice's mum is on the board at Sony and she always gets a box at the O2."

4. The work-life balance is a myth cooked up by magazine writers and HR departments to save on contracts. It means you are allowed to be off work when you don't need to be but your presence is urgently required on days featuring parents' meetings, vital exam preparation and any day when the stress-busting yoga classes you promised yourself a month ago aren't full.

5. The attempt to schedule in regular "family time" - one of Ms Farr's big ideas - is doomed. If you try it in the week, an adult runs late and at least one child is in the middle of a homework and/or personal crisis. If you try it at the weekend you will frequently find that you and the other half are the only family members who turn up. Everyone else has gone clubbing or to a sleepover.

6. It's okay for children to know that work is hard (this is why they call it work). The most stressy parents I know are the ones who feel they have to pretend they are up for fun and games the moment they crawl through the front door after 12 hours. Say a cheerful hello, but don't bring them up to expect a superhuman.

7. You will miss some pleasures other mothers have in seeing the detail of their children's lives. But you have an office to escape to - a place where few colleagues throw tantrums and most of them don't leave their dirty underpants on the floor.

8. Do get a job you like - and a partner who makes some real money to pay oodles of staff while you do it. Someone has to marry the bankers.

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