- guardian.co.uk, Sunday April 28 2002 00.37 BST
- The Observer, Sunday April 28 2002
When she went out on the campaign trail in 2000, she pulled her son Robert out of school and taught him herself on the plane. Since coming to Washington, she's made a point of leaving the White House two hours earlier than usual on Wednesdays to enjoy a 'midweek moment' in the family home.
She insisted on working from home at weekends. Whenever possible, she took her son with her to Camp David and Texas. Thanks to her example, the West Wing was turning into Family Friendly Heaven. Only this week, for example, the daughters of top Cheney aide Mary Matalin were in there watching Dragon Tales while Mom talked to 'energy people', and playing with her make-up while she got ready for a meeting with the press.
Hughes was one of five 'Moms' Bush put into key posts at the start of his administration. But last week she announced she'd had enough. This summer she'll be leaving the White House to accompany her 'homesick' family back to Texas. She insists that her decision does not mean that motherhood and a high-powered career are incompatible. 'I hope it is an example that women have more options.'
Bush hopes so, too. 'Karen Hughes will be changing her address,' he said, 'but she will still be in my inner circle.' Outside that circle, Hughes's resignation is adding to an already heated debate about the perils of working motherhood.
Earlier this month, television commentators gave saturation coverage to a new book, Creating A Life by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, accusing the United States business world of making it all but impossible to succeed as a professional for those who had family responsibilities.
She found that 49 per cent of those earning more than $100,000 (£69,000) a year were childless at 40, and that most of those who were married had met their mates by the age of 30.
All but 14 per cent said they had wanted families. Many had failed because they had assumed, incorrectly, that they could wait until their mid-to-late thirties. Her shock statistics provoked all the usual complaints about 'scaremongering' and 'silly women who don't know about their bodies even though they have Harvard MBAs'.
Then came the rebuttal from Ann Crittendon, author of The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued.
'There is never the right time to have a baby,' she pointed out. 'The system fights women whether they have children early or late or not at all.'
The real problem, said Abigail Trafford of the Washington Post, was not in women's bodies, but in the structure of careers. 'Instead of blaming women for not heeding their biological clocks, we should be blaming ourselves for not changing the workplace clock.'
There was no reason why women shouldn't take a decade or so off work and then return to high-flying careers, Trafford said hopefully.
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times went so far as to say that in some ways, women such as Karen Hughes who made sacrifices for their families were better off than men who didn't. 'Maybe having some of everything we want is better than having all of what men want.' Dowd did point out that the Bush Administration had done little to support mothers beyond the West Wing.
In Britain, though, the picture is a bit brighter. New Labour has done more than any previous British government to help working mothers. It has even made a few teeny-tiny baby steps towards working fathers. And think of all those fine speeches about the family-friendly workplace. The number of women in top-paying jobs is still too low, but look at all those women MPs.
Count how many of them have children. Then factor in Cherie Booth, and remember how hard the Equal Opportunities Commission has been working to close the pay gap.
In the Seventies and Eighties, 'business feminists' were most concerned with glass ceilings and getting more women past them. But now there is an equal emphasis on the importance of having families when, and if, you want them. The question is not whether women can manage jobs as well as families, but how.
The most creative thinking inside the work/life campaigns is not just about new ways of structuring the working day and working week.
It is also about new ways of structuring careers, so that men as well as women can work part-time without giving up on the hope of promotion, or work extra hard at one phase in their careers and take extended leave when their children need them at home.
A well-integrated family-friendly system would also address the needs of people who don't want children, or don't want them yet, or people whose children are grown up. Workplace change that protects people with families should not be at the expense of those who do not.
The be-all and end-all is the business case: the only projects that get taken seriously in the work/life world are the ones that also boost productivity.
But except in a handful of forward thinking companies, work and career structures still aren't changing.
If anything, says investment banker Shanti Fry, they are getting worse. 'The people I know whose fathers worked for corporations in the Fifties and Sixties - their fathers came home by 6pm.
'Now people work 80-hour weeks. How can anybody be a good parent to their children in their vulnerable years when they're away that much?
'It's not just mothers. Fathers are so important to their children's mental health, too, but somehow this gets swept under the carpet.'
Fry is adamant that her own decision to work part-time during her daughters' early years was the right decision. What mystifies her is the stigma that comes with it.
'Part-time employment works so well for women and men with small children. It works well for children and for employers. So why is it such a fight? The only answer is bedrock prejudice. It's an uneconomic and irrational attachment to stereotypical roles.'
There are other mysteries, too. Why do so few young female professionals know the basic facts about fertility? Why do so many assume that they can 'fall back on IVF' after about 40? Many women do have children after 40 (and I am one of them). But it's not something you can plan on: fertility goes into a steep decline at that age, and the success rates for assisted conception at that age can be as low as 3 to 5 per cent per cycle of treatment.
These statistics have been out there for quite some time. But whenever they make it into the press, the whole world gasps. It's the same with breaking stories about fallen high-flyers - each new casualty provokes almost universal surprise. 'It's gone round so many times,' says Suzanne Franks, author of Having None of It: Women, Men and the Future of Work.
'Why is this news to anyone? Anybody I know who's done the mummy track thing has been marginalised. I can count on my fingers the number of women who have been able to carry on working fulltime without something going horribly wrong.
'The only ones who have pulled through are the ones whose husbands have done more than their share but they are rare, because this is rubbing up against all the same stereotypes. Things are changing so much more slowly than our generation anticipated.'
Young women and men who want to navigate their own way should be warned, she says. 'They should plan accordingly. Or they could complain about all those pitfalls that are lying in wait for them, ready to make their lives hell. If there were a unified push for workplace change, it would begin to happen, and everyone would benefit.
'Every time I've written on this subject, someone I interview makes this point. Almost without fail, it falls off the end of the page. Even when it doesn't, no one ever remembers it.
'As one young friend of mine complained, "It's just too awful, I don't want to think of it. Why can't we talk about something nicer?"
'Well, just this one last time, all right? And then I'll stop.'
