Mothers of invention

There''s so much conflict over motherhood that you might as well rechristen it the umbilical discord. It goes all the way back to Eve who wanted to raise Cain and apples at the same time, but was un-Abel. Ever since, women have been trying to juggle their paid job with their free one.
Don''t think that the problem will go away if mothers simply dropped their log-jammed Blackberrys, and stuck to the strawberry jam.Full-time motherhood isn''t inoculated against angst either. Take the most-in-the-news mother of recent months, Kokilaben. Like the early days of her husband''s company, she was content to be Only Ba; she never thought of diversifying into any other energy sector. But did it reduce her current shareholding in pain?
As she watches her boys downgrade their upbringing, does the Ambani matriarch regret her undiluted mom-equity? Should she have spent those early years mastering polyester filament instead of reeling out a bed-time yarn to her beloved betas? And if she''d pursued her own interests would she have felt more guilty now over the fraternal fission? Either way it''s a heartbreaking dil-emma.
Ok, let''s leave the complex web of billionaire business, and come down to you and me. In the 80s when my own kids were growing up, it was the age of the Supermom straddling home and job with a swagger. But no less than Kokilaben, Career-babe had her days of inner conflict, and nights of Calmpose. Conscience-stricken, we realised that it was easier to serve the Biblical opposites of God and Mammon than to simultaneously serve up corporate projects and carrot puree. Either you had to leave one or lumpy the other. Moreover, this business process demanded much controversial outsourcing of motherhood - to nannies with dicey accents and to preschool centres which you had to keep calling.
In the 90s, a tectonic shift took place in the ocean womb of gender politics, and we witnessed the rise of the tsumummy. Without realising what had hit them, boss and boyfriend both went under. One promised flexitime, the other proffered Farextime. Fair, no? If she was doing as much to earn the bread, why should she be the sole one slicing up the soggy sandwiches. Tsumummy flattered to achieve. She presented this unpalatable social reengineering in the seductive package of the New Man. He tied his pregnant wife''s shoelaces, painted the nursery, and changed nappies while she changed careers. Smart Mom enlisted her girlie gang and commercials to ensure that no guy would want to be seen as the Incomplete Man.
Now the next wave is upon us. Not the Incidental Mom as the obsessive career woman often ended up as; not the drive-to-work-together-push-the-pram-together of her successor. She''s a Double Mammy of quite another genre - the stay-at-home career mom. She participates firsthand in bringing up baby, but her professional ambitions haven''t become second-class. The even bigger coup is that even though she doesn''t go regularly to office she''s still got Papa fully engaged in parenting.
My aunts looked at me in shock; I look at these women in awe. The battle of all mothers is about to be won. Give them their day.
Alec Smart said: " Geopolitics - France misses the Airbus, America is Boeing strong."
Erratica and Juggling Act, compilations of best of Erratica and Jugular Vein, now available at leading bookstores.