A few weeks before the UK’s lockdown began in March last year, I took my six-year-old daughter into London for the day. It was half term, six months after I had returned to work full time following a lengthy spell of reduced hours when my children were small. We sat in a coffee shop near Tower Bridge and talked about the cakes, the princes who died in the tower and why the water was grey.
She certainly looks happy in the pictures but I feared I wasn’t seeing her enough, that I was approaching her as I would an adult best friend for a rare catch-up. Six-year-olds don’t want monthly debriefs — they want to tell you about school every day and every night, in random asides as they brush their teeth or fall asleep. That day brought home to me that full-time work wasn’t working for me as a parent. I feared I had made a massive mistake.
But then lockdown happened, I was at home full time and, suddenly, full-time work with children did make sense — so much so that the prospect of a return to the office fills me with dread.
I have never really bought into the idea that…
