I thought I had heard it all until I read about the feminist utopia being built in Clapham (geographically near to me, philosophically not). There is a nursery company there that will take all the pain and misery out of family life – the misery the feminists love to moan about.
The first and most obvious thing they will do is take care of the kids all day long. Children are irritating obstacles to gender equality so this is a must. But the paid for help does not end there.
No, the clever clogs at Bright Horizons have been listening to Woman’s Hour and the Chore Wars, they have been reading about the misery of home-cooked meals, so they have decided to simply give the people what they want.
This nursery is offering parents to do the laundry and provide home-cooked meals to take away, a business centre with conference-call facilities and a concierge to organise children’s parties and transport. It will cost you £80 a day– but sure it is worth it.
Now parents are liberated from doing all those little jobs that, if you ask me, make you a parent. Cook some lasagne for the family – do not be a crazy fool when you can pay another to do that. Clean the PE kit – do I look like a maid from Downton Abbey to you?
Make some cup-cakes and sort out a birthday party for the child you claim to love? I have an important conference call to make. Read a bedtime story – see previous mention of conference call to make. I am busy, don’t you see – I am busy with anything else other than my family.
So there you have it – life all tied up for a mere £80 a day. Sure what is not to like? The missed opportunity of cooking a meal with your child, the excuse to help them ‘write’ their party invites. How many times do I have to say it – I am on a conference call to a big group of very important people in a very important company. My family cannot compete with that.
Let’s not forget that the childcare subsidy available to any family pulling in £300,000 will help pay for this the great out-sourcing of life. We should call it a childcare/laundry/home-cooked meal allowance. Money well spent.
I doubt, however, that for the feminists this will be enough as they will whinge that they have to pick up the kids that another woman has cared for all day, collect the laundry that some other women has done that day, as well as – the final insult – carry the meal the nursery has cooked and put it on plates at ‘home’ for all to eat.
Goodness the exhaustion of it all. I need to sit down.
