Friday’s thoughts: On Daisy Lowe and the notion of studying later in life, when you have babies....

I posted some days ago about going to London. On the way back home, I was browsing the newspaper London´s  Evening Standard and I came across this interview with a young model, DaisyLowe, where she states that she´ll go back to education when she has kids.

You know that I am a recent mum... I am also a post-grad student... This means that I have to balance motherhood with my research and studies. Which is quite hard both emotionally and physically. And I am not even mentioning the current landscape were motherhood is discouraged in the work space (I wrote a bit about it here)....  And Daisy Lowe seems to think that will be easy to balance both, studying and having kids. I don´t know whether to think that she is a super woman or simply away from reality - I am afraid that it may be the latter. 
 
It’s not easy, far from it really; at least for me (again I will only mention my personal difficulties).  Moreover if you want to do both properly. 

In one hand, I do prefer to think that Daisy Lowe is contemplating this because she is empowered enough to think that is possible to balance both, and that being a mother does not mean that both professionally and academically your life is over. This is great really! To feel that you will be provided enough support, institutionally or more, so that both motherhood and your academically pursuits can co-exist. And again, I learned quite recently that mothers are more productive at work than their childless peers (read about it here). So this is not far from reality. 
But this is not the whole picture. 

She is also sending a message that it is alright not to study now. That you can do it once you have kids! It’s a message that states, well, once you have a baby, on your spare time you can study. But let’s face it, there’s no time to spare when you have a baby at home. There’s always something that you have to do, either get him to sleep, cleaning some spat, changing a diaper, feeding, and so on. And when there are no baby related chores left to do, there are the regular house chores that increase exponentially when your baby is in the equation! And that is without considering the exhaustion you feel afterwards. And then there’s your work, your studies to do. 

So, if you are given a choice you should study when you are young, and when you are kids free, more available. That’s when you can concentrate, dedicate yourself and focus properly on your studies. If you decide not to study and follow a modelling career that’s great to, it’s your choice, and your life. I certainly was not a modelling material, so that definitely was not a choice for me! But don´t go spreading the idea that you can study easily later in life, in your “kids free spare time”. Don’t misunderstand me; I am not claiming that it’s impossible to do so, as I am doing it! And so are hundreds of other mothers too, that not only are studying but also working. So of course it’s manageable. 

But far from easy, and most certainly really draining, both physically and emotionally.  Emotionally because I am constantly either missing my baby when away or plunged by guilt feelings. I feel that I am not being a proper mum, away from my little one! I am always thinking that I am missing important milestones, when at work. And this time that I am missing I will never get it back. Physically, because it is exhausting, there’s almost no time to rest, your free time is virtually non-existent. 

To be a mother and to keep on study is not a decision to be taken lightly. It requires strength, commitment and a lot of support (thank you so much, my other half!).  And unfortunately the institutional support is still far from perfect. There is much to be done in order to help mothers to continue their academic endeavours. I will write about my experience and thoughts on this some other time... 

But back to Daisy Lowe, as I said I would prefer to think that she was feeling empowered enough to consider this, or that it was even a career choice, going on modelling.  But no, and this was quite disappointing... What really made her decide not to pursue her studies now was....

.... to sleep in during the mornings... 

Oh Daisy, well, you certainly won’t have this once you have a family (more about this here)...! 

I am linking up with this amazing blogger: