I’m no “smug married”. Why marriage and kids can be a liability in a rocky economic climate

It was a little light relief to finally watch the 3rd instalment of Bridget Jones’s Diary – the one where she stays thin, except for a startling prosthetic bump, has had a baffling amount of plastic surgery, needs a good haircut and has a baby. Much like members of my family, you realise quite how much you’ve missed them, but only because you don’t have to spend much time in each others’ company.

And given the state of play in my own relationship- two kids, both with challenges, a near divorce, including seeing other people, several job upheavals and some years on the bake-your-own-bread-line (a particularly middle class type of abject poverty), I’ve never been particularly smug about it.

Yet the perception that married life or a family is the pinnacle of achievement for women is one I’ve fought against- and yet it persists. Only yesterday I read an article in the Guardian in which women who’ve taken full advantages of the career opportunities afforded by childlessness find themselves approaching menopause and panicking. I would argue that raising children is no more a picnic than a successful career. Having both, however, still feels like wish fulfilment.

Today marks both my daughter’s tenth birthday, and ten years since the fall of Lehmans, and a decade since Tom was booted out of a job that promised financial security amid a financial world that was rapidly collapsing. In that time, I’ve clawed my way up from a well-qualified-for-anything-but stay-at-home-mother to an overqualified copywriter, and feel frustrated not to feel more job security going in my 3rd pregnancy (though first real maternity leave).

I’m also fully aware that I will continue to carry the can of childcare duties, the impact of which has already sorely marked my career trajectory into somewhat unfulfilling, if thankfully flexible and manageable work. The banking world hasn’t changed so much that Tom can realistically share my mat leave (he earns more than me, partly by virtue of being 8 years older, male and fortunate to be in the right place at the right time to get a hoof on the financial jobs ladder, although to be fair, I’ve made gains considering wage stagnation in the city means he’s barely clawed his way back to where he was a decade ago. But I guess we can’t complain. Between us, with sound financial planning and day to day frugality, we probably just about scrape into the 1%.

Do I feel like I’ve got everything sorted? Not in the slightest. Like many others, we’ve struggled back on our feet, but one of the consequences of the noughties’ loose monetary policy is 4.8 million fewer babies than predicted in the USA alone. In a world of rising tides and climate change, perhaps that is no bad thing, and I should count my blessings to be one of the lucky ones to have a family I’m proud of.

And I am proud. Ava at ten is calm, considerate, clever and cute. Jonah is still Jonah- but with the added bonus of a sense of perspective, cool logic, growing wit and genuine talent, now his emotions are better held in check. How we will cope with the next ten years, who knows? The world continues rocky, the next crisis always lurching round the corner. But I hope we are better placed to weather it together, wherever we end up physically. In the end, it is Tom who gives me stability for all our relationship has weathered some storms, and I guess I can feel smug about that.