Jennifer Horgan: Returning from maternity leave challenging enough without a wayward teen to mind

Holly Cairns's first week back from maternity leave must have been a shock to the system, but it's important we see the reality for women, writes Jennifer Horgan

The Eoin Hayes controversy did serve another unintended purpose as it had us all thinking about Holly Cairns's maternity leave.

Holly Cairns must be confused about what stage of parenting she’s at. Within one morning she went from nappies and wipes, night feeds and spit-ups, straight into the fractious melodrama of parenting a wayward teen.

That’s certainly how she sounded on Morning Ireland on Tuesday, referring to Eoin Hayes’ Blackface fiasco as “hugely disappointing”. “He should have known better,” she offered, sounding as mortified as any parent apologising for their child’s behaviour in front of the school principal.

Behaviour that was racially discriminatory, a fact Cairns was at pains to repeat. That said, and although he was a few years past being a teen in 2009, no one can blame Cairns for wanting to move on swiftly. 

An online post by Dr Mamobo, founder and CEO of GORM, the award-winning social enterprise, got the incident about right. She said: “Blackface has a violent history rooted in mockery and exclusion,” before adding that the current rise in anti-immigrant hatred deserves far more attention than Eoin Hayes.

The controversy did serve another unintended purpose, however. It had us all thinking about Holly Cairns's maternity leave. God, I felt her pain during that interview, imagining the absolute headache of dealing with such nonsense on an already difficult morning.

Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns said Eoin Hayes's (pictured) Blackface fiasco was 'hugely disappointing'. File picture: Stephen Collins/Collins Photos

I understood, at a cellular level, how tough it was for her to leave her baby at the crack of dawn, straight into a public grilling at RTÉ. Few of us will have had quite that experience, but we can all relate to the more general challenges of her day.

I took to a toilet cubicle for a cry my first morning back, feeling like I’d left a limb behind, but also elated to have a light handbag for the first time in months, and nobody waiting for me on the other side, drooling fresh and endless demands.

I felt changed, derailed, uncertain how to slot back into the role I held before my world flipped joyfully and chaotically upside down and inside out. I didn’t of course – go back to how I was before, I mean. 

I became far better at my job, knowing how to distinguish between the important and the urgent. More efficient because I had to be, and capable of multitasking at speed. Motherhood trains you in not sweating the small stuff. Nothing matches the wail of your distressed newborn; work deadlines and career demands soften by comparison.

This is how it will be for Holly Cairns too, once her adult colleagues manage to go longer than six months without hurling themselves, literally face first, into controversy. 

Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns (centre), with party colleagues Jen Cummings (left), Cian O'Callaghan (second left), Jennifer Whitmore (second right) and Padriag Rice (right) during a think-in at The Irish Architectural Archive in Dublin on Tuesday. Cairns too will become more efficient after her maternity leave once her adult colleagues manage to go longer than six months without hurling themselves, literally face first, into controversy. Photo: Liam McBurney/PA

But I hope she doesn’t stop talking about her other reality, largely because I worry that too many of us do.

Cairns has started back strong by sharing a picture of her daughter online, joking about sneaking her into the office. The baby certainly seems up for it, her tiny fist clutching her mother’s shirt with a might unimaginable. 

It is an entirely different image to those shared by Elon Musk and JFK in the Oval Office. That tiny fist clutch wants more than a visit to see daddy’s desk. It wants a full-time parent.

I remember that tiny fist well, the guilt lining it, and I’m grateful to Holly Cairns for the reminder. Just as I was grateful to Jacinda Ardern who said, “One day it will be normal," returning to her job as New Zealand’s Prime Minister after the “fastest six weeks” of her life.

Talking about it, showing it, being honest about the struggle – all of that keeps parenting visible. The next hurdle is for all of us to stop using the highly irritating and undermining ‘superwoman’ analogy about women. The “I don’t know how she does it” rubbish.

Holly Cairns – I’m sorry for your Tuesday morning. Someday soon the teenage antics in your party will die down and you’ll get to focus all your work energy on work, and your parenting energy on your baby girl. Photo: Liam McBurney/PA

The answer is, neither does she! It’s impossible to have a full-time job with serious responsibilities and a calm, ordered homelife with small children. It’s not something to which any sane person should aspire. Unless you have considerable wealth, it’s make-believe.

But it’s also understandable to pretend it’s manageable. The pressure is real. How can one woman be expected to puncture the myth? I don’t know, and yet I wish more of us would try.

Visibility is key. Honesty is key. The more the working, adult world is forced to acknowledge our home lives, the better.

On Tuesday evening, I sat down with the Charlie Sheen documentary on Netflix. Having sympathised with Cairns and her return from maternity leave, a huge part of my focus fell on his ex, Denise Richards. 

No, she’s not just the gorgeous blonde with the bouncy hair in that episode of Friends, she’s also the person who reared Sheen’s two baby girls, then took on his two young sons from another relationship. Richards is refreshingly forthright about the integral role she played during his drug taking, bringing food to his door, keeping him alive. Well done her.

Coping in silence

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I’ve been bingeing the Nordic dramedy, Pernille. It follows the daily happenings of a middle-aged woman who, yes, you guessed it, spends her days looking after people.

She feeds her cats and chickens. She looks after her father, cheerleading him through a delayed sexual awakening. She looks after her children. She looks after her sister’s child. 

As a social worker, she looks after other people’s children too. Pop-up text messages on screen add a whole other itch of chaos and overwhelm. It’s a brilliant and exhausting watch. But it also makes me want to scream.

She never says to any of her adult dependents, her daughter, her ex-husband, her father, that they are demanding too much. I’m only on episode four. There better be an explosion in the post.

Women need to stop putting up in silence, pretending it’s reasonable.  

So how do we help each other? 

We share how many loads of washing we did whilst also managing our paid job. Or how many appointments we scrambled to make with a child or a parent in tow, while tapping away on our laptops to meet a deadline. At home yes, but also at work with colleagues.

It won’t get easier for any of us if we continue like our lives are reasonable. Only relentless, public, and personal honesty about our struggles, our limits, our capacity, our double-jobbing, will change reality. 

Women who stretch themselves beyond their limits only pile pressure on everyone else. We must work on reasonable boundary setting together.

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So, repeat after me: working mothers are not superwomen. They are human. No, they do not have access to mutant power sources. They are exhausted. They spend a lot of their time feeling overwhelmed.

Holly Cairns – I’m sorry for your Tuesday morning. Someday soon the teenage antics in your party will die down and you’ll get to focus all your work energy on work, and your parenting energy on your baby girl.

But please keep the baby pictures coming. Please keep talking about your day-to-day reality. Please keep pushing for change when it comes to full access to quality childcare. Be a leader of women. Help us break the silence.