I had to make a major decision with myself because I just don't think you can do both: try to have a baby career and raise it and have a baby baby and raise it. And to try to do justice to either one. It was a very conscious decision on my part not to have children - which I have never regretted.
Much of the ill-tempered railing against women that has characterized the popular writing of the last two years is a half-heartedattempt to find a way back to a more balanced relationship between our biological selves and the world we have built. So women are scolded both for being mothers and for not being mothers, for wanting to eat their cake and have it too, and for not wanting to eat their cake and have it too.
I did not see any way that I could possibly give birth to someone else and also give birth to myself. Far from feeling guilty, it was the first time that I had taken responsibility for my own life.
Are there days where I wish I was just at home with my kids? Yeah, most days. But then I look at our accomplishments, and I feel alive; I feel so proud of myself. So it's a very confusing thing to be a working parent.
Sometimes when you are a great mom, you're not so great at your job. And then when you're good at your job, you're not so great of a mom or a good wife. It's a dance that never stops. But it's beautiful.
There's an internal battle. I need to work, I need to work, I need to work and I need to be home with my kids and the kids win.
There's a repression against mothers where we're expected to be full-time workers and pretend we're not mothers, and then expected to be full-time mothers who pretend we're not working. Simultaneously, within the hours of the week that exist.
A lot of women in New Zealand feel like they have to make a choice between having babies and having a career or continuing their career. So is that a decision you feel you have to make or that you feel you've already made?
I just decided that I would not put my professional life on hold to raise children. I know that sounds selfish to a lot of people and I don't know if what I'm doing is the right thing. But that's the way I'm doing it.
I loved teaching, but every day that I went to work, I carried the worry that I was hurting my kids because I wasn't at home with them.
Working mums and stay-at-home mums get a tough time. You're damned if you do and damned if you son't. You just have to do what's right for you and not listen to what the mummy brigade say.
Every woman with a career has to make sacrifices when it comes to her children. It's no different with me, as a political activist, than with businesswomen, of which there are thankfully more and more in Russia. Or a female cabinet minister.
I have thought you could not give everything to your books and also to your children, so for a long time, I thought if I had a child or a family, I'd think, 'How would I support them?' because basically I would stop writing.
