WORK SHOULD BE CHILD'S PLAY

Jenny McCartney rejects the accepted

wisdom that mothers shouldn't bring their babies to the office

AN employer, an employee, and a baby. There are three of them in this marriage, and things are beginning to get a little crowded. Or so it would seem from the recent tales of jobs which have dissolved in a nasty stew of suggested abortions and unhappy recriminations.

First there was the macabre little vignette of the butler who was alleged to have sexually assaulted and humiliated his 97-year-old employer. He was spurred on in his wickedness, it is said, by a secret source of bitterness: his wife, the house- maid, had decided to have an abortion after their elderly employer made it clear she did not want any children in her home. Who, in this instance, could blame the employer? There are so many respectable people who refuse to tolerate their own children at home, gratefully packing them off to boarding school at the earliest opportunity, that it seems odd to chastise the old lady for not wanting someone else's.

But now employers are carrying their intolerance a step further, and it is a very dangerous step. Some don't want their employees to have babies at all, no mat- ter where they are kept. Splashed all over the Express last week was the story of Miss Sara Mitchell, a 'high-flying' career woman at Concord Couriers, who was sacked after she refused to have an abortion.

Her employer, the ill-named Mr Bliss, had written Miss Mitchell a letter, warning her that having the baby would ruin her `great future' in the company and beyond. His fears proved startlingly accurate: when Miss Mitchell persisted with her pregnancy, her great future was mysteriously marred by 'incompetence' and Mr Bliss gave her the sack.

Miss Mitchell was distraught and bemused. 'I absolutely adored my job. I was happy to work 15 hours a day, seven days a week,' she said. Precisely. And that is exact- ly why Mr Bliss fired her when he realised she was about to become a mother.

For how could Sara Mitchell, mother, ever hope to reproduce the heroic avail- ability which her boss previously found so delightful? Before her pregnancy, Miss Mitchell was sunnily toiling into the small hours and, if the Express pictures are any- thing to go by, looking very glamorous with it.

After, there would be a baby at home a bundle of need, demanding that she be home at a fixed time to relieve the child- minder; waking her with aggrieved squalling in the night; embellishing her designer jackets with a light spritz of milky vomit.

Would a baby affect the style in which she carried out her work? Undoubtedly. Would it affect the quality of her work? There is no reason to assume so.

Employers, sated by a glut of highly qualified applicants for jobs, have become increasingly demanding. Studies show that office workers are putting in ever longer hours. It is not to do with greater efficiency: often the longer they work, the more scatty they become. But the legions of Bob Cratchits, hunched over their desks, are sending out a reas- suring message: 'Work is the most impor- tant thing in our lives.'

When a woman has a baby, work becomes just one of the important things in life. But many employers regard a baby in the same light as a secret drink habit or a fondness for cocaine: all very well as long as it doesn't rear its ugly head in the office. This wintry acceptance is generally reserved for women. As one female friend recently protested: 'When a man has to bring a child into the office, there's lots of ooh-ing and aah-ing. He's seen as awfully busy but caring. When a woman does the same, she's chaotic and badly organised.'

I am not for a moment suggesting that offices become some kind of hippy com- mune, with toddlers tangled in computer cables. Children are nature's anarchists, and they should be encouraged to throw their Molotov cocktails as far away from adult work as possible. But could employ- `I'm flattered, naturally, but I'm afraid I'm bespoken for.'

ers not meet the occasional crisis with good grace?

Yet it doesn't matter how early a work- ing mother arrives at her desk, or how meagre her lunch breaks, there is still that frisson of shame as she skulks off on the dot of 5.30. It is often the slight frost of disapproval, rather than the difficulty of the work, that sends women tumbling into the pastures of part-time and freelance. There, they are out of the running for those chunky compa- ny promotions avidly pursued by single- minded men.

And what is wrong with the sharp whiff of male ambition? Nothing at all: the histo- ry of the world is one of single-minded people getting what they want. One might applaud their drive, if only some men didn't claim that motherhood makes women thick. How gleefully they seized upon the story that women's brains shrink during pregnancy, only to swell up again like some absurd chick-pea.

In reality, motherhood makes women better at work. If one is up at the crack of dawn, changing a nappy with one hand and getting dressed with the other, how simple it is to juggle a fax, phone-call and memo without panicking. The chick-pea brain is already flooded with adrenalin. Less time, more action.

There is only one other group which reacts to babies as badly as employers: jeal- ous elder siblings, whey-faced with fury, who can be glimpsed trying to pinch and smother babies at odd hours of the day. But at least elder siblings grow out of it. Take note, Mr Bliss.

The author writes for the Sunday Telegraph.