Actresses are always threatening to retire. Especially after they have kids. Last year - and not for the first time - new mums Angelina Jolie and Nicole Kidman both announced they wanted to quit acting. Before rushing off to make new movies.
In a press conference to promote the film 'Australia', Nicole had this to say about her plans: "In terms of my future as an actor, I don't know. I'm in a place in my life where I have had some great opportunities, but I may choose to have some more children... There are many things I want to do besides act."
A few months earlier, while promoting The Changeling, Angelina Jolie said the same thing. The mother of six - including newborn twins - told the BBC, "I don't plan to keep acting very long. I'm ready to do a few things now and fade away and get ready to be a grandma one day."
Now, it's possible this was just hormones talking. Nicole and Angelina wouldn't be the first women to make sweeping statements about their lives in those delirious months after a new baby arrives. For a year after my first son was born, I was fixated on the idea of quitting Cosmo and editing a baby magazine instead. After having my daughter, I recall texting my girlfriends to declare "What career? All I want to do is stay home and count little baby toes!" And after giving birth last year, for a while there I couldn't imagine ever opening my laptop again. Imagine that.
As real as this sentiment was each time, it eventually passed, and after a while I was ready to emerge from my baby bubble and rejoin the world.
If I'd been a celebrity giving a press conference during any of those periods, I would have announced my retirement, too. So maybe that explains Nicole and Angelina's threats to ditch Hollywood. But I can't help wondering if there's something else going on here. Another layer. One that has everything to do with our expectations of mothers.
Earlier this year, when the Jolie-Pitt twins were a few months old, photos were published of a dirty Angelina covered in fake blood on the set of her new action movie, Salt. Noticing the shots as I flicked through a magazine, I found myself thinking this: What on earth is she doing? She has two new babies and four other children at home! Not to mention Brad Pitt, who, presumably she can see naked on demand! Is she crackers? Why else would she be making another film? She doesn't need the money! She must be addicted to all the attention!
This is the point at which I threw a glass of cold water over myself and remembered not to be such a judgemental traitor. Maybe, just MAYBE, Angelina loves her job. Maybe she loves acting and making movies. Maybe it feeds a part of her that isn't sated by her children or her fame or even by Brad with no clothes on. Imagine that.
And maybe Nicole feels the same way. Do these actresses - and other women - feel pressure to renounce their careers as some kind of guilt-purging ritual? Is that what we demand from working mothers because hearing someone say, "I really love my job, even though it takes me away from my family and places extreme demands on me and occasionally them" is less palatable?
Slowly, women are getting better at being honest about what goes on behind the scenes of our lives. The juggle. The guilt. The part where we drop the balls. But why are some of us still so reluctant to put up our hands and say, "I love working"?
Yes, it's a privilege to be paid for something you enjoy doing, because most people aren't (although I find generation Y much better at demanding a high level of job satisfaction - props to them). I know this because I love writing. Not all the time. Not every word. But, generally, it feeds me in a way no other person or role can.
A few weeks ago, 60 Minutes featured a story about young domestic goddesses who have firmly rejected the idea of paid work. They resent feminism, they said, because it mandates the challenging combination of career and kids. But Germaine Greer firmly contradicted them. "I never said anything about a career," she insisted. "I said women needed to have A LIFE."
Her point, I think, is that if you're defined solely by your role as a mum, what happens when your kids grow up? If you're defined solely by your role as a wife, what happens if your husband leaves?
There's a huge amount of giving involved in motherhood and we need to refill our tanks in whatever form that takes, paid or not. Whether it's making a film, starting a blog, going for a run, or doing the grocery shopping alone late at night with your iPod blaring, like one mother I know. Brad will still be there naked when you get home. Oh, wait ...
Discuss this in the Baby forums.
