Andrea Leadsom wishes us to think that juggling her City7 career and bringing up kids makes her a role model. Okay her City career was not quite a high flying as her CV implies in terms of what she actually did and in that it was often part time but even were she to have been full time why should I admire her. I am sad to see that the wonderful Elaine Craig, normally about the only sane commentator on matters political from Scotland, also sees this as a plus point for Andrea.
Bringing up kids is always challenging and so being a good mother, as I am sure Andrea was, is something that earns our respect. But when you have shed loads of money the burdens of parenting can be that little bit easier.
I grew up in a single parent household where my father had neither (much) inherited wealth or a job in the City. Okay academia pays reasonably well and the hours are not exactly onerous. But to make ends meet my father moonlighted marking vast amounts of IB exam papers. I am clearly biased but in my view, my father is a hero far more than a bankster mother whose salary allows her to afford luxuries such as nannies, au peres and not to worry about how to pay the electricity bill at the end of the week.
And there are many parents, single or otherwise, who earn less than academics, who have to juggle even more than my father did. They are real heros. If someone like Andrea Leadsom asks me to view her as somehow more special because of how she had to juggle, I think of my father and conclude that the lady doth protest too much.
All mothers or prime carers are worthy of admiration in some way but bankster parents are in now way meriting of even more respect than we in the great unwashed.
In the case of Andrea, given her views on gays and on those without kids she probably looks down on single parents too, the God she talks to not being the most loving and tolerant of fellows.