I returned to work four months after having twins – and never felt guilty
A newspaper column trots out the tired assumption that mothers should feel bad about working. I’m not buying it
Last week you wrote about the popular trope of the hot but horrible man. Is there a similarly widespread but misleading stereotype for female characters that bleeds into real life?
Charlotte, by email
Very glad you asked, Charlotte, because there are many female stereotypes from pop culture that people either take far too literally or too much for granted: the up-for-it younger woman, the desperate single woman, the daffy mother, the embittered old crone (consider those your four ages of womanhood, ladies). But one in particular has for too long got a free pass: the guilty working mother.