Alison Pearson\'s I Don\'t Know

¶ … Alison Pearson's I Don't Know How She Does It

In her comic novel I Don't Know How She Does It, journalist Alison Pearson provides readers with the epitome of modern working motherhood in the form of the frantic Kate Reddy. Although the novel is set in England, Pearson's depiction of Reddy uses themes which are universal amongst women of a certain educational and economic level who are trying to balance marriage, mothering, and a career. Throughout the novel, Reddy confronts depictions of 'good' mothering in the form of her peers and media representations which she fights to reconcile with her own experiences as a working wife and mother.

Through first-person narration, Reddy describes herself as neither happy nor unhappy but existing in the "gray survival zone where I imagine most of us live most of the time" (Pearson 100). This survival zone is characterized by Reddy's sense that she is trying to do something for everyone and doing none of it well. "When I wasn't at work," Pearson writes, "I had to be a mother; when I wasn't being a mother, I owed it to work to be at work. Time off for myself felt like stealing" (100). Time, or the lack of it, is a primary problem for Reddy, who spends most of her days chaotically sprinting between home and office, two worlds which she cannot allow to intersect or overlap. Indeed, in a chapter titled "I Went Back to Soon," Pearson explores the not-so-subtle biases encountered by working mothers in the mostly-male dominated field of finance. Reddy recounts how her superiors told her they could not guarantee her job, post-pregnancy, despite the firm's family-friendly policies. Indeed, it is through these policies that Pearson illustrates the conflict that arises between the false front of fantasy (be it Reddy's or the investment bank she works for) and the oppressive weight of reality. Reddy states that her company's "family-friendly policy exists so they can say they have a policy, not so people with families can invoke it. No man would ever use it anyway, so neither can any woman who wants to be taken seriously"(271).

In a sense, it's difficult to identify with many of Reddy's concerns. Although she worries over the unequal balance of childcare duties between herself and her husband and yearns for the pre-children days when she used to relax at museums and restaurants, her perspective is one which is informed by her extreme privilege. At the high end of the economic spectrum, Reddy can waffle back and forth about whether she wishes to stay home with her children or not simply because she can afford to make that choice. Her ability to maintain a roof over her head and food in her children's stomachs does not depend on whether she has employment or not, and her childcare concerns are confined mainly to the difficulty one has in finding a good nanny. Although it may be unintentional, many of Pearson's best commentaries on motherhood are illustrated through Reddy's relationship with her nanny in that her casual dismissal of her nanny's history and individuality speaks to an inherent power imbalance rooted in class and gender bias. Reddy has the luxury of coming home from a hard day at work to find her children already fed and put to bed; her biggest concern is dealing with a "nanny huff" (81) that forces her to "navigate with extreme care around the events of the day" (81) by pretending to be interested in the ins-and-outs of nanny Paula's working day.