Postcards from the Edge

The joy of being a granny

Forget the difficulties of motherhood, says Mary Kenny – just rejoice in the prospects of grandmotherhood

‘Never have children – always have grandchildren,’ was one of Gore Vidal’s cynical, gnomic utterances.

Being a flamboyant, gay guy, Gore wasn’t faced with the choice. Yet the advice might be useful to the numbers of fretful women I hear agonising over whether to become mothers or not.

Motherhood is rather unpopular these days – the British fertility rate is at its lowest since 1938. The thirtyish and fortyish generation debate with themselves over whether the worry, trouble, expense and sacrifices involved in parenthood are worth it. And modern babies seem to demand such high-intensity focus!

It’s that word ‘choice’ that has so many ambitious women in their prime agonising about whether or not to propagate. Throughout most of human history, there wasn’t that much choice about it. I recall that jolly author Margaret Powell telling me, ‘Back in my day, if you got married, you were expected to have children.’ Or, as Princess Anne once put it, with her characteristic dry wit, ‘Motherhood is a professional hazard of being a wife.’

But now, behold the bewildering range of possibilities: marriage, civil unions, babies, no babies, IVF, baby by surrogacy, babies by donor sperm, single parenting by choice, childlessness by choice or even the traditional route of wedlock and then a sprog or two. What to do?

Here’s my Gore Vidal-ish advice. Don’t ask yourself if you want to be a mother. Ask yourself if you want to be a grandmother.

Grandchildren aren’t a guaranteed product of parenthood, but looking ahead does help you to take the long view.

To the 38-year-old career girl I heard saying, ‘I just can’t decide whether I want to be a mum,’ I just say, ‘Try to decide whether you want to be a grandma.’

Patricia Casey, a professor of psychiatry at University College Dublin, thinks Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are misleading young people with their emphasis on ‘mental-health issues’. Not getting along with – or feeling undermined by – your in-laws, or even suffering the loss of a parent in tragic circumstances, is not a mental-health issue, says Patricia Casey. ‘Mental-health issues are schizophrenia, bipolar illness, severe depression. Distress in reaction to sad events is normal.’

Harry has had therapy, but Professor Casey doesn’t think he’s much of an advertisement for it – or he’d recognise the difference between mental-health afflictions and normal distress. It’s evident that the Sussexes are a ‘highfunctioning couple’; people who have mental illness can’t function at all.

Describing reactions to difficult or sad life events as a ‘mental-health issue’ is detracting from serious mental illness, she says. ‘The focus has shifted too far away from real mental illness like schizophrenia or clinical depression, and too much towards ordinary negative feelings, which are normal.’ COVID and, indeed, climate change may make some people anxious and indeed fed up, but they are not a trigger for mental illness.

Professor Casey’s Fears, Phobias and Fantasies explains the difference between the worries, vexations and sadness of everyday life and genuine mental illness.

When Brexit occurred, Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt hoped to replace the City of London as Europe’s major international financial centre. But London bounced back and the City is said to be thriving – Shell’s decision to move to London, leaving the Netherlands, was considered significant. I daresay these decisions are related to London’s historic links with wider international finance.

But perhaps an added factor is that London has a social ‘buzz’, absent in Amsterdam and Frankfurt. A city’s ‘buzz’ is hard to define but it’s palpable, and London has it. Much as I appreciate my residency in Deal, by the Channel coast, I always find those words ‘This train is now departing for Charing Cross’ exciting.

When Simon Jenkins, author of the lavish Europe’s 100 Best Cathedrals, is asked to name his own favourite, he nominates Seville as the finest in Europe. Wells Cathedral wins the laurels in this country.

Seville Cathedral, which is also a palace, is certainly stunning. Yet the European cathedral that I have found most affecting is Beauvais (by Ryanair’s ‘Paris’ airport). It’s small for a cathedral and propped up with buttresses; it was here that so many men came to pray when serving in the First World War – and many came, afterwards, to mourn. It now has a special dedication to peace, and that affecting memory of the Great War lingers.

For basilicas, I’d pick the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, partly because every leftie, including George Orwell, wanted it destroyed during the Spanish Civil War, just as most of Catalonia’s other churches were. But even anticlerical Catalans knew that Antonio Gaudí was a great architect: his basilica survived and is now a World Heritage Site – as well as a place of worship.

Let the cathedral bells ring out for Christmas!