Too Much to Ask?
Elizabeth Wirth
January 1, 2003
[discuss]
I Don't Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother, Allison Pearson (Knopf, 2002), 352 pp.
In case you're wondering, we haven't figured it out yet. Deep down, we all believe someone is doing it—someone has come up with the magic formula for balancing home, work, and family. But if you want to stir up trouble, ask a working mother whether she is satisfied with the amount of time she spends with her children, or question a stay-at-home mother about what exactly she does all day. Sure, we're managing. But truth be told, we're still trying to figure out how to balance increasingly harried lives, and wondering whether we're making the right choices.
Allison Pearson's novel I Don't Know How She Does It has been a runaway hit in her native England, probably because it hilariously personifies every working mother's worst fears in the manic, sad, and sympathetic character of Kate Reddy. The working mom's answer to Bridget Jones, Kate is a British hedge-fund manager and mother of two whose life perches continuously on the edge of disaster. Working 80 hours a week, Kate tries to stay connected to her children and husband while taking last-minute business trips, holding late-night meetings, and scheduling conference calls. At the same time she is trying to keep up with the "Muffia"—the stay-at-home moms in her community. The battle with the Muffia supplies much of the novel's humor—the opening scene has her bashing in a store-bought cake for her daughter's school function so that it will look homemade.
When not mining the vein of I-laugh-to-keep-from-crying gallows humor, Kate settles for, well, just crying. She cries into the hamper when she misses her children's bedtime. She slowly loses touch with her husband, ...
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