Superwoman?

I'm going to preface this post with a couple of comments:

- I like (what I know of her - I'm not a great fan of people saying 'I love' or 'I don't like' this or that particular celebrity that they have never met - how do you know????) Cate Blanchett - she seems fairly sensible, normal, unaffected - and of course, she is beautiful;

- this post is not intended to be by way of criticism - everyone needs to make their own choices, and as mothers I think we all need to be supportive of each other and the decisions we make (within reason obviously!); and

- I am very much aware that my views on this particular issue have been shaped very much by the professional environment in which I have become, and tried to be a good, mother - an environment in which a woman who has children is, in most cases and despite the rhetoric, at worst an inconvenience, a drain on resources, and 'no longer playing on the A team', and at best a marketing opportunity if she does manage to hold it all together.

But ... I'm going to say it! My comments above notwithstanding, I am uncomfortable with the 'superwoman' tag given to Cate Blanchett for attending the 2020 summit 6 days after giving birth to her third child (although, in my view one would have to be pretty super to manage it!) and I am uncomfortable about the message that it sends to women (and men).

What happened to the sanctity (for want of a better word) of childbirth, the mother/child bond, those days after birth - are we at the stage where the expectation is that women can just pop a child out and resume normal operations immediately thereafter? I know that was the expectation of my employer - although, granted it was not within 6 days!. What is to prevent the thought occurring that Cate Blanchett can do it, why can't everyone else?

I know that I couldn't have done it - 6 days after Action Man was born I could hardly walk, let alone sit down and pontificate on the future of the nation, and 6 days after Flipper was born I was so emotionally all over the place that I wasnt much use to anyone. I know it is all individual choice, and I admire Cate for what she has done, but I am worried about the message that the reference to her as 'superwoman', as a high profile woman and mother, is sending to the likes of me, and the other new (and new-ish) mums I know. There needs to be some sort of balance between the 'baby as a blip on the horizon aproach' and the 'baby as completely debilitating' approach - we have come a long way in moving away from the concept of pregnancy and childbirth as an 'illness' or that of being a mother rendering women incapable of anything else - but we need to be careful not to move so far the other way that we remove the specialness of it, and forget the care that needs to be taken by us as a society of our new mums and newborns.

That's my rant. Not well expressed I don't think, but I hope you get what I mean - and that I haven't offended anyone!