Mum Guilt, by Aimee Hunt
‘So, who has the baby?’ was rarely intended as a loaded question I’m sure. In some cases, it was born of genuine curiosity, and in others just an attempt at idle chit-chat. I’d be glib in response trying to mask my growing indignation, with a throwaway crack at humour. ‘Oh, she’s out back peeling potatoes’ was a well-rehearsed favourite for a time, before I moved onto a more theatrical ‘SHIT! The baby!’ That one sometimes missed the mark. After a particularly brutal shift I remember asking my husband, who also worked full time, just how many times he’d been asked “So, who has the baby?” I was hardly surprised by the answer; once.
My daughter, now five and thankfully in full-time education (thirty glorious hours of free childcare a week!) was ten weeks old when I went back to work opening my first restaurant. Having finally clawed some sense of normality back into our lives, I opened a second site when she turned four. Both were acts of passion, as much as they were of necessity. I’ve been incredibly lucky in the support network surrounding us, and my daughter has, I think, emerged from these first few years more well-rounded for it. She grew up in kitchens, visiting cheese suppliers, butchers & farms, or being babysat by bartenders while I inevitably finished an hour or two late. She could crack an egg better than most adults by the age of two and use a Mexican elbow by four. As a result, she strolls confidently into most restaurants like she owns the joint and makes a mean Margarita ;) And yet, the “Mum Guilt” is real, and I never felt it more acutely than I did in the early years. Sleep deprived and probably still ravaged by hormones, I blundered through the days trying to balance the needs of a teething baby with staff rotas and EHO records. More often than not, something had to give. Sometimes, it was the rota; other times, it was distracting the baby with yet more sodding Peppa the Pig while I *did* the rota.
And yet, whilst the industry presents obvious hurdles (unreliable pay & long hours) in other respects the gig is well-suited to parenthood. On a very practical level, it’s more flexible and welcoming than most corporate environments. Shift patterns allow greater freedom around a school-run or bedtime routine, and as a whole the industry probably has a more enlightened approach to flexitime or shared parental leave than many others. So why is it so few women see it as a viable career path across and beyond the child-rearing years?
The matter of women in professional kitchens has received much in the way of male wisdom over the years, particularly over the last year. Whilst Heston Blumenthal’s comments were perhaps more well-meaning and, by and large, his record on hiring female chefs isn’t one to cause concern. It’s also lazy to assume that the problem lies solely with men in this industry. I’ve received more comments from women, including fellow mothers, fellow hospitality workers, and customers than I have their male counterparts. Only a handful could have been considered critical in nature. The overriding tone of most exchanges was curiosity, tinged with concern. Because, let face it: hospitality has a bad rap. It’s struggled to cast off the shackles of easy stereotyping, perpetuated by the likes of the Kitchen Confidential school of catering, and angry, pan-hurling celebrity chefs. But if you’re here, reading this, you’ll know as well as I do that hospitality and womanhood are not incompatible beasts, and they have no reason to be beyond an inability to move with the times.
As more women enter the fray, lift pans and address the flaws in the system, the more the dinosaurs of old-world hospitality lose their legitimacy and sense of entitled opinion. But more importantly, future generations of women, mothers or otherwise, will find the road to a Back of House career, paved a little more solidly with less compromise. After all, the world is changing, and the kitchens, bars and floors of our industry are changing with it. With this new decade let us collectively wave goodbye to the guilt of juggling an ‘unconventional’ career with raising children, cry ‘au-revoir!’ to crippling imposter syndrome, and flick an impassioned middle finger to apologising for wanting to have more than one job description- for refusing to accept ‘mother,’ and ‘chef’ as mutually exclusive spheres. Let the twenties be the decade where we balance the odds and balance the representation.
Aimee is the chef and proprietor of Lata Lata in Buckinghamshire. Born and bred to a foodie family in High Wycombe, she moved to London to study history at 18, continuing a sideline in bars and restaurants that had started as soon as she had her national insurance number. It was the noises, smells, and food of Brixton market that sealed the deal on her career, though, and by the time she graduated she knew her future lay in hospitality- its claws were in deep, and nothing matched her passion for feeding people, or beat the buzz of a manic service. On Aimee’s days off you can find her chilling out with her daughter, Daisy, or eyes deep in a cookbook with a sweet Manhattan (extra cherry, please 🙂). Follow Aimee on @aimeelouhunt and Lata Lata.