Ageism – Why your age matters as a working mother but you’re still setting an example to your girls

by EK Wills

How old are you?

This question is about as invasive as who you voted for or how much you paid for your house. But everyone appears to need to know this because it helps to put people in neat little niches to categorise them: middle aged female with teenage daughters versus young mother versus professional spinster or old hag.

None of it should matter but it does. When you’re young, you want to be more mature. When you’re getting to the magical 30 years old, it is a milestone that people want to attain. It means you’re finally allowed to have an opinion that can be considered informed and, if you’re really lucky, you’re parents might listen, too.

As you progress, people exclaim at how good you look for your age and it’s flattering. But there comes a point when it’s actually not a subject you want to discuss.

As you near another end of a decade and you’re still a trainee then it’s more about that look of incredulity that you are still training (even if it is re-training) and that you would attempt to do such a thing.

A colleague recently made a point that she thought I tend to be sensitive to criticism when it’s not there but then she added that it must be hard to have to go back and be junior when you are older and have life experience in other areas. And it is. It is also a choice. But it is also a necessity now that career changes happen on average of 3 times in a lifetime.

Then you get the defiant attitudes that berate you for not wanting to talk about your age, like you should wear it on your sleeve and be proud. Reality is that there is not equality yet and older females don’t get regarded as sages but older men generally do.

Or there are the gender pigeon-holes related to work such as women are the nurses and the men are the doctors. It still happens that junior male nursing staff are deferred to as the doctors even if a senior female doctor is present. And this happens in other professions like information technology, law and many more.

There will always be attitudes that are less than politically correct like the GP that told me if he was on the selection panel that he would not have supported my application to medical school because it costs so much to train a doctor and there needs to be enough years of service given back for the privilege. What he doesn’t factor in are the number of people who quit when there are too many hurdles to overcome or when it is so unbearable because of the lack of support.

When talking to my 15 year old daughter about her career aspirations and the auditions that she needs to do in order to pursue them, we discussed how “you have to give it a go because otherwise you will never know”. Regardless of what others think or whether you stumble, the point is to get back up and not give up.

She wisely relayed the storyline in a book about a boy who gave up by taking his life and saw the flash of what his life was going to become if he hadn’t given up and would have been fulfilling. The point was that you never know what is going to happen.

So it is important to keep going and to attempt the things that seem unattainable. To show our daughters that it is possible to stand up and say I can do it and so can you. To have a go and to get up and keep going when you have just broken down and sobbed again after an unknown number of times. Because it does get easier even if we get older at the same time.

How much do you want to ask me how old I am right now?