I also think the very concept of ‘having it all’ is a terribly unhelpful one. What does that even mean? It’s an impossible ideal that keeps us all in a state of unhappiness as we’re constantly yearning for something ‘better’. Also, I think that starting from a position where one thinks of career and children as mutually exclusive concepts is a limiting one. From what I’ve seen of friends who are parents, parenthood is a game-changer. Your whole approach to life changes – I’ve certainly known both male and female friends with kids become remarkably more focussed and efficient after procreating, something that would only help my work!

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I was thinking of the overall consumerist focus of society, and how we’re all constantly being pressured or persuaded to spend on things that we don’t necessarily need. (You know, like BUY ALL THE THINGS in wedding-land, but it’s everywhere else too, really.) And how once you commit to a certain way of living, that then pressures you to earn a certain amount to maintain it. And then when you’re spending all this time and effort earning this living, you then need to spend on time-savers or leisure. And oh look! You need to earn more to pay for that, and so on and so forth. I don’t think we personally are very caught in this cycle (or at least I hope not!), because we’re aware of it and thoughtful about how we lead our lives. But I’m pretty sure ‘society at large’ is caught up in a lot of that, which to an extent drives a lot of people’s current need to earn.

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I have been getting all kinds of chatty and opinionated up in other people’s internet space about issues around working parenthood and balancing career and children. Not because I have any big news of my own to share yet (don’t get excited, chickens, we’re still working on it), but clearly it’s something that resonates for me, and by the looks of comment threads everywhere, also for a lot of us, whether we are currently knocked up or not.

Now, I enjoy an uninformed exchange of opinions as much as the next bloke down the pub, but I really like getting my thinking processes on an issue properly greased by reading a well-researched, thought-provoking tome on the matters at hand first. Hence, my invitation to all of you to join me in reading, thinking about, and then hopefully vigourously discussing the whole Pandora’s box of topics that I suspect Half a Wife may throw open for us about working parenthood. I have the book in my possession, though I have not yet started reading it, but this article (which I really hope you read before the Guardian took it down), coupled with all the interesting good sense that Gaby Hinsliff usually speaks on these and other related matters over at her blog, make me almost certain that it will not prove a waste of your time, whatever your views, and wherever you happen to currently be on the reproductive spectrum.

So, a show of hands from all who are up for some engaging discussion on this most thorny of issues in a couple months’ time, please! I am pretty sure that this is guaranteed be a good one.

P.S. If Amazon US is being a dick, Amazon UK might ship it to you. Otherwise, I’m reliably told that the Guardian Bookshop is shipping it overseas, and speedily. No excuses, ladies. None.