There Is No Such Thing as a Working Mother. Lorraine Candy on Why That Framing Has to Change

The foundations nobody gives you credit for.

Lorraine Candy has been the editor of, among others, Sunday Times Style and Elle Magazine, raised four children and swum across Lake Geneva as part of a 6-person relay. But it is the work nobody sees that she considers her most important. Here, in her own words, she makes the case for a complete rethink of how we talk about motherhood, work and what it actually takes to do both.

Maintaining a marriage, nurturing female friendships and consistent mothering are often the unseen parts of a successful career. For me, this is where the grit, the discipline and the unglamorous parts of a big job actually happen, and in my opinion, they are under-recognised as the heart and soul powering us into getting things done at work.

My early career was in newsrooms of daily newspapers. I started on The Cornish Times at sixteen and left my home county to come to London as a trainee journalist at seventeen. From local papers I went on to the nationals: The Sun, The Mirror and The Times. I worked in male-dominated environments as I shaped my young identity, and being forthright and able to make my voice heard was vital. I crafted a strong work persona that was helpful to me. But at home and with good friends I was able to show my soft side, the one that had doubts and fears and worries about failing like everyone else.

Without my friendship group and my partner, I would not have had the ability to be that strong at work. So, I knew I had to work hard at making good friends and being there for them, no matter how busy or tired I was. I applied a lot of effort to my marriage and made sure I was there for my partner and his large family when I was needed. Women often do this but do not value it because it does not seem as glamorous or as status-building as a big job. This out-of-work foundation building is where the grit is.

I still have two of my four children living at home, so I am not quite at the empty nest stage, but it does loom. I am slowing everything down to let ideas of what comes next percolate. I put the word rest in my diary when I know a week is going to be busy. I make sure my Friday mornings are free to see a friend I meet every week and exercise with. I make sure I have regular weekends with my cold water swimming women planned in too.

“At home and with good friends I was able to show my soft side, the one that had doubts and fears and worries about failing, like everyone else.”

Before, when I had a full-time job and four children at home, I let fate decide my free time and rest, which in retrospect no doubt contributed to a full-on perimenopausal breakdown at fourty-eight. I felt comfortable doing four things at once for most of my career. When I was editing a glossy magazine, I also had a weekly newspaper column and was writing a book. When I took up swimming, I chose the huge challenge of swimming across Lake Geneva's seventy kilometres in a relay, which involved six in the morning training sessions.

People often tell me I am lucky to have such sustained and long-term friendships. But I have them because I have worked really hard to keep them. You do not win awards for being there for friends and family, but my mates and my family have been worth so much more to me than any work recognition.

The all-or-nothing approach [of my youth] was fun and I had adventures, but in those days, I had excessive amounts of energy which I recognise I do not have now. I have learnt a lot from Trish [Halpin] about how to keep boundaries around work and home life, so everyone is happy.

I have never been a people pleaser or an illogical apologiser. Working with domineering men and a few exceptionally talented women at the beginning of my career, I saw that women often apologised more for things that were not their fault. It was not fair, so I decided that unless I had definitively got something wrong or made a mistake, I would not be apologising for no reason. It is advice I give every young woman I mentor: stop apologising for things you have not done, or for wanting your voice to be heard.

I recognised early on that not everyone will like you and you statistically cannot please everyone. That is mad maths and a waste of energy.

There is no such thing as a working mother. All mothers work, but none are paid for the work they do in the home. We need to view this work as both mothers and fathers work. I have worked hard not to separate my career from my motherhood because it is more helpful to talk about it for other women, especially younger women coming through.

I believe there is a more spiritual and creative part of parenting that we have ignored as Gen X parents. We know from science that children are intuitive and creative and use their instinct more than we give them credit for, but we do not always encourage that. We have an education system that discourages the more thoughtful side of children's personalities, which will be extremely valuable as AI becomes part of their future. The relentless academic testing of our children and teens feels old-fashioned. I think we have applied too much academic pressure for too long, and it is playing havoc with their mental health.

Read Lorraine's parenting Substack The Candy Club