Just as in Sharon Horgan’s comedy Youth, getting older is less fun than promised

“When is a woman actually considered equally employable?” my friend asked as we attempted to set the world to rights one evening. “When you’re younger there’s the fear of what having children will do to your career. And when you’re perimenopausal there’s the fear of being perceived or dismissed as some hormonally unbalanced burden who is ‘just at that stage of life’,” she continued.Maternity leave, menopause leave, parental leave, shorter-working-year schemes. All great and important to have. But how many women availing of them feel they haven’t or won’t impact their career in some way?We had already discussed teenagers and the things we had naively sworn ours would definitely never do when we were busy in the toddler trenches. We’d discussed how women had definitely got the short end of the stick in the biology stakes, and how lucky men were to have never had to factor in bad periods to their outfit choice or long commute. (And while we’re at it: curse you, period product ads of old, for gaslighting us women for so many years into thinking rollerskating or parading around the place in all white at that riskiest time of the month was the norm.)And we’d discussed Youth, Sharon Horgan’s new comedy series, whose first two episodes we’d just seen. And agreed that no matter what way you look at it, even if that’s through laughter, which much of it was, getting older looks decidedly less craic than people had promised.READ MORE[ Youth: This might be the best art-imitates-life show Sharon Horgan has attemptedOpens in new window ]“Do you remember when the only thing you worried about was getting the kids to sleep through the night?” my friend said pensively, acknowledging our innocence in it all. “We thought everything would be easier once they slept.”But now, we concurred, it’s a very different type of night-time disruption. For every primary schoolchild who might finally be asleep, there’s a teenager in another room roaring excitedly through gaming headphones. And let’s not forget the one who figures 3am is optimum omelette cooking time. It’s the storm before the calm when they’ll all move out and we’ll be left crying in the empty bedrooms we were promised. Big heavy trying-to-catch-your-breath sobs caused by the overwhelming emotion of it all - and also, possibly, the pong of a football sock lain undiscovered under the bed since circa 2018.Except this is 2026, and they’ll probably never be able to afford to move out, so you can skip that last bit and just buy a scented candle instead. The storm may be here to stay.Still, it’s not just about what future housing issues might look like. Life, parenthood and all that entails looks a bit different from what we might have imagined in our own youth, my friend and I agreed. Which brings us back to back to my friend’s question at the beginning. And whether we as women feel we are always under a different kind of scrutiny.“Don’t be visible as a mother at work,” a colleague once advised me. I think it’s safe to say, as a parenting columnist, she may have called that one wrong. But I could see where she was coming from. And I thought of the advice I might give to my younger self, if I could, and would give now to my own daughter.[ Jen Hogan: You may be questioning the sort of company I keepOpens in new window ]Such as bearing in mind that your career may never recover from motherhood. That’s not to say don’t do it – my children are the best thing that ever happened to me – but know that the motherhood penalty is real. A recent study published in the British Journal of Sociology found “motherhood significantly increases downward mobility and limits access to professional occupations”. Meanwhile, a recent workplace report showed women make up two-thirds of low-paid jobs. Women are disproportionately represented in part-time work. Mothers are more likely to avail of unpaid parental leave, or take time away from the work altogether to rear their family, than fathers. And there is a consequence to the choices we make as we try to juggle our family’s needs. We, of course, as women are not allowed to think this, or say this out loud, because doing so clearly shows we must hate our children. Luckily for men, there is no expectation they clarify this. And thankfully there’s a fatherhood bonus. Phew. Just like the toddler parent who really can’t appreciate what raising teens is like, it’s hard to imagine how working life will be when the kids are a little older and years of career sacrifices have been made, and life and its asks look a little different. But whatever choices you make to suit your family, beware of the wolf in tradwife’s clothing, who ultimately cares little about women’s rights.