Do teenagers need full-time mums?

Now her daughters have reached secondary school age, Clare Jack explains why she felt compelled to give up her career to be at home with them

Have your say: Do children need their mothers more as they get older?

Do teenagers need full-time mums? One mother’s skepticism ‘I don’t know how you do it.” During the 13 years that I have spent building up my career as a public sector management consultant, that is the phrase I have heard applied most frequently to my insane daily juggling of work, children, home and husband. No one seemed to realise that I didn’t either.

Quality time: Clare with daughters Laura, left, and Isabel

Well, now I’ve decided not to do it any more - and I am not alone. I am the third middle-aged mum I have heard of this week who is giving up an exciting, satisfying, seriously big-salary job for the same reasons as myself, and I suspect there will be more of us forty something mums with demanding jobs coming to the conclusion that in a family, two big jobs + teenagers = impossible.

The key word here is teenagers and just how much parent time they need. Strangely, that’s the bit that has never been discussed in all the acres of articles I’ve read in the past 13 years about combining work and children.

Experts tell you that it’s consistent, loving care an infant needs - and, mercifully, that it doesn’t matter whether it’s from you - and talk you through the traumas (for you and your child) of starting primary school.

But having babies and working, or having primary school-aged children and pursuing your career, are both easy-peasy compared with what happens when your child walks through the gate of their secondary school.

Advertisement suddenly there’s homework almost every night, there are sports clubs and matches several times a week, there’s the friendship angst (I have two girls, so replace with geek angst if you have boys), there’s the puberty angst.

Out of nowhere they hate you and love you in equal, ear-splitting measure several times a week. Added to that are the exams - termly, it seems - during which you have to bear the pain of them learning what revision is for and ringing you up, at work, in tears, because they have just flunked maths.

That really makes you feel like a rubbish mummy.

Their needs are immense and ever-growing and you’re not there to help them through it. That’s a massive guilt trip. It generates a terrible angst in you; the fear is that you are not contributing to what they should, or could be, as they deserve.

How to survive the juggling act? We thought au pairs would do the trick: young women near to the girls’ ages who would relate to them. We liked them, the kids loved them, but the stress of seeing a Turkish au pair who was closer to the children’s age than mine try to help with English homework was painful. That’s what finally brought me to my decision.

Teenagers are hard, hard work even if they are pretty normal, apply themselves at school and are reasonably well balanced.

Now is when they need me, which they didn’t when they were tots. Anyone can look after small children; only parents can look after teenagers. They need the support, the confidence-building, the tear-drying, the taxi-service, the mine of useful information, the books you’ve read, the experiences you’ve had.

So I have decided to pack in the big job and become a full-time mum at 45, having worked since I left university at 21. My husband, a construction consultant, Laura, 13, and Isabel, 11, are delighted. I’m looking forward to it and am terrified at the same time; it’s not about loss of money or status, it’s about succeeding in a new career.

This isn’t about downsizing and moving out of the smoke to a country idyll either. We’ve always lived in the West Country. This is about having a normal domestic life for the first time in our history as a family - I wonder if we will cope.

www.telegraph.co.uk