No sane man would want this new breed of Nigella for a wife

By LIZ JONES

Last updated at 00:07 03 February 2008

"Spending time in the kitchen is no longer frowned on by women with careers, it's coveted."

So said Sam Baker, the editor of Red magazine last week, heralding a brand-new breed of woman: the Nigella Generation.

According to a survey conducted to celebrate the magazine's tenth birthday, these days thirty-something women put home and family at the top of the agenda, with only one per cent saying that "work is the most important thing in their life."

The survey found that only five per cent would choose to work full-time after having children, that women who give up work to stay home are the happiest of all and that the woman whose lifestyle they most envy is Nigella Lawson, the domestic goddess herself.

When Red magazine was launched, it identified a generation of thirtysomethings it dubbed the "Middle Youth," women who never wanted to grow up and

settle down, who looked down on their mothers for wearing an apron and not even having a bank account, let alone a career.

Now, I admit I am a fully paid-up, indeed founder member, of the Middle Youth, someone who believed all the rubbish about how important it was to succeed at work, and earn lots of money; that having Prada handbags and Matthew Hilton furniture would keep me warm at night.

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And while I acknowledge that the life I eked out for myself is pointless, and hasn't made me deliriously happy, and that it is pretty sad to still be wearing low-rise combats, tiny T-shirts and listening to the Arctic Monkeys at an age when my mum was making stews and putting paper hats on jam, do we really want to buy into the idea that women should revert to pouring all their energy into raising children (who, if my nephews and nieces are anything to go by, will turn their noses up at something

you spent all day making from scratch) and opting out of the jobs market as soon as child number two comes along?

Where does this vision of domestic bliss leave men, I wonder? I don't often see things from a male viewpoint but I can only think that men, when faced with the prospect of being with a woman who wanted to get to the top, who paid half the mortgage, was able to talk about something other than the huge pile of

ironing they had just ploughed through, and gave him the opportunity of being the one to stay home and change the nappies, just might have given a huge sigh of relief to have the burden of responsibility shared for once.

Do thirty-something men have a choice in this new-found fervour for a ridiculously retro domestic set-up? I doubt it.

I have a very hard-working male friend whose wife decided to go part-time as soon as she became pregnant and had the cheek to say to him the other day: "Why am I the only mum out of my group of friends who still has to work?

"When are you going to be a man, and let me do my job, which is to raise our child?" (And before full-time mums write in to tell me how hard bringing up three small children under three actually is, much harder than sitting in an office, I don't care. You chose to have them.)

Women were suckered by feminism into wanting careers above all else. Now they all want to do an about-turn because, surprise surprise, they have discovered something men have known for years: that the workplace is monotonous and boring and hard.

And so along comes all this domestic nonsense, which women are grasping with both hands as a way to get off the treadmill.

We will forever moan about not being happy and we will endlessly rearrange the boardroom and the kitchen, trying to find something that doesn't really exist.

Do we really want to return to a world where men held our future in their hands? Are women "happiest of all" when they give up work to raise children?

I would never place my financial security in the hands of a husband. If I were a man, I would be very angry indeed if my driven, highly educated mate suddenly announced she was going to stay at home.

I am not saying the "have it all" culture didn't have its huge drawbacks but surely children whose mums make them the centre of the universe, and whose fathers are given no option other than to work until they drop dead from a heart attack, will grow up resentful and miserable and hopelessly maladjusted.