As lovely as kids are, being a parent can also be a right pain. It makes me smile when people like Ranulph Fiennes are championed for their endurance, extreme adventures and sawing off their own fingers. And yet, I bet even Fiennes would cower at the thought of bringing up a baby.
There’s a book called How to Get a Job in Television by Elsa Sharp where she sums up what many of us already feel “…sometimes your ideals, families and friends can go out of the window in pursuit of a challenging career in television… TV is a young person’s game, someone with boundless energy and enthusiasm”. For us parents, energy and enthusiasm are often soaked up in nappies, childcare arrangements and problems at school.
It gets worse. There was a report from Skillset last year that revealed nearly 6,000 people left television in 2009; many leaving because of the impossibility of raising a family and working in production.