Don’t worry about girls’ or boys’ stuff. The children will figure it out | Gaby Hinsliff

Zadie Smith’s unease about the time her daughter spends on makeup is valid. But parents should relax about stereotypes

‘Life is too short to stuff a mushroom”. Four decades on, the author Shirley Conran’s maxim for working women still holds true. She wasn’t talking only about time management, or indeed cooking, but about the hidden cost of living up to other people’s expectations.

If you’re madly busy, stop thinking you have to spend hours in the kitchen every day; just getting dinner on the table will do. Time is finite. Hours spent trying and failing to match some ridiculous feminine ideal just means less of it for something else.

Related: Have you been paying the hair-and-makeup tax? You need Zadie Smith's 15-minute rule

The point is to add options to children’s lives, not subtract them

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from Children | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2xAVD3G