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Supermum, role model or a mite misguided? The headteacher who returned to work SEVEN HOURS after giving birth

By Jenny Johnston
Last updated at 10:41 AM on 19th February 2010

What sort of woman goes back to work seven hours after having a baby?
The sort of woman, it seems, who also gets up at 4.30am because she enjoys it. Most working mothers will be familiar with pre-dawn starts on the days when there are important meetings to be prepared for, Rice Krispies to be hurled into bowls and washing machines to be loaded.
Then it emerges that Dr Helen Wright's is a different sort of early start. The mother of three and headteacher of one of Britain's highest-achieving private schools gets up at this time EVERY DAY - to check her emails and have a 'head-clearing walk in the garden'.

Business as usual: Dr Helen Wright is back at work with newborn baby Jessica

Astonishingly, she was doing this sort of thing long before she became a mother. 'I've always been an early riser,' she tells me. 'When I was at school, I remember getting up at that sort of time, probably to work on my Girl Guide badges.'
Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that Dr Wright should hit the headlines for doing something remarkable.
The last time, it was for becoming the youngest public school head in Britain, something she achieved at the age of just 30.
This week she was in the news again when it emerged that she had been back at work just hours after walking out of the delivery suite with her latest baby.
She 'popped back' ostensibly to show off baby Jessica to colleagues, ended up talking to parents and answering a few queries and - in a matter of hours - was back running the show, with her baby in tow, telling the world that it was a great thing for her pupils to see that motherhood and work could be combined from the earliest stages.

 

The reaction to Dr Wright's refusal to take maternity leave has been interesting, to say the least.
Some - like many parents from her school, St Mary's Calne in Wiltshire (who pay £9,000 a term for her sort of leadership) - immediately applauded her gung-ho attitude.
Others, perhaps remembering how they couldn't walk or hold a tea-cup seven hours post-partum, were at first incredulous, then incandescent.
I'd wager that one angry Mumsnet poster spoke for many when she concluded that Dr Wright's actions were 'absolute lunacy. Not the slightest bit impressive and a crap message to give to the students. Silly cow'.
So, what to make of the unstoppable Dr Wright? This is a woman who is described on her own school website as 'our very own Superwoman'.
The first shock is that she looks nothing like your stereotypical careerist. Hell, she doesn't even arrive for our meeting in a London hotel with a briefcase. Instead, she looks like a cross between an Enid Blyton governess (coral jacket, sensible shoes, hair in bun) and a National Childbirth Trust leader.
Little Jessica - cuteness personified - is with her and clamped to her breast for much of our interview. It's fair to say Dr Wright is a little taken aback by the kerfuffle her return to work has caused, not least because for her this isn't anything new.

'No one made me choose whether to work or be with my baby and I don't think other women should be made to choose either'

The thing is that I haven't had any formal maternity leave,' she says. 'I haven't needed any. With all three children I have been back at work pretty much immediately because - and this is what seems to have passed a lot of people by - I'm lucky enough to be able to take my children with me.
'If the governors at my school had said "you can either work, or be with your baby", there would have been no debate there. I would have chosen my baby because having a baby is the most remarkable and fulfilling thing a woman can do, and there is no way I would miss those first few weeks.
'But the crucial thing is that no one made me choose, and I don't think other women should be made to choose either.'
Why does she think other women have had such extreme reactions to her decision?
'Now, that is the fascinating thing. I've come to realise that I have had a choice that many women haven't had, or feel they haven't had. I think a lot of the anger directed towards me is anger at their own situations.
'What's surprised me is how much some women - most women, it seems - divide their lives into work and family. They almost seem to see work as something to escape from. I have never ever felt like that, and I'd be horrified if any of my girls go on to feel that.
'Work is my life, my family too. Everything is entwined. I know I am incredibly lucky, but I also know - and I teach my girls this - that in this world we make our own luck too.
'I can sit here and say: "Aren't I lucky to have these employers." But if I didn't have these employers, I may not have stayed around in the job long enough to have Jessica and for all this to be an issue.'

Role model: Dr Wright in her office with Jessica and pupils Emily Cecil, 18, (right) and Sophie Porter, 18. She wants to show girls they can work and have a family if they want to

Whether by luck or design, most would agree that Dr Wright lives in a rarefied world indeed. 
She presides over St Mary's Calne, one the best independent girls' schools in the country. One hundred per cent of her pupils go on to university and the school itself - all wood-panelling, airy spaces and lavish grounds in the Wiltshire countryside - oozes expectation, affluence and tradition.
She and her family have their own apartment in the school and pupils and staff regularly pop in for tea, while her own children attend chapel in the morning with staff and pupils.
In that regard, it was only natural for her to want to show Jessica off, as soon as she was born.
'And remember I had a wonderful, calm birth,' she points out. 'I felt fine. It was a case of sitting on the bed waiting for that moment where I could be released from hospital, because they are required by law to keep you there for three hours.'
No such law applies to returning to work - at least not when you live in your place of work, she says, although there is much debate on that one too.
'Yes, well there are laws to prevent women going back too soon, but they were introduced to stop women feeling pressured into returning. Since I live where I work, it didn't apply.'
If it's weird that she was back at her desk within hours, it is weirder still that she has managed to continue to work on her own terms - daughter strapped to her chest - ever since.

Supermum: Dr Wright doesn't see why she can't work and be an attentive mother

She says that she has a nanny 'standing by' for those times when she can't have Jessica, but: 'To be honest, everything is pretty much doable.'
'Obviously she's my third, so I've got better at doing things efficiently, but if she needs changing I just do it, discreetly. I breastfeed her. No one objects. Indeed, they love it.
'One of my teachers had to come and see me about something and she specifically asked if she could come while I was feeding Jessica, because she finds it incredibly relaxing.'
And for Jessica? Can it be good for a baby to be trailed around a workplace?
'I don't see that she is at any disadvantage. Rather, she's thriving on all the attention and the buzz. She's surrounded by people who adore to see her, which is great for everyone. It's great for the school that I am around, with that continuity.'
The biggest criticism of Dr Wright has been that she is setting the bar woefully high for other women - not least her own staff and pupils.
'I want to see a world where they have the choice. This is absolutely not about making anyone feel pressured, quite the opposite. Women should go back to work when they feel ready and when their situation allows it, whether that be after one day or one year.'
Would she support her own staff if they too wanted to follow her lead and bring their babies to work?
'I would. I never thought about doing anything formally - this was only ever about my situation and my family - but the more it goes on, the more I do wonder if we should be doing something.'
She is an impressive and passionate speaker, with a genuine flair for leadership. She says often that it is her job to 'create young women who are going to get out there and change the world', and meets most arguments with a refusal to embrace cynicism.
'When I say that, back in the real world, the vast majority of women can't just plonk their babies down by the desk, she says 'Why not?', in the tone that she presumably uses with those girls who dare to suggest that they could never be Prime Minister or Chairman of the Football Association.
'I'm not unrealistic. I know there are areas where it is difficult. But what should I tell my girls - that they shouldn't strive for careers in law or finance or business because they aren't compatible with family life?
'Of course, I won't do that, because if they want something badly enough, they will make it happen.'
As she has. Dr Wright was born in Scotland, the daughter of a clergyman. She reckons now that her own mother taught her that work and children were perfectly compatible.
'It wasn't something that we ever discussed, at home or school, but it's probably significant that my mother did a PhD while bringing us up. There is a wonderful picture of her holding my brother in one hand and a book in the other.'

'I am a very imperfect mother, but I am old enough and experienced enough to know that you can never be perfect'

 

She decided in her early 30s that she wanted to have children AND be a leading head teacher, and was pregnant with her first child when she applied for St Mary's.
'I didn't say anything at the interview because it was very early - under 12 weeks - and because I didn't want it to be a factor, but when I was offered the job, I said: "Ah now, you may want to rethink that start date because I will actually be having a baby just after that."
But the chairman of the board of governors wouldn't hear of it. He said: "No, we want you to start and we will work around what you want to do next."
'I was a little surprised, yes. When I put the phone down I thought "how marvellous" and I don't think I've ever stopped thinking that.
'When I told the chairman I was expecting Jessica he said: "Splendid! I'm one of four. Now, don't think you have to stop at three." '
Blimey. With her first children - Harry and Caitlin, now four and six respectively - she was back to work within days, rather than hours.
It wasn't just 'progressive' school governors who made this possible, though. Her husband Brian, an IT specialist whom she had met at Oxford, was another rarity - one of those husbands happy to put his own career on hold so his wife could go back to work.
'The situation was that he was happier to step back than I was, and since we lived in the school, it made sense.
'He has since gone back to work and we've got a brilliant nanny, but the point is that I had support around me. I couldn't have done it on my own.'
But can any woman honestly multi-task like she says she can?
I ask if she is performing her job at 100 per cent. She thinks for a while and says, bravely perhaps: 'Possibly not, but I am present, I am performing, and there are always times in a job where you might not be completely up to speed, and that may not have anything to do with children. We are all human.'
When I ask if she considers herself a good mum, and whether she is hurt by those who think she clearly isn't, she smiles. 'I am a very imperfect mother, but I am old enough and experienced enough to know that you can never be perfect.
'No one likes to think people are saying bad things about them, but I put it down to people not understanding my situation, rather than abhorring what I am doing.'
Quite how you teach this to the next generation is impossible to tell, but Dr Wright is determined to do so. She says the vast majority of her pupils already know that they want to have families as well as super-soar-away careers, 'and it is my job to equip them for the fact that they may have to make this happen'.
Is she mad, or marvellous? A cossetted idealist, with no knowledge of the real world? Or a shining pioneer, whom all our daughters should follow?
The jury is still out on that one.