Miriam Gonzalez Durantez's husband made a media appearance last week at which he worked an attractive new twist on his usual look, a kind of tone-on-tone, deep lilac tie over a paler shirt. The subject, if memory serves, was the deficiencies of the press: you gather that it is still important for Nick Clegg to present himself as a career politician, as opposed to the consort of the successful corporate lawyer, who made a more prominent appearance last week, in the pages of Grazia magazine.
Politely, journalists indulged him. At least there were no reports of his being asked where the tie came from or how Ms Durantez juggles her busy professional life with duties as mother to their young family. Or, given the difficulties faced by an ambitious couple with small children, if it would not be sensible for the lower earner of the pair – Clegg – to give up work until they are older?
Instead, details of the Clegg household's domestic arrangements emerged, between dutiful allusions to her charity work for Oxfam, in the interview with Durantez. Although she evidently resents this line of inquiry, the lawyer disclosed that her husband "kills himself" to split the childcare equally, making early return trips from Westminster back to south-west London, to walk the older children to school. "We absolutely think it is right that our children come first," she said.
In this respect, although almost any statement from Miriam generates a reflexive, hark-at-her-indoors response from rightwing tormentors, who will not respect him until she is cleaning behind the fridge, 24/7, the couple's priorities appear to be identical to those of the Camerons. If the bottle-feeding, dishwashing dad were not, in many places, considered a terrifically good look, Mr Cameron would not have cultivated it from the very beginning, with those cute breakfast scenes on Webcameron, where his political nostrums would be interrupted – cue wry parent face – by cries of: "Daddy."
"I think you have to be quite strict with your diary, you have to carve out time for your family," he told the audience of This Morning, when in opposition. "I've always believed that it must be possible to be a good father and a good husband and to be a good party leader and a good prime minister at the same time."
To the admiration of his target mummies, Mr Cameron's family-first approach duly featured, along with his "let children be children" declaration against unsuitable pants, a Downing Street schedule organised, where possible, to fit round alpha male parenting. Like taking your dog to work, these special arrangements are not, generally speaking, available to junior staff; certainly they have not been replicated for the wider public. "I'm very lucky because David Cameron has young children," Clegg once acknowledged. "We agreed the other day we were going to slightly delay the start of the cabinet meeting to allow us both to take our children to school, which is a reflection – if any was needed – of the fact we are both of the same generation in this new politics."
This detail was also a reflection – if any was needed – of the men's belief that a measure of parental distraction will make them more, not less, popular, a theory likely to be tested to destruction when the gnome-like President Sarkozy starts wittering about the Gruffalo. Certainly, for Gordon Brown, the sight of the great bully, hand in hand with his little boys was the only time in his entire premiership that he inspired any public affection. Unlike the Blairs and Obamas, he had never, to his credit, previously flourished the children as symbols of newness, of his commitment to the future and as evidence of his connectedness with ordinary folk.
In fairness, some political parents do genuinely believe that raising children has made them better people. In his recent father's day address, Cameron cited the "brilliant" words of one Kent Nerburn: "It is much easier to become a father than to be one." As for Blair: "You can't be fully selfish in a family," is how he put it in A Journey, tactfully not spelling out the implications for less fertile people. "And just occasionally, you espy the essential strength that the family represents and realise it is a marvel of human achievement."
It remains a mystery, doesn't it, why this selfless marvel does not work on everyone? Unless it does. Maybe Syrians should be grateful, for instance, that family-guy Bashar al-Assad had kids. Maybe – as well as Prudence, Elisabeth, Lachlan, James, Grace and Chloe – Rupert Murdoch should have just had a few more?
Supposing Blair is correct, and parents do espy special, precious things that childless adults never can, it would still be reassuring to know that these are not outweighed by the associated burdens of exhaustion, continual interruption and prime ministerial anxiety about how to blag a first-class education without going private. A few years ago, in a paper called "Dream On", Demos researchers found, not very surprisingly, that the most sleep-deprived people "have young children and are holding down managerial jobs. When asked about the effects of lack of sleep, half of the managers said they were irritable and shouted and one in five said they were likely to make mistakes."
Anyone who has been in that state might well see, in Clegg's exhausted pallor, and Cameron's obvious lack of grip, the result of a generation that is having children older, and raising them when, as Nora Ephron has observed, this has been redesignated "parenting" and become a project requiring unending, child-centred sacrifice: "Parenting carried with it the implicit assumption that any time is quality time if the parent is in attendance."
That the hours Mrs Thatcher worked were insane, and may also have caused Mark Thatcher, does not, surely, mean her job must now be reformed in line with contemporary advice on school drop-offs, reading aloud, nutritious dinners, piano practice, homework, swimming, Gove's one book a week, play-dates, five a day, Kumon maths, regular exercise and the construction of a lifesize camel for the nativity play. Like being in the army, being the prime minister – or his deputy – just might not be the perfect job for an exemplary, hands-on dad. But unlike the army, the current job description all but specifies wife, kids, functioning reproductive organs.
If Clegg is "killing himself" to do the boys' school run, couldn't someone else be paid to take them? He now has two months off, after all, to prepare them for this trauma. As for David Cameron, hammer of absent fathers, all that well-publicised presenteeism in the family flat over the office can look less like an example to workers who can never hope to follow it than yet another expression of entitlement. Or, in the words of the brilliant Kent Nerburn: "We are all children of chance and none can say why some fields will blossom while others lay brown beneath the August sun." He's a treasure trove is Kent.
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