In its semi-farcical way this story highlights the question of how separate the worlds of having a baby and playing music necessarily are. For some this is not a question but a given fact. If or when a musician starts a family, she (or, less often, he) must simply split off her energies and responsibilities into two areas and cope accordingly. The image conjured up is the water-skier whose overriding concern is to keep two legs in parallel . And most people's legs aren't equal - there's usually an intuitive, trained right and a wayward left. For a player established in a career, bringing up a child seems more like the left leg, having to adapt to the right's behaviour.

Not that music is much different in this respect than other career options. If anything there is more flexibility, at any rate as a freelance or private teacher. "Because your time is so precious with a family commitment, you can make much better-judged choices as to what sorts of playing you do", says Jill Samuel, who refers to time BC and AD (before the child and after the devil). "Paradoxically, you have more control over your time the less of it you have."

There is an obvious pressure to get a career well under way first, and therefore to worry about the elusive if not mythical optimum age to have a baby. But having become pregnant, a player often finds her work much less disrupted that she was expecting. One of the more successfully debunked anti-feminist prejudices has been the equation of pregnancy with a kind of illness, though stories still emerge of a fixer withdrawing work from women even in early pregnancy out of a sort of chivalrous repressiveness.

After the birth, babies can continue to be occasionally present in a mascot-like capacity on the fringes of rehearsals. Behind-the-scenes equipment may be less glamorous but still essential: Victoria Soames relied on electric breast-pumps and a chain of dependable deep-freezes in the early months of her two children's lives.

Not consciously out to break records, Helen Keen performed a day before going into labour (or went into labour a day after performing) and played a concert nine days after the birth. The audience on the second occasion was a group of elderly people and Helen brought the baby along. This illustrates the way educational or community-based performance is more likely to foster a holistic approach to music. The listener can view the artist in a less stylized aspect, and this opens up channels of communication which might otherwise remain blocked.

But these stories of babies in the thick of things are a distraction from the nuts-and-bolts problem of the musician-parent, which is how to distribute child-care over the longer term. The main variables are finance, a partner's work commitment and the extent of State pre-school provision. As freelance playing is the opposite of anything locally-based, establishing a firm network of cooperation with other families is just that bit more difficult. So what about work place creches? They are very much in the news today. It soon became clear however that for most orchestras introducing creche facilities would be impractical. "Just imagine the organisation, let alone the finance, required to run a mobile creche!" cried one fraught fixer.

As regards nurseries, there is a huge gap between the free but oversubscribed State sector and private set-ups which effectively charge public-school fees. Occasionally something in the nature of a parents' cooperative surfaces, but the more common solution is to hire the services of a nanny. The advantage here is that you can change routine when you want a change of priorities, so as to see your child more often.

So the juggling act is here to stay, though no-one expects otherwise. Yet there are signs that a positive recognition of parenthood is gaining ground in an establishment which has never been quick to pick up on changes in the roles and statuses conferred on the sexes. "Children should be seen not heard" is taking on a rather precise application in the music world right now. Where the voice of Victorian authority sounded only grudgingly accepting of the poor things' being around in the first place, today's musical establishment seems anxious to be seen to be progressive. And that's where another feminism comes in with the objection that encouraging motherhood is an age-old repressive strategy.

But at least the argument's up for grabs....

Nick Benda

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