Parenting On The Frontline: When The War Correspondent Became A Mother
Frances Harrison
For the first eight months, I hid my pregnancy from my bosses, terrified it would spell the end of my career as a foreign correspondent. I simply didn’t know any other women in the field with children. I flew to London for job interviews wearing loose-fitting clothes to hide my burgeoning bump. Being based in Malaysia for the BBC at the time made it a lot easier to keep secret from my employers, though I had to be careful about inhaling too much teargas in the weekly opposition street protests. Only when I was offered a role as a roving reporter in Europe did I come clean, since by then I was no longer legally allowed to fly.
The reaction from colleagues was a little disturbing. One male journalist admitted he’d always assumed I couldn’t have children because I’d left it so late (34 years). Female colleagues muttered in corridors, asking how I was going to manage such a demanding job and a child.
I had indeed delayed getting pregnant because it seemed impossible to combine with foreign reporting, but a rebellious streak in me felt missing out on having children was too high a price to pay for an exciting career, and not fair on my husband.
Two months after giving birth, I was posted as the BBC correspondent to Sri Lanka, which was in the midst of a vicious civil war. I’d seen my fair share of horror, poverty and bearded men with guns, but this time I found myself packing milk bottles and washable nappies as well as a flak jacket, helmet and first aid kit. It was the start of a double life as foreign correspondent and mother.
We arrived in Sri Lanka in 2000, just after the BBC’s local reporter in Jaffna had been killed in a grenade attack on his home in a government-controlled town. It is a murder that remains unsolved, like many others in Sri Lanka over the decades. One of my first tasks was to work out what to do about his widow, still numb with shock, and her three young children. My baby grew into a toddler while my colleague’s terrified family waited to escape abroad to start all over again on icy shores.
