Headmistress tells girls: 'Be prepared to choose between your family and career.'

“I believe there is a glass ceiling – if we tell them there isn’t one, we are telling them a lie.”

The headmistress at a prestigious independent girls’ school has sparked controversy by telling girls they have to choose between motherhood and a career — and soon.

Vivienne Durham, head teacher at Francis Holland Regent’s Park in the United Kingdom, told Absolute Education magazine that we need to stop “lying” to girls by saying they can “have it all” when they grow up.

In the interview, Durham says that telling girls they should be aiming for both a successful career and a family is setting them up for failure.

“I’m sorry, I’m not a feminist. I believe there is a glass ceiling – if we tell them there isn’t one, we are telling them a lie,” she said.

“Young girls have massive options these days and some of them will make a decision that they don’t want to combine everything and that is as valid as making the decision that you do want to combine everything.”

Ms Durham, who was awarded Tatler’s Best Headteacher of a Public School last year, added that women have a “biological calendar” that defines their decisions — and that those decisions should be made as soon as possible.

“We all have a biological calendar and you have to make decisions about your entire working life, which probably goes up to about 77 now, but you have to make decisions about 40 per cent of your life early on,” she said.

“Women still have to plan for a biological fact – i.e. motherhood.”

Ms Durham, who is due to retire in January, added that she hopes things will change to allow women to have the choice to “combine everything”. But that didn’t stop many commentators from taking issue with her remarks, with some critics questioning why she was treating parenthood as a woman’s concern only.

“By warning only girls about career/family conflict, we aren’t including 50% of the solution,” Becky Wragg Sykes tweeted.

The controversial comments were discussed on the Today show’s Mixed Grill segment, where Sarrah Le Marquand and Lisa Wilkinson dismissed Ms Durham’s comments as unhelpful and “ridiculous.”

“I’m so glad I didn’t go to a school where Vivienne Durham was headmistress. Because what she’s doing is she’s completely closing these girls down from future opportunities,” Wilkinson said during the Monday episode.

“A headmistress that’s losing girls down like that shouldn’t be a headmistress at all.”

Le Marquand pointed out that it was hard to see what Ms Durham hoped her students would get out of the suggestion they should choose now between family and a career.

“Even if you think you decide, what then? Do you say, I’ll do homework because i’m not going to get married? What if you decide you only want to get married and get children — then you don’t do homework?” she asked.

“And how would we respond if boys were being taught this? What if your son was being taught at school, you have to decide now, do you want to be a father and a husband or do you want to have a job? You’d be furious…

“It’s just absolutely ridiculous.”

Francis Holland, the former school of Cara Delevingne, Jackie Collins and Jemima Khan, charges the equivalent of $28,000 in annual fees per student.

What do you think of Vivienne Durham’s advice to girls?