Yes, Lily, you CAN have it all. I did — and why not?
Ido hope Lily Allen’s two daughters, now 12 and ten, aren’t feeling too guilty about their mother’s assertion that they ‘totally ruined’ her shot at pop-stardom. The singer, 38, declared this week that, although she loves them and they ‘complete her’, the fact she chose to prioritise them instead of her work meant her career suffered.
Let’s just think for a moment about that word ‘chose’. Yes, Lily, you made a choice to become a full-time(ish) mother and ease back from the demands of being an actress and singer after establishing a very successful career.
Now you’re telling the world that women ‘can’t have it all’. How utterly sexist! To say as much surely neglects the fact that there are, more often than not, two parents to take care of a child.
It may have been Lily who took on the stay-at-home role in her relationship, but it doesn’t always have to be down to the mother.
My husband david and I made the decision to move to the country in 1993 when we had our sons, Ed and Charlie. In our case we left London for Macclesfield in Cheshire so our boys could attend a firstclass northern grammar school in Manchester and have the kind of rigorous education we had both enjoyed in similar schools.
I remember with absolute clarity the day david approached the discussion about who should be our children’s primary carer. He had left the Navy and was helping to run a business for some friends in London; I was the presenter of Woman’s Hour on Radio 4.
‘How would you feel,’ he asked, ‘about me becoming a full-time father? I think it’s important that children should have a parent at home, especially as they begin to grow up. It’s obvious you’re not going to be the one to give up work, so how about I do it?’
I agreed. I loved my work. He had not been so keen on what he was doing. As my job was based in London I rented a cheap basement flat in Camden Town, which I dubbed Wuthering depths – anything for a laugh as I learned to cope with being distant from the family I loved.
on Sunday evenings I would be taken to the station in Macclesfield around 7pm, having offered whatever help I could for the English, French and history homework. david was in charge of maths and science. I would kiss them all goodbye and head for London’s Euston.
By Thursday afternoon it was time to catch the train again and go home. Some of my evenings in London were sad and lonely and I missed the family. other nights were spent at the theatre or having dinner with friends. during the day I was utterly preoccupied with the work I loved.
I could, on the whole, not have been happier. My boys were waiting for me at the station when I arrived around four o’clock on Thursday afternoon. For three days I devoted myself to parentteacher meetings, having their friends round, enjoying time at home and then, on Sunday evening, off I would go again. It never ceased to surprise me that
so many people seemed shocked at my lifestyle. Would they have asked how tough it was to be the breadwinner rather than the primary carer if I’d been a man? of course they wouldn’t.
Would anyone have looked disapproving about me spending so much time away from my children if I’d been their father? No-one would have said a word. It’s not at all unusual for a man to travel a long distance from home and spend nothing but the weekend with the children.
Nor was it all plain sailing for david. He was as satisfied with his lifestyle as the boys’ primary
carer as I was with my role as the breadwinner, but it was clear from the frequent rather odd looks, that lots of people found it strange that a man would choose to be a full-time father. Even my own dad would ask me from time to time when I thought david might get a job. He was puzzled when I explained he couldn’t because he had to look after his grandsons.
I do wish young women like Lily would stop behaving as if they were living in the early 20th rather than the 21st century. don’t they realise how insulting it is to those of us who worked so hard to give them the right to have work, independent
means and a family? My mother left her job in the Civil Service when she had me. She would have loved to have had it all, but even when I was an independent teenager and she longed to earn her own money, she would say: ‘No I can’t. People will think daddy can’t afford to keep us.’
Lily’s mother may have struggled when Lily’s father, actor Keith Allen, left when Lily was only four. Like all single mothers she wouldn’t have felt it was a case of ‘having it all’ but ‘having to do it all’.
Lily has had two husbands. She lives in New York with her children and her new husband, Stranger Things actor david Harbour, whom she married in 2020. Surely, between them, they could share the childcare to enable her to sing and act? No need to blame the kids for ruining her career.
As for this frequently absent mother, I can only thank my husband and my two now grown-up sons for never making me feel I was letting them down. They often praised me for programmes they’d heard on the radio. They were proud of the work I did and the reputation I had. Now, as grown men, they’re successful, supportive and love both their parents. Yes, I ‘had it all’ — and why not?