I’m glad I let children ruin my career

This week Lily Allen announced what many women think but dare not speak: having kids ruins your career. Lily told the Radio Times podcast: “My children ruined my career. I love them and they complete me, but in terms of pop-stardom, they totally ruined it. I get really annoyed when people say you can have it all because, quite frankly, you can’t.”

Cue the Mummy Mafia coming out in droves saying how terrible it is to say your kids “ruined” your career. It infers blame, regret. But it shouldn’t.

I was born in the 1970s and became a teenager in the 90s. Our school careers guidance teachers preached to us girls that our lives would be different from our mothers’. Women could indeed have it all – the career, equal pay, a family, a partner. We would demand more than our mothers and grandmothers.

I became a journalist and worked on some of the top UK magazines, becoming an editor. I then went freelance and moved to Italy. I met my now husband and my son came in 2008 and my daughter in 2013. We moved back to the UK and set up home an hour outside London.

I was offered jobs back in offices in central London and stints consulting for exciting new publications. The salary was good each time. But every time I had to say the same thing: sorry, I can’t leave my kids.

My husband is a musician and often travels or is working late. How could I also do a 9-5 and a commute when I had two little ones? It was impossible, plus I wanted to be there for first teeth falling out, first Nativity play, first everything.

And so my answer – whatever the salary – was always “no”. It meant I saw other child-free people and some parents take those jobs and scale their career ladder. I remained a freelancer – a productive one with regular work, thank goodness – but my career stayed in second gear.

So, in short, having kids did ruin my career. I’d have earned more, banked more money and no doubt have a larger house if I’d said “yes” instead. But what would I have missed? Those first teeth, first school plays, first sports days. I wasn’t on a train or in an office. I was there for them all.

So Lily, you’re right. We can’t have it all. But I have had it “all” with my kids and that’s enough for me.