How hiring a nanny lef t me a decade behind as a parent, by Jenny Eclair
JENNY Eclair has told how hiring a nanny for her daughter left her ‘a decade behind’ in her development as a parent.
The comedienne said it also turned her into a ‘terribly hysterical, neurotic mother’ to Phoebe, now 26 and an Oxford University graduate and playwright.
She is the only child of Miss Eclair, 55, and artist Geoff Powell, 66, her partner of more than 30 years.
‘I think motherhood is an endlessly fascinating, awful thing,’ the Grumpy Old Women star said in a Radio Times interview.
‘And I think it’s really easy to get it more wrong than you ever imagined you could or, to be more precise, more wrong than you feel you have.
‘I left a lot of the rearing of Phoebe to her brilliant nanny, Vanessa. It worked very well, but there are consequences and you’re a fool if you don’t face up to those consequences.
‘For me, it means that I’m ten years behind with my mothering of my daughter because I basically didn’t do it until she was about 12.
‘And when I took over, I became a terribly hysterical, neurotic mother. Because I basically came in too late, I over-protected and smothered.’ The comedy star was 28 when her daughter was born in 1989 and just starting out on her career.
It was the same year she was named winner of Time Out’s Cabaret Award, five years before her first book was published and six until she won the top Perrier Award for stand-up comedians.
More than one nanny looked after Phoebe for a decade while she was growing up. During an interview in 1991, Miss Eclair mentioned nannies when asked how she spent her money. The reply was: ‘Bribing my nanny, Dominique, to stay with me. I would buy her a live-in masseur and a Jacuzzi if I could. I would be lost without her.
‘She has the energy to deal with Phoebe, a child so hyperactive that sometimes I’m convinced she is the child of Satan.’
Child development expert Penny Tassoni said: ‘ While parents may be very busy, it is common sense that they still need to spend enough time with their children. It’s always going t o be a partnership with home-based carers. It’s about tuning in to your child. It is about finding small amounts of time to get to know children and what they need, that is what creates emotional bonding. I suspect Jenny was also struggling with her daughter moving into the teenage stage, which requires a different and often trickier style of parenting.
‘Working parents, particularly mothers, do feel guilt at some time so it could partly be that.’
Norma Lewis, chairman of the Association of Nanny Agencies, said: ‘I think [Miss Eclair] has a crisis of confidence in herself that other people don’t necessarily have. Working mums can’t do both, you can’t have a career and also give it up to look after your child, so you need a nanny.
‘Some choose to do one and some the other but that doesn’t mean they will fall behind in parenting skills because they still have evenings, weekends, holidays to catch up.
‘Going by what she says, no fathers would have any skills. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that because they had a nanny they are behind on their parenting skills.’
Miss Eclair and her daughter enjoy a good relationship. This year, Miss Eclair-Powell called herself a ‘mini-me of my mother’, adding she was ‘proud’ of the star’s achievements.
‘I was a terribly neurotic mother’