A selfish parent? I gave my darling son everything!
Last week, the son of PR guru Lynne Franks — who inspired AbFab — said baby boomers like her made terrible mums. Here’s her incendiary response ...
Josh even had my help to get on the property ladder My mum was often working, but I didn’t resent that
BACK in the Seventies, when I was juggling a thriving business with early motherhood, there was nothing I cherished more than a cuddle with my sleepy babies in the middle of the night. No matter how long my day, if either of them woke crying I would bring them, freshly changed and fed, into our bed. There, I would drink in their delicious baby scent and we would all drift off together. Bliss!
Yes, running the country’s leading fashion PR agency meant not being home in time to cook my children’s supper, but that didn’t mean I loved them any less fiercely. Nor did I think for one moment that my daily absences necessarily made me a ‘bad parent’.
But it appears I was horribly wrong. For when I opened the Mail last week, I had quite a shock: there was an article by my son, Joshua Howie, now 40, declaring me an ‘absolutely awful’ mother who was ‘too selfish to raise children’.
Perhaps what hurt the most was not knowing it was coming. If my son did it to promote his career as a stand-up comedian, you’d think he’d have asked me — a PR guru — for advice.
You might think, considering I’m the supposed inspiration for the character of Edina in the very funny and successful Absolutely Fabulous, I would be used to comedians using aspects of my larger-than-life existence to comedic effect. But this time I felt the joke was on me.
Like many comics, Josh often makes fun of his mother — and his grandmother — on stage. But I’m afraid this article showed him getting confused between reality and his material.
After all, life couldn’t have been that bad for him, as he never wanted to leave home. After university, he lived with me in my then singlemother flat in Maida Vale and was only persuaded to leave in his late 20s, when I was selling up. Even then, he and his girlfriend moved in with my mother for several years. Among the many charges levelled against me in Josh’s article is the ‘fact’ that I was on the phone to the office ‘within 20 minutes’ of his birth — and didn’t get off again until he was 16. It’s a good gag but, seriously, how would he know?
As for his claim that he was raised by ‘more than 20 nannies’, that figure is wildly exaggerated. Moreover, finding a nice young girl to feed and dress our children while we were out earning to support our family was the norm in those days.
And herein lies the truth that my son neglects to acknowledge: he was raised in a very different era. To damn a whole generation of baby boomer parents as selfish and career-focused is to misunderstand the time totally. It’s easy for modern parents to commend themselves for focusing on their children, but they have the benefit of supportive husbands, wifi and flexible working hours.
None of this was readily available to my generation. Nor was maternity leave as widely encouraged as it is now. And as the head of my own business, I had it worse than most: I felt I had no choice but to take less than two weeks off after the birth of each child.
As a stand-up comedian, Josh works nights, which enables him to do the school run and be involved in the dayto-day goings-on of his children. It’s not the most lucrative profession, but luckily his hard-working mother underwrites his mortgage, so he already owns his own home.
Of course, Josh isn’t alone in having had some help to get on the property ladder — most middle-class youngsters of his generation have too.
But this wasn’t a perk I enjoyed. Instead of paying for my wedding, my parents generously gave me £1,000 towards my first home — and I paid my own way after that.
I don’t wish to play the martyr (I loved my job), but my main aim in working such cripplingly long hours was to give my family the best life I possibly could. And that meant a good education, comfortable home, horizon-expanding holidays.
Not the trappings of wealth, but the comfort, security and access to interesting people and places it brings. I wanted my children to grow up happy, healthy and well-rounded: a ‘good career’ was not the be all and end all.
Far be it from me to criticise my son, whom I love dearly, but many baby boomers who read his article didn’t hold back. Understandably, they took offence at the suggestion that our generation made terrible parents, who neglected their children while scaling the dizzy heights of glamorous careers and filling their ‘gold-plated’ pension pots.
I’m not trying to claim that the baby boomers were always models of parental perfection. I certainly wasn’t, and I still harbour huge amounts of guilt about the things I missed out on when my children were young. Many of my generation feel the same — as, indeed, do working mothers today.
None of us gets everything right. We just try our best, and back then it was a case of trial and error. There weren’t many parenting manuals or the ‘super nannies’ whom modern parents call on when things get tricky.
In fact, many baby boomers would be appalled by the somewhat smug parents of today. My son said he prided himself on being a ‘Golden Parent, taking the top spot on the winners’ podium of parenting’, and confessed that ‘every moment … of my day is consumed by my children’s needs’.
That’s all very laudable, and having children believe they are the centre of the world can be positive, building selfesteem and boundless confidence.
But what happens when they grow up and discover life isn’t really like that? That they aren’t a precious snowflake but one of many youngsters trying to forge their way in the world? They may get a nasty shock.
And though today’s parents may choose not to use nannies, what about the iPad and other screens that do the job instead?
Josh and his wife Monique are good at keeping their children active, reading books nightly or playing board games, but they also use the screens to occupy the children when needed.
For my part, I would never claim to be the best parent in the world. I was busy and distracted, but I loved Josh and his sister hugely and tried to bring them up to be well-rounded people in their own right, equipped with the tools to manoeuvre through life’s challenges.
If I had believed my career was the only thing that mattered — as Josh suggested in his article — I wouldn’t have had a family in the first place. I both wanted and loved — I still love — my children very much.
I come from a long line of working mothers. My mother ran the family butcher shop because Dad was sick; my grandmother started a milliner’s shop, aged 18, and went on to run a hotel. And my great-grandmother’s husband died young, so she did all kinds of jobs to keep a roof over her children’s heads.
I grew up accustomed to the idea of a mother as care-giver and breadwinner. Mum was often busy working, but I accepted that and didn’t resent her for it. I was in awe of how well she kept everything together, and incredibly grateful to her for the sacrifices she made for us.
In fact, by following suit, I have hoped my children would think the same of me. Working mothers in the Seventies and Eighties were pioneers and paved the way for the generation of working women who have come after us, fighting on issues of sexism and equality so today’s ‘golden parents’ wouldn’t have to.
This includes my daughter, a businesswoman, who has brilliantly juggled her successful career with raising two beautiful girls.
Despite leaving school at 16, I was always hugely ambitious and started my business at 21, marrying designer Paul Howie shortly afterwards. I was 28 when Josh was born and Jessica followed two years later. There was no question of giving up work, because it was my salary that paid the bills.
I would leave home at breakfast time and was rarely back before bedtime — and with no mobile phones, I couldn’t even check in to find out how the children were.
As Josh pointed out, I never got home in time to cook dinner (my loss); but I ensured that we sat down every Sunday as a family to my roast lunch
with deliciously crispy potatoes — still such a favourite of Josh’s that we had them together only last week. Clearly this working mother isn’t a domestic goddess, but neither is she a terrible cook.
It’s interesting, too, that my son’s father gets next to no mention in his article.
I think it’s wonderful that so many fathers of Josh’s generation see it just as much their job to look after their small children as it is their wives. But men just weren’t like that when Josh was a boy.
In addition to stretching myself to pay the mortgage and make sure there was food in the fridge (my husband had his career ups and downs), as the children’s mother it was me who was their primary carer, responsible for making their packed lunches and buying school uniforms. I was responsible for their well-being — and I thought I did a damn good job.
And there were upsides to the career that Josh so resents. When possible, I would take my children to various fun fashion events, and they would even walk the catwalk as mini-models, particularly at my friend and client Katharine Hamnett’s shows.
And as for Josh’s claim that I packed him off to a hellish boarding school, the truth of the matter is that I reluctantly agreed to him attending weekly boarding school in the London suburbs, as his teachers said it would better prepare him for his O-levels. He wasn’t packed off to the country for months on end.
And outside of school, I was keen to ensure my children mixed with creative, entrepreneurial people from all backgrounds.
It wasn’t all airhead actresses and models, as Josh claimed. Many of our friends came from my Buddhist practice, which I started as a way of counteracting the craziness of work. We had Buddhist meetings in our home throughout Josh’s childhood: it brought a sense of community to family life.
A favourite memory of mine was when my Buddhist group decided to put on our version of Aladdin for our local community in West London. Paul wrote most of it, Jessica played the Princess, Josh was one of Aladdin’s funny pals and I was the Empress of Maida Vale.
The scenery collapsed, we all forgot our lines and the audience was convulsed with laughter.
Our family holidays, too, were special. Paul and I made a point of going away every Easter, summer and Christmas with the children.
They travelled all over the world before they were in their teens, including visiting their many cousins and grandparents in Australia. From the pyramids of Egypt to the beaches of Hawaii, from Thailand temples to Californian road trips, we enjoyed exotic family holidays.
My relationship with my children inevitably changed when I split with their father when they were in their teens. By then I had sold my business and we travelled across California and Israel together.
And the spoils of the career I spent so long building bought us our holiday home in Deia, Majorca, which I purchased in the early Nineties with the proceeds of the sale of my business.
It was in Deia, incidentally, that Josh met his lovely wife Monique, who was nannying in the town. (Perhaps, as a man who claimed he was raised by nannies, it was inevitable he’d fall in love with one.)
I’m proud to say my children are exceptional parents to six gorgeous children between them. My grandchildren are truly the love of my life.
Not that I’m a traditional grandmother — I am still working hard delivering workshops, retreats and books supporting women’s empowerment and leadership — but quality time spent with them is always such a pleasure.
My new home in Somerset was chosen with my grandchildren very much in mind. They have their own bedrooms, I’ve had a great tree house built for them, they have a trampoline, football goals, swings — it is a veritable paradise for Josh’s energetic young sons, who enjoyed it so much when staying here last week with their parents.
Indeed, their recent jolly visit only exacerbated my shock at opening the Mail and seeing that my son had labelled me a terrible mother.
If I had my time again, would I change things? Certainly. I would take advantage of working from home as much as possible and relying on my partner to share the load.
But I’d still go to work. I’m simply not cut out to be a stay-at-home mum. No generation gets it completely right, but we do the best we can.
We can only learn as we go along — and not be surprised when our children choose to take a different approach. So, my darling Josh, watch out!