Super mums. Hmmm.
"We all have the same 24 hours in a day as Beyonce", as Molly-Mae famously declared.
The former Love Islander is someone I’m seeing rather a lot of recently, as the internet’s mysterious algorithms have clearly defined me as ‘millennial mum’ and keep serving up endless content about “Molly-Mae’s pram with an 1,000-strong waiting list” and “Molly-Mae’s advice for stretch marks”, plus 500-word long articles based on a single post on her Instagram stories. According to these websites, Molly-Mae is now the font of all knowledge on parenting, which is annoying not only because she is 23 and has had a baby for about two seconds, but also because it completely ignores the fact that parenting with vast wealth and resources is a thousand miles away from parenting in the real world.
Which brings me to my next celebrity case in point: Rihanna.
Straight after Rihanna’s Super Bowl halftime show last week, I saw quite a few mums on social media giving themselves a hard time. The general gist was “wow Rihanna not only has an eight month old baby at home, but she’s also found the time and energy to prepare this amazing show, AND she’s pregnant again! Why am I such a sloth of a mother in comparison?”
While I must give full credit to Rihanna for her amazing performance – I’m sure she reads this newsletter, so wouldn’t want to offend her – I find this endless lauding and celebration of celebrity mums kind of irritating. Because the main thing I think when I see them achieve these marvellous things is how wonderful it must be to have the flexible childcare, housekeepers and private chefs in place to enable it.
As I’ve written here before, I was fully convinced that I’d spend my maternity leave writing a novel and a tonne of brilliant freelance articles for prestigious publications while my baby napped. And then she didn’t! Instead I spent most of the year getting screamed at, and looking frantically at the ever-growing to do list of jobs around me that I simply couldn’t get the alone time to tick off. I felt half crazed at many points with the absolute lack of autonomy, which is normal, because babies (and toddlers) are really, really needy and that is a massive shock when you have lived your life up until that point pretty much pleasing yourself.
Pre-motherhood, I used to fantasize about having a private chauffeur and being able to afford to buy all my food in M&S. Now, it’s a housekeeper-slash-nanny that is my ultimate dream. One of the nursery parents was telling me this week about how they have an ‘after nursery’ nanny, who picks the kids up and feeds them, but also puts away the laundry and tidies. Imagine! I was almost drooling at the thought of it. Because it’s not just the childcare you need help with when you’re both working full time; it’s all the other stuff, like organising dinners and washing finger-paint-covered jumpers and making sure the daily carpet of fresh crumbs is swept up.
If you’ve got all this stuff sorted for you – like the Rihannas and Molly-Maes of this world, plus all those ex-Made in Chelsea women who keep popping out babies and setting themselves up as “relatable mums” on social media – then of course you have more time to go off and do impressive things. I often feel like what is missing from the whole “mumfluencer” world online is women who actually have 9-to-5 jobs and truly understand the juggle of work and childcare, but of course they don’t have time to be influencing because they’re too busy sprinting from the station to the nursery and back.
This has turned into a bit of a rant and I feel the need to add that I’m very lucky to have my lovely daughter, and I’m also aware that I have a huge amount of help and privilege compared to many parents. I’ve totally accepted that I’m probably not going to star in a Super Bowl halftime show - or whatever my equivalent might be - in the next few years. I guess it just makes me sad to see women beating themselves up when they find themselves lacking compared to “high-achieving” mums, because they seem to forget that if you can afford help on tap then you’re operating in a completely different ball park. Almost another universe of parenthood.
So far be it from me to go against the great sage of our times, but I have to disagree with Ms Mae on this one - we actually don’t all have the same 24 hours in a day as Beyonce. But we’re just as amazing in our own way.