Podbit · Parenting Hell with Rob Beckett and Josh Widdicombe
Lauren Laverne took only four weeks of maternity leave with her first son — and spent it receiving texts from colleagues warning her that people were after her job. Twenty years ago, the TV industry was a very different place for mothers.
Where this was said
At 22:10 · chapter starts 21:10
Lauren Laverne echoes Josh's wife's observation — that having kids made her stop trying to be cool — by describing parenthood as fundamentally an exercise in ego death. She was relatively young when she had children: her first son arrived when she was 28 or 29, her second at 30 or 31. At the time, no one else in her social circle had children yet. When her auntie Jean came to London to meet the new baby, she reassured Lauren that the 'good thing' was that she was an older mother — at 29. Lauren recalls feeling approximately fifteen years old with a baby and no idea what to do, while being treated as practically a grandmother. The story captures the way generational expectations around the 'right' age for parenthood have shifted dramatically in one generation.
Lauren Laverne took only four weeks of maternity leave after her first son, during which colleagues sent her texts warning that others were after her job.
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