Lily Allen shared the two key reasons behind her decision to have children in her mid-20s in a candid conversation.
The Smile hitmaker, 39, discussed the topic of having children – and then pressure women are under to start a family by the age of 40 – with her best friend Miquita Oliver in a recent episode of her BBC podcast Miss Me?
Lily shares two daughters with her ex-husband, Sam Cooper – Marnie, 12, and Ethel, 11.
‘I think I had children for all the wrong reasons really because I was yearning for unconditional love, which I haven’t felt in my life since I was a child,’ she told Miquita.
She added: ‘Also my career was at such a high speed, you know high pressure and I’m a people pleaser and I felt like very overwhelmed by what was happening.
‘I just didn’t get much respite and I felt like the one way to stop people hassling me, it’s not about me it’s about this other person that’s inside me.’
When asked if it did slow things down, she confirmed that it had the desired effect.
‘They did leave me alone, but I don’t think I really understood what I got myself into,’ she said.
Between 2011 to 2013 (when Lily had her two kids) she had already celebrated two chart-topping tunes, – Smile and The Fear – and was working towards another number-one album, Sheezus, which came out in 2014 and featured her beloved Somewhere Only We Know cover.
After releasing her final album in 2018, Lily entered the acting world and last year appeared in Sky drama Dreamland. She has also been married to Hollywood star David Harbour since 2020.
The podcast duo were praised for their honesty in the Instagram comments.
‘Appreciate the honesty and such an important conversation to be had. This is why I like this podcast. Honesty and talking about tricky, mostly awkwardly avoiding conversations,’ @sdrew999 wrote.
‘This is truly inspiring. Really good conversation to have (I just turn 40 and I’m a man) but I still care about these things and this conversation was really good the hear!’ @therealmarcusmidi added.
‘Lily thank you so much for this perspective and honesty I wish more people were like this,’ @nik_inamsterdam echoed.
Her latest comments come just months after she admitted that her children ‘ruined her career’.
‘I love them and they complete me, but in terms of pop-stardom, they totally ruined it,’ she told the Radio Times podcast.
‘It really annoys me when people say you can have it all because, quite frankly, you can’t.’
She then shared that she purposefully chose her children over her career to avoid being an ‘absent’ parent, like her parents were when she was a kid.
‘I feel like that really left some nasty scars that I’m not willing to repeat on mine. I chose stepping back and concentrating on them and I’m glad that I’ve done that because I think they’re pretty well-rounded people,’ she concluded.
Lily is the daughter of film producer Alison Owen and British actor Keith Allen and has previously spoken about her difficult relationship with her parents growing up.
In 2021 she said that she was estranged from her father at the time.
‘I haven’t really spoken to him, to be honest, for a while,’ Lily told The Telegraph. ‘The last time I texted him was on Father’s Day and he texted back saying ‘Thank you’. We haven’t connected for a while.’
And earlier this year she spoke about her ‘pretty painful’ upbringing by her mother.
‘She put herself through university and then became a film producer and got nominated for an Oscar by the time she was 30 – as a single parent, that’s an incredible achievement.
‘Did it have an affect on us as children? Yes it did. Do I hold that against her, no I don’t – although it was pretty painful at the time,’ the music artist told the Parenting Hell podcast.
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