Janet Ellis: My children gave me a hard time for working

Genevieve Roberts explores the hot topics and parenting issues she encounters while raising her three children in her weekly column, Outnumbered

Broadcaster and author Janet Ellis has never said sorry to her children for working and is delighted her daughter, singer-songwriter Sophie Ellis-Bextor, 45, is equally unashamed of her career.

“We’ve both always agreed that as working women, we’d never apologise for that,” she says. “I do feel that very strongly. There is a default of: ‘Oh, sorry, Mummy is going to be away or busy’, whereas it’s not often the other way around. I was determined not to do that, and I’m really glad to see Soph kept that on. If you work, the hope is that at least part of it sustains you and gives you a way to be a different sort of individual: the mother label is a good one but we can have others.”

Ellis, now 68, was a huge part of my childhood, working from 1979 to 1987 as a presenter on Blue Peter, the longest-running television programme in the world. My constant and unfulfilled quest for a ship-decorated shield badge led to reams of artwork and trips to a local windmill. As a child, though, I was oblivious that she had a life beyond our television screen on Mondays and Thursdays.

In fact, she became a mother at 23, before her friends. “Everybody prepares you, and nothing prepares you,” she believes, comparing it to her Blue Peter parachute jump. “You can spend all the hours you want in a hangar, strapped to something and jumping off. And that is totally not like jumping out of the plane. In the same way, I remember parenting classes at my local hospital, holding the doll and watching films.”

Ellis split up with her first husband Robin Bextor when her eldest daughter was four and juggled motherhood with her career; Ellis-Bextor’s first screen appearance was accompanying her mum to work. “I was super busy, because that was when I was doing Blue Peter, and I was also a single parent,” she says. “But I never lost the sense of adventure of it. I hope they feel that too.”

She met her husband television producer John Leach in 1986 and had Jack, now 37, drummer in Ellis-Bextor’s band, and Martha, 33, an art historian. “It’s a good job I wasn’t a single parent for the whole of my life, because otherwise they would only be wrapped in cotton wool and not allowed to walk anywhere,” she laughs. She says John supported her in giving the children freedom.

While she’s never apologised for working – something I’ve done frequently, but from now on will now ‘be more Janet’ – she acknowledges there’s often a tussle between career and parenting. “Guilt is handed to you in equal poundage to your baby and increases in weight as they do,” she believes. “But having any sort of job gives you value in a way your children can’t measure.

“Just to warn everybody: the kids never think you’ve made the right decision. They don’t go, ‘thanks for staying at home’ or ‘thanks for doing that’. So leave them out of this bit.”

So her children gave her a hard time for working? “All the time. There’s always something you have to miss and it’s horrible, you feel very torn. I didn’t get away scot-free at all. They probably have a separate WhatsApp group all about me,” she laughs.

She almost twinkles with love for her family. “I might have said ‘leave me to listen to this lovely play on the radio’, but I was never bored by them at any stage. And, as you know, they just get better all the time. I hope I’ve communicated that to them, that I loved it and I love it.”

Now, Ellis experiences that love a second time around as a grandparent. She lives in west London, 10 minutes away from her eldest daughter who’s juggling her ever more successful music career – her eighth studio album The Invisible Line will be released in summer – with being a mother to Sonny, 20, Kit, 15, Ray, 12, Jesse, nine and Mickey, five.

“Sophie’s a brilliant mother,” she says. “She would be anyway, but considering how busy she is I’ve never once heard her say to the kids, ‘I’m tired’ or ‘I’m busy’ or ‘Leave me alone’. When she’s home, she’s mum 100 per cent. And that’s great. I certainly said ‘Mummy’s going to have a lie down’ way more than my eldest daughter, which is never.”

As a grandparent, she’s more of an observer role. “I don’t ever feel I need to step in, and I want to honour what she’s doing. Obviously, there’s a certain amount of treats that are not necessarily told,” she laughs.

“And I’m still a catastrophist, so everything looks too sharp, too high up. But there’s an overall enjoyment that they’re my grandchildren, but also loving the fact that she’s producing nice people. They’re great. I feel very lucky to know the minutiae of their lives: who their friends are and what they’re into. I’m always aware that plenty of grandparents live further away than I do.”

I wonder how much parenting has changed between the generations. Ellis says while baby advice is cyclical – “sometimes it’s leave the baby to cry, other times it’s pick the baby up” – the overall strategy doesn’t change: “which is hoping to get people who you like, that society also loves, and you all have a nice time together.”

The average age to become a first-time mother nationwide has risen from 24 in 1979 to 29 today. “Many women already have a role elsewhere so probably have a slightly more timetabled approach to parenting,” she believes. “You can’t just go: ‘I’ll sort that all out tomorrow,’ because there’s a lot of life to fit in – and inevitably, having a child means you put a very small and very lovely bomb under that. But equally, you’re all trying to work it out together and being flexible because one-size doesn’t fit all. I especially see with Sophie’s kids that they are five strong individuals.”

Before she became a grandparent, she was told that the best thing about the role is that ‘you can give them back’. In her experience, it’s the opposite. “You are letting in this young person who has different ideas about the world and different experiences, and they’re meeting a whole different person who’s, let’s face it, already old,” she says.

She’s taken that letting in quite literally: her eldest grandson Sonny moved into her home in 2023 and they’ve just celebrated their second Christmas as housemates. “This is a real halfway house; he easily gets back to see his little brothers, who love that,” she explains. “I hear music coming out of his room and I think: ‘How lucky for me to have that?’ He went away recently to Japan for a couple of weeks, and the house felt very empty.”

Shortly before, Ellis travelled to South Africa on an organised group trip, a new experience that took courage solo – “it took me two or three days to think: ‘this is what I’m doing’ and catch the vibe” – and that she’d love to repeat. Her husband John died in 2020. “There’s lots about it that is always going to be hard,” she says. “But I don’t want to be less than the person John loved, smaller and fearful. I don’t want him to not recognise me.”

Society is evolving positively for young people, Ellis believes. “Children aren’t hidden away as much as they were,” she says. “They are given the right to say they like or don’t like things. They’re not just told: ‘Wait till you’re older’.”

But she can’t quite believe that the childcare problem in this country, which existed in the 80s, still hasn’t been solved – and often stops women having a true choice as to whether to work or stay at home. “Please make childcare affordable,” she says, a twinkly force for good. “This is not a pipe dream. Other countries get this really right. But we have got this wrong since my day and that’s woeful: we should have got it right by now.

“Countless people, mostly women, have come into places of influence, and it has just carried on. And that’s puzzling. So with the people who are in any position of power: don’t pull the rope up. Help people.”

Janet Ellis is an ambassador for Just You, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, one of the original dedicated solo travel operators with a collection of worldwide guided touring holidays. Her podcast Twice Upon a Time, where she invites guests in the public eye to talk about their favourite childhood book, is produced by Hat Trick Productions and available on all platforms.