By ALISON ROBERTS
IT HAS always struck me that anyone with four children must either be very rich or incredibly, selflessly, committed to a life of grindingly hard work. Or both.
Yet there are plenty of modern quartets around. Four has suddenly become a cool number.
“It’s a real trend,” Chrissie Rucker, founder of The White Company and mother of three girls and a boy, tells me. “I find that more and more of my friends are having four children.” The Blairs, of course, have a nice round four, as do Bono and his wife Ali Stewart, the Gordon Ramsays, Sadie Frost, Sting, Lord Coe and the beleaguered Education Secretary Ruth Kelly.
So how on earth do these modern super-mums (and dads) manage such a houseful? As divorce rates and property prices continue to rise, as schooling in London and the maintenance of twin careers become issues of ever greater complexity, coping with the usual 2.4 kids seems like a task of Herculean proportions to most of us.
Carina Cooper, the Evening Standard’s cookery columnist and author of the Notting Hill Cook Book, has a brood of four aged five to 16, and claims, somewhat counter-intuitively, that in fact it’s far easier with four than one. But then, they are all girls: Ithaka, 16; Flynn, 14; Sidonie, eight, and Zazou, five. “Oh, it’s much easier,” she says. “After a certain age, they start to sort each other out. You can train them quite young and you don’t have to mollycoddle them all the time.”
It looks so enviable, this tribe of four blonde girls, all educated at home.
Can it really be so irritatingly perfect? Not quite, as it turns out – Cooper is in the middle of a divorce and living in a rented house when we meet, and coping with the stress all that involves.
She claims to be fairly disorganised (“It’s been a bit chaotic this morning,” she says as she answers the door in Holland Park at 10am with wet and tangled hair), and loathes the kinds of strict routines advocated by childcare gurus like Gina Ford. “I see some mothers of four who are viciously well-organised, a million times more so than me – with beautifully turnedout kids and tennis lessons after school and so on. My children can look great, but they can also look very scruffy. My days don’t have much rhyme or reason to them, and I don’t have a particular working routine. Quite often I get up very early and work while everyone’s asleep.”
The kids often sleep in till 9am, she says.
Cooper has also taken an unorthodox approach to education, choosing to hire tutors and teach all four girls at home rather than send them to school. She doesn’t impose a structure on their learning. “They’re very precocious and advanced in the creative, arty subjects as a result,” she says, “but quite behind in things like science. That doesn’t bother me, it’s just the way we are.
“I’ve always loved the independence of thought and spirit of home- educated kids. I visited a few schools and I didn’t like the rules, the bullying, the insistence on academic achievement, the hours and hours of homework. I’ve really enjoyed having my kids at home; I love hearing them laughing in the background while I’m in the kitchen.”
Her idea of a stable and loving regime, indeed, involves piling the girls into the back of a car every so often and setting off on a mystery tour with only a map and a vague idea of destination to guide her. “I’m a gypsy at heart,” she says, though it’s also clear that hers is a bohemian lifestyle backed by rather a lot of money. It is very much a W11 existence.
Cooper says she was broody at the age of 15, yet only planned the youngest of her four babies. “The first three just sort of turned up, but I knew I wanted four when I realised that the third was suffering from “middle-child syndrome”. She didn’t have a role like the other two, she was neither the baby nor the leader. Four is such a lovely number, it’s a proper tribe with its own dynamic and energy. I remember, literally half an hour after giving birth to Zazou, feeling very very strongly that now I was complete.”
Many women, of course, don’t find the right man in time to spawn four children.
Cooper met her husband, the director and producer Franc Roddam (Quadrophenia; Auf Wiedersehen Pet), when she was just 22 and had Ithaka five years later. They lived in a beautiful house just off the Portobello Road, a foodie’s heaven. However, Roddam (according to Cooper) subscribed to the ever-so-macho Gordon Ramsay school of fatherhood and never changed a nappy.
“Lots of dads are like that. He was the fun father, into big gestures rather than day- to- day detail.
“But you do have to start young if you’re going to have a big family. And my life in my midtwenties was very different from those of my childless friends, who were out clubbing and having a good time. I used to carry Ithaka around in a sling and chop up vegetables with her on my tummy. It’s strange – now I’ve had my children and I’m in the middle of a divorce and for the first time in ages I’m really free. Quite a few of my friends are only embarking on the whole nappy thing now.”
For women, four children represent a lengthy and draining physical commitment (Cooper, who describes herself as “a bit of an earth mother”, nursed each of her daughters for 18 months each), but for both mum and dad, they also require an extraordinary amount of emotional vigilance. Cooper calls this “keeping them in the circle” and describes the psychological tactics needed to make sure all four are happy and thriving.
“I see it as an imaginary circle that we’re all inside. And if one strays outside the circle – if she’s a bit shy or moody or has dark rings under her eyes – you have to sort her out quickly and bring her back. I’m constantly on the lookout for it.”
Her own childhood in Gloucestershire was itself far from easy. Her mother died when she was 14, and at 16, a teen rebel
who hated studying, she was expelled from school with barely a qualification to her name.
“I had a lot of friends who took drugs in their teenage years, including my two brothers, and really it took 10 years for them to get over it completely and come back to normality. You have to watch your children with eyes like a hawk and, yes, having four does mean four times the worry. But I’m a great believer in the theory that time and attention heal almost anything. The stronger the foundation of love, the stronger they’ll be when they’re older.”
Her girls have already seen a great deal of the world; indeed their childhood reminds one a little of Esther Freud’s fictionalised memoir Hideous Kinky. Cooper and daughters followed Roddam to Morocco, to the US and to Australia, where they lived for months at a time while dad was shooting a new TV series. “For me, the most secure I ever feel is in a car on the road to nowhere with the girls in the back, not knowing where we’re going or where we’re going to stay.” It’s a situation that would terrify most mothers, I say. “Yes, it is bizarre, but that way of life doesn’t bother me at all. I’ve always given them each a backpack and told them to get on with it. Kids are incredibly adaptable, and if you’re relaxed, so are they.”
YES, she has always had the means to employ fulltime help, though her choice has never been conventional.
“The best help I ever had was a French art student – a punk with a gold tooth, lots of piercings and bovver boots. She stayed with us for five years and the girls loved her.”
Cooper also took substantial career breaks while each of her girls was tiny – a deal many women cannot afford – but she was spurred to write the Notting Hill Cook Book in order to generate income while working from home.
If I had four children, I tell her, I’d be constantly afraid of misplacing one of them – leaving them on the bus or in the supermarket by mistake. Has she ever lost or forgotten one? “There are often headcounts at airports or train stations,” she replies. “Sometimes I think I’ve lost one, and then there’s a little tug on my trousers and a small voice saying: ‘Here I am.'” They must be very good girls, then.
“All kids are good,” she says with a charitable shrug of the shoulders.
“If I’d been born 100 years ago, I’m sure I’d have been one of those women with 10.”
. The Working Cook by Carina Cooper, a collection of Evening Standard recipes, will be published this spring.
CARINA’S TWENTY TIPS FOR A HEALTHY FAMILY LIFE
. Take a preventative approach to medicine.
Think about alternative approaches like homeopathy or acupuncture. I never give antibiotics – try the natural solutions first. And children are hardier than we often think.
. Balancing time and effort between children equally is instinctive.
Trying to include them in basic chores, like shopping.
. Shop a little and often.
That way nothing gets left at the bottom of the fridge, and all produce is fresh.
. Never make food a punishment. It becomes less pleasurable if you do.
. A child doesn’t need to eat everything on the plate.
If you involve them in the process of choosing their food, they will want to eat it.
. Puddings are something nice to have at weekends, and our “sweetie” day is on a Saturday. We go out on a special outing and the children choose their own sweets.
. Engage children with what they eat and teach them to like good food.
Making smoothies is a fun and healthy thing to do.
. Things can go awry in life. If you are sad, your children will be sad too.
Be honest with them and tell them what is upsetting you. Make them understand that it is not their fault. A strong foundation of love really helps.
. Instil good manners and respect in the older children; they will teach the younger children those same principles and act as role models for them. Teach the older ones good behaviour and it trickles down to the smaller ones.
. When there are many children in a family, they quickly learn about sharing – and about bargaining, swapping and trading. Sharing a room also helps with this.
. When you have four children, passing clothes on becomes a normal thing.
Don’t worry about the “second-hand Rose” syndrome. The younger ones will relish being like their hip older siblings.
. Children are capable of being reasonable. Try to take the time to explain things to them rather than simply barking out an order. Children will mirror your behaviour. If you are rude and shout at them, they will shout and be rude back.
. If children are naughty, there will be a reason for it.
It is rarely without motivation. Try to work out why they have done something and rather than punish them, try to solve whatever caused the bad behaviour.
. Every so often, do something they don’t expect – serve them and yourself with chocolate ice-cream for breakfast.
They like it when adults are naughty, too.
. Everything is redeemable. Relax around the family. Not everything has to be immaculate all the time. With a large family, perfect organisation is impossible.
. Make some time for yourself. If you make it clear that a certain time in the day is just for you, they will respect that.
This goes for bedtime too. They don’t have to go to bed at a set time, but they do have to realise that you need to relax.
. Once children are five and over they begin to be able to entertain themselves. Rather than you being too hands-on, they like you to just be around while they explore.
On holiday, let them play on their own while you read a book nearby.
. Eighteen months to three years and ages 13 to 15 are the hardest stages.
These are ages that will require a great deal of patience. Be understanding of why they are demanding or grumpy.
. When you have children your whole outlook changes. You won’t get as many manicures and pedicures as you used to.
Don’t expect the same exacting standards of yourself in every minute detail.
. Spending time together needn’t be a chore. Teach the children about things you enjoy – they will learn to enjoy them too.
Comments