Getting Sticky With: Phoebe Lovatt

Phoebe Lovatt’s career is defined by curiosity and connection. As a freelance journalist, founder of Salon Studio, and host of the Deep Read podcast, she’s earned a reputation for thoughtful conversations that delve into culture, creativity, and the complexities of modern life. (She’s also been dubbed a “Literary It Girl” by Vogue which, in our opinion, is better than being knighted.) From intimate one-on-one interviews to hosting panels for global audiences, Phoebe has a gift for uncovering the stories that truly matter.

And one that really, truly matters? The systemic challenges of modern parenting—exorbitant childcare costs, the isolation of living far from family, and the added weight of pressures and expectations that have been tossed on us by social media and the age of information influx. Modern parenting, as Phoebe candidly reflects, is often more challenging than it was for previous generations, requiring a willingness to reimagine what balance really looks like.

See you soon?  

I grew up in London, but I don't have family there anymore. We live in north London and my partner's family lives in South London, so they don’t feel close. His mom is also young and has two younger children so she’s not exactly the grandma sitting around twiddling her thumbs, she’s got a shit ton to do. And while we have a lot of support from our families emotionally, it’s not physically day to day. I’ve got friends whose moms turn up three days a week to look after their child. And then I see my friends who've got siblings and have close family around. And wow, parenting is not easy for anyone, but it's easier if you have that level of support. 

Being an only child, one thing I really underestimated was how much easier it is for people with family nearby versus those without. It’s a night and day difference. Unless you’ve got a huge amount of money and can pay for all the childcare costs you want. But even so, wouldn't you rather have your mother look after your child versus a stranger?

The isolation of staying in on Saturdays 

My mom didn't have a lot of money, but I do think what was crucially different is it was a time in London where you could live close to your friends. Everyone's now scattered because no one can afford to live in the same places, so you lose that physical proximity. My mom had two best friends growing up who had daughters the same year I was born, and they were also single moms, and that’s what enabled her to keep going. 

I will say, I’ve been really fortunate that in the last year, five or six women in my close circle have had children. While we don't have the capacity to physically show up for each other because we're all dealing with our own infants, there's a huge amount of emotional support and understanding between us. And I think this experience would have been a lot more lonely and isolating for me if I didn't know that many of my close friends are doing the exact same thing that I was, stuck inside on a Saturday night when I'd quite like to be out having dinner. 

We live in this capitalistic, individualized world where many people live away from their families. And a lot of people don't have the capacity to support each other because they're so busy with work and they're so stressed. And if I have another child, I think I'll be a lot more mindful about it. 

During my interview with Céline Semaan she shared how, in Lebanese culture, people instinctively step in to help postpartum mothers. She was saying how sad it makes her that we live in this culture where our concept of community and what that means is so damaged by the way we live.

No hot water at the water birth 

Having a child was part of my life's path, and then I met my partner. We haven't been together that long but we both felt aligned on it. And then to be totally honest, a few of my friends were trying to have babies and it was taking longer than they would have liked. Two or three different friends said to me, if you want to have a child, you don't know how long it's going to take, and I really took that to heart. We were very fortunate that it worked really quickly, and that was both a blessing, but it still took me a little bit by surprise. My pregnancy was great. I loved being pregnant. It’s the greatest I had felt in my adult life.

I wanted to have a water birth, and after 12 hours of being in active labor, I came ready to get in the birthing pool. They told me at the hospital that the boiler was broken, and they didn’t have any hot water, so we couldn’t do the water birth. I thought, this is one of London's biggest hospitals. How the hell do they not have hot water? 

But aside from that, I was given options during prenatal care. I was asked if I wanted to go the epidural route or if I didn’t want to do that, they had a whole other section of the hospital for water births. And they showed me this picture of it and it looked like a fucking spa. I mean, literally, I'm not joking, it had candle fairy lights and you're in a private room. And of course I became very attached to that experience because it looked beautiful—but it didn't end up being the case. When it came to it, I'd been in active labor for 12 hours without pain relief and I couldn't have the water, and then who knows, maybe I wouldn't have been able to have unmedicated birth anyway. Maybe I would have got in the water and said, fuck this. someone get me that epidural. 

Breastfeeding drawbacks 

I'm still breastfeeding. My daughter is nine-months-old and I am tired, but refuses a bottle. And breastfeeding worked out for us but at what cost? Exclusively breastfeeding means that the labor of childcare primarily falls on you as a woman. I didn’t realize the pressures and agendas others had, particularly during the maternity journey, where I blindly accepted advice as a first-time mother. I've read a lot about women feeling huge amounts of guilt  about not being able to breastfeed, and obviously that's not something I can personally relate to, but what I can testify to is that exclusively breastfeeding has its problems and its drawbacks as well. 

My child still doesn't sleep. I have not slept more than five or six hours in a row for nine months. And I read the other day that if you miss out on six hours of consecutive sleep five nights in a row, it decreases your cognitive capability by 20%. And it goes down from there. And I was like, I must be on minus 1,000%. Because I count on probably one hand the number of times I've slept five or six hours in a row. 

Modern parenting is a special kind of hard 

You don't want people to think you don't love your child because you really love your child, but it's complicated and it's tiring and your whole life is different. I also put the cost of my nursery into an inflation calculator. I asked my mom how much it cost her—and it was a third of the price of what it is now even when you take inflation into account. Child care is wildly expensive and parents nowadays have a lot of pressure on them that didn't exist in the same way it did for our parents.

But we're in this surveillance culture, right? Where even if you're not being watched, you kind of feel like you are. There’s this constant feeling of, I'm not doing it according to what I've seen on social media, therefore it must be incorrect. There’s an added layer of pressure that comes with modern parenting. Like of course I want to feed my child homemade food and I'm not trying to shovel French fries in her mouth or whatever, but I can't always entertain her every minute of every day. Sometimes I feel bad that I'm not being sufficient or that I’m working on her development enough. But then I don't think my mom was working on my development every minute of every day, and I'm fine, and so are you. 

My mom said she had one ultrasound while she was pregnant. You have to encounter this whole new layer of anxiety about what if something happens to them. Our daughter started sleeping in her own room a couple of months ago and the first two nights she did, I'm not joking. I didn't go to sleep. I was sitting there because my body was so anxious.And that's something you can't really prepare for is the lifelong fear that having a child puts in your body of how do I live with the idea that I can't bear the idea anything might happen to them, but how do I make it through the day, without letting that idea consume me? 

Not just expensive, but astronomically so

The experience of bringing up a child in the UK is at the moment a very hot issue because it is astronomically expensive, and the median salary in the UK is £38K. People are absolutely drowning trying to keep up with it. What's just been introduced by the government is an initiative to offset some costs if you're making under £100k, which a lot of people obviously are. It can help with nursery fees, but it’s still really expensive. 

In the UK, there’s something called statutory maternity pay for the self-employed, but it’s quite minimal—enough to cover a couple of bills or buy a few groceries, but not something you can live on. It’s helpful, though; you receive it for 40 weeks on a sliding scale. The maximum is around £700 a month, roughly $1,000. It’s not nothing, and it absolutely made a difference for me.  

I have friends who have full pay for six months, then half pay after that. Bear in mind that the UK is one of the worst in Europe for maternity benefits. In countries like France or Norway, you’re getting a full year’s pay. Unfortunately many women end up not working because they do the maths and they’re like, I’ll barely break even, why hand my child over? But then their careers stall, and getting back in the saddle is tough. I’m trying to do that now but it’s difficult because I can’t be social, I can’t go out and network which is crucial when you’re self-employed. 

On keeping their child anonymous 

I think it was pretty clear from early on that we at least for now never wanted to post our daughter online.  We don’t even share her name. I don’t remember having a big conversation about it; it just didn’t feel like something we wanted to do. And by the way, that’s no judgment on anyone who does. It just felt more natural for us not to.

There are definitely moments where I think, I want to post a photo of my baby to show everyone how cute she is because she’s really cute. But instead, I just share pictures with a few close friends. Mostly, though, we don’t post anything. This could change in the future, but for now, this feels like the best approach for us.

Accepting chaos after growing up as an only child 

No one really talks about how challenging it's going to be for a relationship. You're both under the most pressure you've ever been under in your entire lives. You're both exhausted. 

I think one of the reasons I wanted to be with my partner is that from early on I could see he was going to be a good dad. He's an intuitively caring person, and has more hard parenting skills than I do because he grew up with younger sisters when he was already a bit older. So he has memories of looking after babies whereas I'm an only child so I've never changed a diaper until my daughter was born.

There was a lot of chaos in my childhood more broadly but in my everyday life, my household wasn't chaotic. It's taken me a minute to adjust to the chaos that comes with having an infant whereas he's been rolling in chaos for years. It’s been valuable for me to learn how to just be calm and just roll with it and be like, it's fine. 

Perfection? Toss it from the maternal vocabulary 

I was so naive to what parenting even entailed. I've had days where I really felt like I'm failing because I  don't have a super strict schedule in place, or I see someone on Instagram who's traveling the world and the baby's just strapped on and I think, why aren't I more like this mother who doesn’t have a strict schedule? The baby can just sleep in my arms. I'm somewhere in the middle. And every day I have to remind myself that I can do it in my own way. Some women want to be super regimented, super scheduled, and that works for them. It wouldn't work for me. Equally, I've tried traveling with my daughter, and I don't know how much travel you've done with your daughter, but it's not that relaxing.

And you have to give yourself a lot of grace—subconsciously, I felt that I needed to be good at “this” straight away. But this is the most challenging job I've ever had. I'm doing it sleep deprived. I don't have my full faculties, I can’t always succeed, but by nature I’m very hard on myself. And that’s something I’m working on. We’re all figuring this out every day.