Vogue Williams has opened up about the struggles of juggling friendships with motherhood in an interview almost all parents will be able to relate to. Speaking on Elizabeth Day’s How To Fail podcast, Vogue admitted that friendships ‘do feel like a failure’ to her because she hasn’t ‘put them first’ in the last six years since she had children.
‘I think when I had kids, it was family, work and then friendships like in and around it sometimes and now I’m trying to just have better friendships and look after the friends that I have because they are so important to me,’ she said.
Vogue shares three children with former Made in Chelsea star Spencer Matthews - Theodore, born in 2018, Gigi, born in 2020 and Otto, born in 2022. She told Day that her and Spencer recently went on holiday over Easter with two groups of friends. ‘We had like one group of friends the first week, another group of friends the second week and it was really nice to get to spend time with people like that,’ she said, continuing ‘But it is hard to find time for friends. But it’s so important because they’re the ones that they’ll be your constant in your lie forever if you nurture them.’
This follows comments Vogue made earlier this year, when she revealed her and Spencer were ‘making more effort’ to spend time without their children. This involved going on their first solo holiday together - a ski trip to Megève, France. ‘[It was] Our first real trip away, just us [since having children]. We always have our kids with us, but we are trying to make more of a conscious effort [to do things together],’ she told The Standard. Although she said they missed the ‘noise and the madness of the house’, she added ‘It made us realise [we need to put in that] extra bit of effort and make time for each other. It is really important. The kids are going to ditch us at some point in their lives, we need to keep the relationship fun.’
Her honesty will resonate with a lot of mothers. In her 2014 book, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood, US journalist Jennifer Senior cites a 2009 study that surveyed over 1,300 mothers and found that 80 percent of them believed they didn’t have enough friends and 58 percent of them felt lonely.
This works both ways, though. Many child-free women report that the biggest barrier to friendships in your thirties is not having children. In a previous piece in Grazia, Gemma Ashkam writes ‘Despite all the memories, laughs and common ground before, some things change instantly. My ‘I can’t wait to see you!’ is met with ‘I can’t wait for you to meet them!’ – a third person already in our gang of two. Once a child is here, frustrations build. At gatherings, when the story you’re telling gets cut off by a dropped spoon, you learn that everything you just uttered will have been forgotten.’
It's not the first time Vogue has spoken candidly about struggling to maintain friendships as a parent. In a column for the i earlier this year, Vogue wrote 'As my life got busier with work and children, things changed. When I first became a mother I became more selfish with my time – the free time I did have was for my son then work and the the rest of the family followed by friends,' adding 'But now, I want to change that.'