As a single mum of teens I constantly fantasise about running away. Getting a one-way ticket to Cuba, or even just Croydon. The previous milestones were difficult enough. The colic, the crawling, the tantrums, the temperatures, the awful parents at school. But when your kids become less dependent, and more hairy, it becomes an Olympic-level challenge: vaping, booze, drugs, exams, boys, girls, social media, porn, sex. Writing Amandaland, we wanted to pelt our characters with these problems and explore the different ways parents deal with all this awful stuff.
When Amanda (Lucy Punch) finds herself post-divorce in a downsized home and less desirable postcode she is desperate to find her new people, but she finds herself wrestling with their loose parenting.
The first time I left my teens alone at home, for one measly night, I had a phone call from a mum I’d never met before. ‘Don’t worry, Everything’s OK. I’m at your house.’ It was 8pm. My 15-year-old had invited over friends and within an hour they had chugged their way through my emergency vodka and some Kahlua from 1997. ‘I’ve cleaned up most of the sick and rolled up your rug. It’s by the back door.’ When I got home, I had to decide how to react. Should I be cool? Stroke my daughter’s hungover head and joke about it? Or make her hose the carrots from the rug and show her footage of David Hasselhoff eating a burger off the floor?
I don’t want to be the mum whose kids are always at the cool parents’ houses because I’m so strict at home but I also don’t want my precious babies snorting Ket bumps off the see-saw in the local park because I allowed them the odd sip of my Aperol on holiday. Both of my children have blocked me on all the socials so I have no way of knowing how corrupt they are.
Like a lot of women of her generation, Amanda is dealing with the double whammy of raising teens and ageing parents. Felicity, Amanda’s glamorous mum (played by Joanna Lumley) has become a more regular presence in Amanda’s life as she gets a little older and more lonesome.
I bullied my parents into moving closer to me when the kids were little, hoping to rely on them for free babysitting and Sunday roasts but it majorly backfired when my mum went vegan and my dad developed a condition that made him collapse a lot. I found myself rescuing them and spending a lot of time in the hospital visiting my dad and dealing with his doctors.
I’m hoping when my kids go to uni (or prison) that I will have a moment to come up for air. I can’t help but think of the inevitable process of becoming infirm myself and having to depend on children to take me to hospital. If I’m too a strict parent now, will they want to drop everything and come to my rescue one day? Maybe the odd sip of Aperol isn’t so bad…
Helen Serafinowicz is a writer on Amandaland. Inspired by her own experience of motherhood, she pitched the idea for Motherland to Sharon Horgan and Holly Walsh, and the rest is history.