Emma Thompson Is Nanny McPhee
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RB: So is that your trick? Keeping other people around to help?
ET: An extended family is a good trick, if you have a family that's worth extending. [Laughs] And some people don't. They have difficult and abusive families, in which case, get the heck out! And make your family with other people, because there are lots of other kinds of people who can influence you. I had two gay godfathers who were invaluable to me. And also a childhood uncle who was gay; he was superb. And two grandmothers. I was brought up by a huge gaggle of people. So, yes, my daughter has my mom and her auntie and her cousins. You've got to spread it out and give them a very, very wide base of people because one person, as any single parent will tell you, is not enough. It's not. It's too tough.
RB: Oprah always says that mothering is the hardest job in the world.
ET: She's entirely right. And the pressures of being a mother are just getting worse and worse and worse, not better. And all that superwoman crap didn't help at all, because everyone said, "Oh, you can have everything." And you can't have everything. It's just silly. And it's greedy and unpleasant, as well. Women are finally talking about it after all these years of saying: "No, it's fine. I can do it. It's all fine." Now they're saying: "I'm not coping, and actually I don't want it all. I want to be able to do the things that I'm doing, well, and everything else can go to hell."
ET: An extended family is a good trick, if you have a family that's worth extending. [Laughs] And some people don't. They have difficult and abusive families, in which case, get the heck out! And make your family with other people, because there are lots of other kinds of people who can influence you. I had two gay godfathers who were invaluable to me. And also a childhood uncle who was gay; he was superb. And two grandmothers. I was brought up by a huge gaggle of people. So, yes, my daughter has my mom and her auntie and her cousins. You've got to spread it out and give them a very, very wide base of people because one person, as any single parent will tell you, is not enough. It's not. It's too tough.
RB: Oprah always says that mothering is the hardest job in the world.
ET: She's entirely right. And the pressures of being a mother are just getting worse and worse and worse, not better. And all that superwoman crap didn't help at all, because everyone said, "Oh, you can have everything." And you can't have everything. It's just silly. And it's greedy and unpleasant, as well. Women are finally talking about it after all these years of saying: "No, it's fine. I can do it. It's all fine." Now they're saying: "I'm not coping, and actually I don't want it all. I want to be able to do the things that I'm doing, well, and everything else can go to hell."
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