“It’s more of an education than I got.”
Pink’s new documentary is a must watch for parents, everywhere. Her circumstances are far from relatable, but her attitude and approach to being a working mother is refreshing and admirable.
I know what you’re thinking — the woman has a huge team. And yes, we’d all be super-mom if we had an entourage to help.
But we all know that just because your child is being looked after by someone else while you graft, doesn’t mean you ever really switch off mam-mode. Which is no mean feat when you’ve got a world tour to do. Sure you know yourself.
But tour she does, with her whole family in tow.
Speaking about juggling both in her new documentary P!nk: All I Know So Far, the singer says: “For a lot of moms, when they become moms, they stop touring — because you can’t imagine being able to do both. The only way I can justify dragging my family all over the world is that we’re making memories together. I want it to be worth it. I want tour to be perfect for every person who walks through those doors with a ticket in their hands, but I also want it to be perfect in my kids’ minds. And I kill myself to do both.”
Of course she has concerns about the impact of bringing small children away from the routine of home life and school, as she explains: “I worry about taking them on the road and them not having a normal life, but I look around at the people we’re surrounded by… We have culture around us all the time, and it’s all people who are incredibly passionate about what they do, and they get to be around these people all day long. That’s what my kids get to see. Every room they walk into, they’re like, ‘Wow, there’s another person following their dreams.’ It’s more of an education than I got.”
She admits, however, that he eldest child Willow finds life in the P!nk machine hard sometimes: “Willow told me that she feels invisible around Jameson. Broke my heart. Two-year-olds get more attention than 8-year-olds. That’s just the way it is, because at the end of the day, 2-year-olds are helpless little psychopaths and they’re narcissists and it’s developmentally correct for them to be that way. It’s been hard for her the whole time, it’s never been easy for her. I did tell her, at one point, ‘Well, your mother is a performer who takes all the oxygen out of the room and then in comes your brother who’s the mini version of me. How could you be anything but invisible?'”
Her parenting choices aren’t for everyone, but seeing the incredible experiences her children are having, I can’t help but feel those memories will be cherished forever: “My mom said to me — it was one of greatest gifts of my life — she said to me when Willow was 4, she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, ‘I just never knew parenting could be this enjoyable until I saw you do it.'”
