Genevieve Roberts explores the hot topics and parenting issues she encounters while raising her three children in her weekly column, Outnumbered
Of all the things I admire most about Katherine Ryan, it’s not her sharp humour – which I love, nor her openness – which is why, I’m sure, so many of us feel a connection to her, but her fearless attitude.
It’s this attitude that led her to repeatedly call out a colleague she believed to be a sexual predator and, when applied to parenting, perhaps it’s not surprising that her words feel like a rallying call to my mid-thirties self.
“I don’t think a woman should have her vision of her own biological legacy hinged on the appropriateness and availability of a man. That is a very flawed system and a gamble,” she tells me. “It’s a really smart decision to have a family in your own way that suits you, and to use donor sperm or eggs or surrogacy.” I couldn’t agree more – I only wish someone had said it so plainly when I was making the decision to embark on fertility treatment to become a solo parent nine years ago.
Ryan, 41, put the wheels in motion for donor insemination aged 34. She checked her fertility levels (high) and bought sperm from Seattle (“the British sperm had weird reasons, very colonialist, and then the Seattle guy was like: ‘I love my mum, I love my skateboard’ – he was 21 or something”), while a relationship was breaking up.
“I think there are worries around creating a family that’s not traditional. But what about the 2.4 family where the father is a philandering alcoholic who gambled the family money away? Like, is that a risk?” she asks. “I wasn’t going to foolishly let my late thirties slip through my fingertips, waiting for the right relationship or trying to shoehorn in the wrong man and have children. Once bitten, twice shy. I already had a failed relationship with the father of my daughter and I wasn’t going to make that same mistake twice, because it’s a lot of admin.”
In fact, the Canadian comedian got back together with childhood sweetheart Bobby Kootstra following 20 years apart, and they’re now a family of five: Violet, 15, Fred, three and Fenna, almost two. But she looks back on single parenting as “maybe the best decade of my life”, something she worries about communicating.
“I don’t want to speak in this romantic way, when maybe there’s a single mother who’s financially insecure, like I was, who feels really isolated. And I’m saying it was great,” she explains. “But the beauty is it must have been hard at points, but I don’t remember the hard parts. I absolutely loved it. Making all the choices yourself and not having to consult someone else.”
And she’s honest that some things are more difficult in a partnership. “I have to really consider someone else’s point of view, and can’t just full steam ahead,” she says. “But my children have the benefit of siblings and a really doting father and more extended family.” I understand: as a solo parent for the first four years of motherhood, making constant micro-decisions, I’m still learning to improve my communication and not make decisions unilaterally.
Ryan’s work life includes tours with and without children (she comes home to sleep with her children if she’s working less than three hours away) and a family reality television show: she’s currently filming four hour-long episodes of At Home with Katherine Ryan, following on from the success of Katherine Ryan: Parental Guidance. Her voice is hoarse from shows when we chat.
Somehow, she performs – and survives – on minimal sleep, “a very scattered six hours a night”. Her youngest two children are up through the night. “That’s my fault because I didn’t want to sleep train them,” she says. “They’re just up to check I’m there, or ask for milk or use the potty. Fenna is very independent, she will say: ‘I sleep in Fenna’s bed’, but then wants me also in the bed, so I end up curled at the foot. Fred will not sleep in his alcove bed: he sleeps on a mattress with a little platform that’s meant to be my bed, but Fred has appropriated it. So sometimes I’m on the floor, sometimes in the alcove bed, and sometimes, if I’m really lucky, I go in Fred’s bed, which is otherwise uninhabited.”
Her husband Bobby sleeps alone – she’s previously said they have sex twice monthly and it’s rising in frequency as the children get older; while Violet also sleeps alone, though “with a cat that she recently brought home without permission”.
She is famously open about parenting, receiving widespread praise for her examination of maternal guilt, identity and exhaustion on Katherine Ryan: Parental Guidance. She was also attacked for opening up her children’s lives to cameras, though holds firm boundaries around filming, avoiding baths and bedtimes.
“We don’t ever film anything where they’re in a vulnerable position. Equally, if they kick off or if they’re crying we put the cameras down, because I would feel disrespected if I was really upset and someone was filming me. I put myself in their shoes both in my life and in my behaviour on social media,” she explains.
A million people follow Ryan’s Instagram posts, but she believes it’s important for every family to have open conversations about how much of their family life to share online and use their instinct as to what’s exploitative. “I’ve pulled back from posting photos I thought were so cute. I’ll ask myself: ‘Is this exploitative in any way? Am I over indulging myself with images of Fred that I don’t own?’ I don’t believe I own my children’s image, but I am the caretaker of their image for now.”
This seems sensible: I’m aware my own social media use is going to be examined and challenged by my children soon enough. “Violet started saying around age 10: ‘Why are there no pictures of me on social media? My friends are on social media when their parents post pictures of them. I don’t like the blackout.’ And again, I had to be responsive and collaborative and go, ‘Okay, well, let’s allow you to be in some social media pictures. But that doesn’t mean that I’m posting a steady stream of everything. Never school uniform. I always ask permission. And as soon as the little ones understand, I’ll ask them as well.”
But she’s also realistic: “We’re going to be an embarrassment to our children at some point, no matter what we do.”
She tells me that while in Cork this month, family in tow, to perform her standup show Battleaxe, she and Kootstra had Fenna christened. “I got a link to all these amazing photos, and I need to not exploit my children, not over-indulge myself, and just post a demure number of photos.” The next day I see she posts a very restrained nine photos on Instagram. Demure. Two days later, she posts another dozen. I laugh.
When it comes to her daughter Violet’s use of social media, Ryan says parenting in the social media age is something she’s “navigating every day” and holds firm boundaries. “Giving Violet access to this tool unregulated would be just as crazy as if we gave Fred access to a chainsaw: he could really hurt himself and others,” she believes.
“The rule for me is she can’t have private passwords and she doesn’t have a phone. I have a phone. She wouldn’t be able to get a phone contract at 15. I would love to take her off Snapchat, especially. But teenage girls get so much from communicating with their peers, and this is, unfortunately, the tool they all use. I don’t want to isolate her completely. We try to be open and honest. If I’m fearful, I say out loud what I’m fearful of and why, and give her problems to solve: How can you make me feel better about this thing? What do you think we should do? Do you understand how dangerous it is?”
Over the past 15 years, Ryan’s learnt to react and reinvent herself as a parent every day. “Sometimes when they behave like they don’t need you, when they’re very independent, it’s when they need you most,” she explains. “So you have to be quite versatile.”
I’m curious what she finds the most joyful part of parenting. “I think it’s just so wonderful to love someone that much. It’s so scary to love someone that much,” she says. Scary? From fearless Katherine Ryan? It’s moving to hear her say so.
“When Violet was born, I didn’t get this rush of love everyone talks about,” she says. “I was like, it’s really irresponsible to give me a person to look after. I couldn’t believe they let me leave hospital with her, and it was looking after her and nurturing her that made me love her, within about eight hours, and then I was obsessed with her.
“I never think of it as having them love you back. Sure, it’s nice to be loved, but they’ll pull that love away as they get older and give it back and pull it away and give it back and go to university and say you’re cringe. That will come and go, but it’s just so human to love someone so much.” I’m left wondering if Ryan’s fearlessness comes from never taking love for granted.
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