Do children kill creativity?

There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.” 

The British essayist Cyril Connolly wrote that in 1938, asserting that children kill creativity.

To be fair, it wasn’t just babies the old curmudgeon objected to. Other obstacles to good writing apparently included sex, worldly success, drink, conversation, politics and day-dreaming. Having any kind of life, in other words. 

Yet this particular quote has echoed down the years ever since. Women especially are often made to feel that they can be a parent, or they can be creative. But never both.

Partly this is about perception.

Or even bias. After her first marriage ended, the novelist Doris Lessing left Africa to come to Britain, leaving her two small children with their father. She is often held up as an example of the choice we women need to make between our art and our offspring. But what is conveniently forgotten is that she had a third child, from a later relationship.

Peter was two when she went to live in Europe, and came with her. She wrote all of her great novels while also caring for her son, and they were on the way back from a hospital appointment for him in 2007, when she learned she had won the Nobel prize for literature.

“Oh Christ!” she exclaimed, when the assembled reporters told her that she’d won. Peter appeared less shocked, cheerfully greeting the press before escorting his mum into their home.

Look for it, and there’s actually plenty of evidence that children can enhance creativity, not kill it. JG Ballard’s wife, Mary, died of pneumonia at the age of 34, leaving him to raise their three children alone. He was a good father, according to his daughter, Fay. And he continued to write, brilliantly. 

Here’s his reposte to Connolly.

For the real novelist, the pram in the hall is the greatest ally. It brings you up sharp and you realise what reality is all about. My children were a huge inspiration for me. Watching three young minds creating their separate worlds was a very enriching experience.”

I’m not in the same league as Ballard, but I have made a living as a writer all of my working life. And for 23 years of that, I’ve also been a parent.

Life did change after my son was born. I’m not going to sugar-coat it. At times, being a parent is exhausting. But it’s also inspiring, and most of the changes in my life were for the better. 

Here a few of them.

Your time is more limited.

Before my son was born, I could procrastinate for an hour or three before starting work, stare into space for long periods, spend the whole of Sunday reading newspapers, and generally waste time in a million inventive ways. 

I used to tell myself this was part of my process. But all of that becomes an indulgence when you only have child-care for a couple of days a week. Or you’re trying to fit eight hours of work into the five hours you have between the playground drop-off and going back to collect your child at the end of the school day. And then you’re desperately trying to finish a job while your child is napping. 

You get the writing done, in the time available. Because you have to.

The value of that time is much clearer.

I always found it hard to negotiate fees. I’m a writer. I love to write. I love finding out about new things, travelling, meeting interesting people. And this was always far more important to me than the money. 

Even with some of the prestigious cover stories I wrote for national magazines, if I’d worked out my rate per hour, I’d have been better off working the lowliest of minimum wage jobs. But this was never an issue, for me. I loved doing those stories, and had the best time doing them. (Not something you can say for most low-paid jobs.)

But when my son came along, working just for the joy of it was no longer an option. We had a nanny to help care for him at home two days a week, and another day he went to a nursery. 

The rest of the time, either his dad or myself cared for him. We both loved being with him, and that time was a non-negotiable, for all of us. 

This limited our work hours, yet we still had to earn a certain amount a month to cover our usual bills, plus the childcare costs. 

Suddenly, I had to turn down low-paid work. And if a job involved travel, or was particularly complicated and time-consuming, I asked for a higher fee. 

I was offered a book deal when my son was a toddler, and I was very matter-of-fact about exactly how much my advance would need to be. The publisher kept coming back with lower counter-offers, but I continued to say that it wasn’t up for debate. 

The sum I’d asked for was the minimum I would need to write it. I simply couldn’t do it for less. Eventually, they gave me what I needed.

Now my son is grown, I can write here, or take on assignments that I know I’ll enjoy, without worrying so much about the pay. But I’ve also learned that it never hurts to ask for more. Because you often get it.

You can create anywhere, any time.

I used to think I could only write in a quiet room, alone, when my muse or inspiration came. Having to write quickly for newspapers helped rid me of that illusion. But having a baby really made the lesson stick.

A room of your own is great. But a notepad on a park bench will do.

A few hours of uninterrupted time is wonderful. But 10 minutes is also enough to get a few words on the page. 

Your priorities change.

Cate Blanchett is – I think – one of the best actors of her generation. Yet we don’t see her on the screen too often. A mother of four, she only makes a film if the schedule fits around her children. For the 2015 film Truth, for instance, the whole production moved to Australia, so that she could play the role of TV news producer Mary Mapes. 

“Most of the film happens in interiors,” she explained in an interview with me for the release of Truth. “We ran the numbers, and it was possible for it to be filmed in Sydney so it became possible for me to do. Which I was really thrilled about.”

She wasn’t being demanding, or a diva. In fact she and her playwright husband were working extremely hard, at the time, running Australia’s national theatre. But they had decided, when moving to Sydney, that their children came first.

“What prevents me from picking and choosing [projects] is my geographical location and my desire to not have someone else raise my children,” she told me, with not a trace of regret.  “So my time is not always my own.”

Children are endlessly inspiring.

A child can turn a simple cardboard box into a den, a car, a spaceship. They can invent games out of anything. They can find a world of fun in a muddy puddle or a pile of dry leaves, and take huge joy in simple, natural things like stones, or shells. Imagination is boundless, our world is a wondrous place, and they remind us of that. Which is easy to forget, as adult cares crowd in.

Sophie Kinsella has written 29 best-selling novels, as well as raising five children.

“Having children is an experience like anything else,” she once told me. “It feeds your story-telling capacity because it informs you about the world. What can we write but what we experience, what we learn, or what we observe?

“With every child, I meet all their friends, new families — it’s all exposing you to new worlds. As a writer, you don’t have an office job, you’re not necessarily in the commercial world, so you need to get out there a bit.”

It’s no longer all about you.

And that’s a good thing. Time and time again, clients have told me that their creative work took on new meaning, after they’d become parents. It made them more ambitious, more determined to succeed, because now it was for their children, not just for them.

This is what a self-obsessed writer sounds like:

“I have not been a good father,” Booker prize-winning author John Banville declared in a 2016 interview with the Irish Times. “I don’t think any writer is.”

He goes on to explain that his chosen profession had been hard on his wife, as well as his children. “It takes so much concentration, and we are cannibals. We’d always sell our children for a phrase.”

The backlash against this was led by David Simon, the writer who created The Wire, amongst other brilliant things. “Speak for yourself, f**knuts,” he tweeted succinctly. “Family is family. The job is the job.”

I couldn’t agree more.