The Italian notion of sprezzatura – the conscious effort of making things look easy and nonchalant – is toxic in the world of new parents. Oh me? I just whipped up this sugar-free carrot cake. Oh them? I didn’t do anything; they just started sleeping through the night. Oh the house? I just have these sixteen different handmade boxes where I sort their clothes and toys, so it’s really easy, actually.

The Panic Yearsmade me laugh and it made me cry. There's a rare tenderness to this book that comes from not having felt seen before. It's for our generation, and Nell gets it. She understands and respects us.' Searingly honest, witty and moving. For anyone who knows what it's like to simultaneously want to weep with joy and throw your child out of the window, Frizzell is a very welcome voice in the conversation on motherhood'. - VogueGiving parents a break doesn’t just mean doing a bit of yoga and lying on the sofa and ignoring the piles in the sink. True, genuine release from the stress of raising small children means shared and equal parenting in whatever shape your family happens to be. It means mandatory paid parental leave. It means a child-friendly workplace culture. It means a functioning welfare state funded by taxation. It means safe and high-quality housing for everyone. It means accessible, subsidised childcare that pays its staff a living wage. It means access to green space and affordable healthy food and good public transport and mental health care and playgroups and children’s centres. It means funding and supporting the National Health Service. It means park benches and playgrounds and fully-funded schools and honest conversations with your peers. Scatter it over most stains, most fluids, most leaks, explosions, and oozes, let it soak in, and then wash it off. As I say to all and any new parents: baking soda is great on piss and vomit. And you’re going to have lots of both. Children’s centers are the most beautiful places on earth

I’ve not been a single parent, a dating parent, a parent in a new relationship or in an open relationship. What I know is that being in a relationship with the other parent of your child means years—no, a lifetime—of conflict and compromise. You will, inevitably, have different approaches. One of you thinks you should let the baby crawl down the aisle of a Great Western traincar while the other thinks it’s dirty; one of you likes co-sleeping and the other doesn’t; one of you thinks you should just clear up in the evening, the other as you go along; one of you wants to be held as you fall asleep, one of you needs to have nothing and nobody on their skin just for an hour. You might disagree on whether you want more babies, or when. You might disagree on childcare, on money, on feeding, on what bib, on Calpol, on Hey Duggee. One of you will be more tired than the other but at different times. One of you will use naps to clean the stove while the other uses them to lie down. Try to separate your parenting life from your relationship, even if that just means taking 70 seconds out of your day to look them in the eye. And don’t make your child a mediator or a weapon in those fights. You might not smell “that baby smell”… Frizzell said: “This is the book I’ve wanted to write ever since I started thinking about writing books. The experience of becoming a parent is, by far, the most significant, most ridiculous, most confronting thing I’ve ever done. It is my Everest, my World Cup, my military coup. It is an experience beyond comprehension and yet probably the most universal human endeavour there is. With jokes, expert interviews, personal revelations and a genuine manifesto for change, it is the book that I needed when I felt eclipsed by early parenthood and the book I felt compelled to write, just as soon as my son had stopped trying to push raisins into my USB port.A must-read... sharp, funny, it chronicles all of the big decisions a woman is expected to make between the ages of 25-40: where to live, if they should marry, what to do with one's career. And that other biggie: to have a baby or not'. - Culture Whisper Read everything that Nell writes! We continuously mention her work on the High Low because she really is such a unique writer/ - The High Low Podcast

If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. Exhilarating, infuriating, urgent and human ... an excellent journalistic investigation. I think this book is required reading for the child free, as it will help us to understand and support the choices of all parents.' Daisy Buchanan There is so much about womanhood that feels indefinable. And yet with her definitions of the flux, and the panic years, Nell manages to define the indefinable - as well as uniting childfree women and mothers, where the two are so often pitted against one another. Lyrical, moving and thorough, this is a memoir, a feminist text and a piece of social commentary. Every millennial woman should have it on her bookshelf'. - Pandora Sykes Lyrical, moving and thorough, this is a memoir, a feminist text and a piece of social commentary. Every millennial woman should have it on her bookshelf.’

Singing in public is fine

You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. A memoir culminating in a manifesto, Holding the Baby sets out to understand why we still treat early parenthood as an individual slog rather than a shared cultural responsibility. Tracing her own journey to the nadir of sleeplessness via social retreat and murderous rage, Frizzell draws on the latest research to explore: Raw, hilarious and beguilingly honest, Nell Frizzell's account of her panic years is both an arm around the shoulder and a campaign to start a conversation. This affects us all - women, men, mothers, children, partners, friends, colleagues - so it's time we started talking about it with a little more candour.