Image-conscious alpha mum Amanda, portrayed by Lucy Punch, has returned for the second season of the BBC sitcom Amandaland, a spin-off of Motherland. She continues to reside in 'SoHa', her rebranding of South Harlesden to sound more fashionable, after reluctantly downsizing from affluent Chiswick. However, much to the mortification of her two teenagers, Georgie and Manus, Amanda has now reinvented herself as an influencer, fervently promoting her aspirational lifestyle brand 'Senuous' despite the minor setback of having zero followers.
She is evidently delusional. While requesting a £1 million investment at her local bank, she settles for the offered £3,000 and boasts to her SoHa mum friends that her company has attracted 'major Chinese investors: a banking corporation based in Hong Kong and Shanghai'—otherwise known as HSBC. She uses the loan to purchase a laptop and proper studio lights.
Having a clueless mum creating content with a portable light and her phone is cringe-inducing, but her children are accustomed to being embarrassed. They also have to contend with their 'Gan Gan', grandmother Felicity played by Joanna Lumley, being driven across a football pitch in a black taxi to join Amanda on the sidelines. Worse still is when Amanda volunteers to give a career talk as an influencer.
'Mum, please, please don't do this. I'll do anything,' her daughter Georgie pleads as Amanda sets up lights on stage in the school hall of Haycroft Academy. 'Georgie, relax,' Amanda replies, trying to reassure her. 'I'm about to make you very popular. You'll be like a nepo baby.' Poor Georgie looks as though she wants the floor to swallow her up as she sits in the audience with school friends. By the time Amanda dashes back on stage to interrupt a talk about a food bank to discuss her own charity efforts, her daughter's mortification is complete. It is the quintessential embarrassing mum scenario.
While I spend my life striving not to be an embarrassing parent like Amanda, it does not always succeed. Amanda's teens navigate life in a state school in South Harlesden. Mine, Lola aged ten and Liberty aged eight, do the same but in Kensington. Fortunately, I possess more self-awareness than Amanda, but it is challenging to always know what is considered embarrassing to your children, and learning what triggers them is a minefield.
Posting funny videos of them and commenting on posts never goes down well. Showing up with embarrassing outfits at the school gates, cheering too loudly at sports day, or engaging in public displays of affection are also forbidden. They cannot bear it when I arrive late to class performances and rush to the front, waving and 'making a show of myself.' When I had a non-surgical facelift last month and arrived for school pick-up covered in dried blood, my daughter's friends stared at me in shock. 'Mum, just turn around and head to the car,' Lola pleaded. Even our golden retriever, Muggles, aged 11, is a source of embarrassment. Usually I leave him in the car during the school run, but the other day he jumped out and grabbed an animal carcass wrapped in foil, which I tried to wrestle from him in front of the school entrance while my kids shouted, 'Just leave him. Please mum, it's so embarrassing.'
I often tell Lola not to 'stress out,' and she squirms as if I have said the worst thing in the world, looking around to see if anyone is listening. I try very hard to be a cool mum. I do not get annoyed with them when they have friends over, and I clean the car before picking them all up for playdates so it does not look like we live in it with old packed lunch items, odd PE socks, and toys strewn everywhere. But nothing works. When Lola went on a school trip and I waved her off with tears in my eyes, she quickly distanced herself with that look of embarrassment, telling me, 'Mum, you're going to need a therapy dog to cope. If you call me more than four times, I'm going to block you, then call you once, then block you.'
I often feel I am being spoken to as though I am the child. The trouble is that mums like me and Amanda often feel stuck mentally at around 28, regardless of our actual age. In Amanda's case, she cannot come to terms with being called 'middle-aged' and seeks reassurance from her co-dependent, people-pleasing mum friend Anne, who allows her to continue being more childish than her own children. In my case, I forget that joining in with my children dancing to Kidz Bop's 'Can't Stop the Feeling!' with their friends is not appropriate. They also hate it when I make a point. Lola was mortified when I told off a friend of hers for being mean to her. Whenever I want to send food back in a restaurant because I am unhappy with it, my children run for the exit or find a menu to cringe behind. A lot of the time, I have to remind myself that their embarrassment is a normal part of growing up and will only worsen as they become teens. Some of it is my fault. But while everyone knows an Amanda, that is only half the story. The truth is, inside all of us mums, there is an Amanda just waiting to punch her way out.
