The soulmate sell-out

Columnist and Senior Features Writer

Sunday 10 June 2012

THEY were once so close they were called "the terrible twins", but Marie Helvin has claimed her friendship with fellow former supermodel Jerry Hall faltered due to her own decision to remain childless.

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Susan Swarbrick

Helvin said the pair grew apart after Hall had four children with ex-husband Mick Jagger, while she herself decided there was "no reason" to have a family. "I think a mother needs to be with mothers," said Helvin. "I don't know what they talk about."

As someone who is undecided about having children, it's a notion I find troubling. Already I'm in the situation where many of my good friends have gone down the road of motherhood, while I myself have not – and may not. Helvin's suggestion that, as soon as a woman has a baby, she and her child-free peers no longer have any common ground, quite frankly, jars. I've seen friends through broken hearts, bereavement, divorce and lost jobs, but could parenthood really sound the death knell for those bonds? Perhaps it's naive, but I would like to think that, rather than fall away faster than Cheryl Cole's credibility at the Jubilee concert, our friendship will merely take on a new guise. Just because I don't know what it's like to experience the chapped nipples of breastfeeding doesn't mean I don't sympathise or care. Yet the idea of the slightly odd childless couple who exist in lonely orbit around those with offspring is a myth which continues to be peddled by films such as Friends With Kids and What To Expect When You're Expecting.Few things raise my hackles more than those attempting to engineer an "us-and-them" face-off between women who do – and don't – have children. And I include Helvin in that. In truth, her admission says far more about her own character than anything else – mother or not.

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The soulmate sell-out

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