Our Yorkshire Farm star Amanda Owen has said she did not wake her husband up when she went into labour and gave birth to her eighth child at home on the floor with her dog for company.
The TV farmer, who has become famous because of the Channel 5 show about her family’s life in rural Yorkshire, shares nine children with her husband Clive.
By the time she came to deliver daughter Clemmy, now five, she decided she could handle the task on her own.
She told the Radio Times: “Our local maternity hospital is in Middlesbrough, which is 69 miles away, and on these roads, that takes a long time. So by baby number eight, I thought sod it, I’ll do it myself.”
“I knew the baby was in the right position, so when I felt the familiar feelings I went downstairs and had the baby in front of the fire with my terrier as a birthing partner.”
She added: “Clive wasn’t desperate to be at the birth, he was asleep upstairs. I went and woke him up with the baby.”
Owen said she has instilled on that same sense of independence in their children, including when it comes to home-schooling.
She added: “We logged in for about a week. Then I threw it back to them.
“Children have to be independent. I can’t be a helicopter parent. We read the papers and they show me some of their projects, but I have yet to be at a single parents’ evening. I did pretty poorly at my exams, but look at what I have achieved since then.”
She continued: “The snowflake generation, they can’t do anything.
“They don’t know anything about how to look after themselves, or a work ethic, all of that has gone out of the window. It’s our fault as parents.
“If you put your child on a pedestal, with no sense of independence, and think you have got to entertain them the whole time, what can you expect?
“I rebuff swaddling children, because I want to see them go on and do well and be themselves, whatever that is. I feel like it is their life and all I do is prepare them.
“What we do on the farm, hopefully, is preparation for the big world. The lessons they get here will stand them in good stead.”
The full interview is in Radio Times, out now.
