“We’ve openly chatted about it”: Sophie Ellis-Bextor on how she spoke to her sons about Netflix’s Adolescence

When Netflix’s Adolescence arrived on our screens in March, it got the whole nation talking – and that includes singer and Kitchen Disco icon Sophie Ellis-Bextor. Starring on Good Housekeeping’s August cover, she shared how it was useful to bring into discussion with her sons, as well as how important it is to talk about toxic masculinity.

Sophie, who is mum to Sonny, 21, Kit, 16, Ray, 13, Jesse, nine, and Mickey, six, explained: “Aspects of it were brilliant to bring into the discussion, but I’ve always had a lot of faith in my boys. We’ve openly chatted about toxic masculinity for a long time.

“My eldest is very articulate about these things, so none of it was new to my house. Sometimes people have an idea of what boys are like, as if they’re a different species,” she added. As far as I’m concerned, I’m raising five people who happen to be boys.

She also addressed the issue of mobile phones and screen time, explaining that, in her house, it’s a conversation rather than a set of rules about what they can and can’t do. “I keep an eye on it, because that’s parenting, but if you start demonising things, you shut down communication,” she says. “Then you’re like those parents in the 1950s who made kids burn their rock ’n’ roll albums.”

As for housework, she explained that the boys help out around the house and revealed that, with food being a big part of family life, they’re quite handy in the kitchen. “My intention is that they should all leave home being able to cook and dance,” she says. “The key skills.”

Fans may remember that Sophie’s boys joined her on her Instagram Live Kitchen Discos during the Covid lockdowns, which became a real family affair. “The Kitchen Discos were very relaxed for them," Sophie says. “I’d say, ‘Oh, we’re doing another one on Friday if you fancy it?’

"And some weeks they might say, 'I’m not doing it,' then, with five minutes to go, they’d come downstairs in a crazy outfit." Sometimes they were dressed as superheroes, sometimes as animals, sometimes they were outside on the trampoline, sometimes clinging to her leg.

Music, she mused, is just part of life at home. “We always have music on, and all the stuff was in our kitchen already: disco balls, sequin bunting, smoke machine, laser machine…” Something tells us life in the Ellis-Bextor-Jones family is rather fun.

Read the full interview in Good Housekeeping UK’s August issue, on sale now.

Sophie’s album, Perimenopop, is released on 12^th September. Visit ghmembers.co.uk to win tickets to Sophie’s album launch show at London KOKO on 8^th September.