Fergie struggles with mum 'guilt' like the rest of us

Fergie has opened up about the toll of “mummy shaming” and dealing with the guilt that comes with balancing babies and career.

The 42-year-old singer, who split from actor husband Josh Duhamel earlier this year after eight years together, admitted to iTV's Lorraine the guilt of leaving four-year-old son Axl was “the worst”.

“I remember going to the studio the first couple of times and sibbing in the car. It was the weirdest thing ever,” she said, talking about her return to music with her new album, Double Duchess.

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“That had never happened to me in my life. I’m going, ‘What is this?’".

The former-Black Eyed Peas singer also touched on the uneven expectations on women versus men in this sphere, saying men can “have all the career in the world and still have children”.

“But if you’re a mum and you have a career, it’s the mummy shaming,” she said. “You can’t do that anymore, you’re a mum!”

“What am I supposed to do? I love singing and dancing. It’s who I am as a human.”

However, she said her only son seemed to share her love of music, and “sings around the house all the time”.

She also said her and Duhamel, 45, were determined to make shared parenting work for the sake of their son, adding “It’s never easy, something like this”. “But [Axl] comes first and we’ve got to make it happen.”