Lily Allen is a hands-on mother.

The singer - who has daughters Ethel, two, and Marnie, 10 months, with husband Sam Cooper - makes sure she is home in good time so she can be a ''normal mum''.

She told The Sun newspaper: ''I generally try to get back at 4 or 5pm and do dinner and bathtime and the things that normal mums do.''

However, the 28-year-old star admitted she struggled to ''connect'' with herself after the birth of Marnie and found it more difficult than it was after her first daughter.

She added: ''It wasn't until I stopped breastfeeding that I started to connect with myself again. It was much harder than in the past.''

Meanwhile, Lily has had to defend her new single 'Hard Out Here' after claims her raunchy new video - which sees a group of black women jiggling their bottoms - is racist, but she has insisted she chose the dangers based on their talent.

She recently said: ''If anyone thinks for a second that I requested specific ethnicities for the video, they're wrong.

''If anyone thinks that after asking the girls to audition, I was going to send any of them away because of the colour of their skin, they're wrong.''