Smash hit

Still, every time I read one of these reports I neurotically consume every word and then am plunged into anxiety followed rapidly by anger. What is the point of these surveys, other than to spread misery? It is blindingly obvious that a mother is, ideally, the best person to look after her child: we don’t need a seven-year survey to tell us that. But what are we supposed to do about it? Suddenly conjure up a winning lottery ticket? The vast majority of mothers go to work because they have to. This, after all, is the real world, where mortgages and bills must be paid. Invariably such reports are coupled with smug case studies of “X, wife of a barrister, who gave up her job and is now so much happier” or “Y, a stockbroker’s wife, who shudders at the memory of her childminder”. Mmm, see the link here? Funny how they never feature

“Z, wife of a minimum-wage shelf stacker who realised she could chuck in her call-centre job by simply forgoing a few luxuries.”

These studies never dwell on the drawbacks of the stay-at-home mother, assuming that they never suffer isolation or depression (vibes that their children, by the way, pick up). They never admit to the unspoken truths: the stupefied boredom at the prospect of yet another coffee morning with “other mums”, or the fact that they pop the cork of the wine bottle at the stroke of 5.30pm because their nerves are shattered.

I love my job, I admit. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel guilty and wish I could be with my child more. It doesn’t mean that I don’t feel sick when I imagine her falling and hurting herself at nursery and not being there. But I do what most women not blessed with a trust fund do: I try to do my best.

This report doesn’t square with the evidence I have seen. Though I hate to be a boastful mother, my child’s vocabulary is way more advanced than other children her age not at nursery. Watching her laughing and hugging her friends, I can’t say she looks emotionally stunted. She is confident, loving and sociable and the nursery staff have taught her excellent table manners. I realise this might sound like a guilty mother protesting too much and maybe partly it is. I just know that the Happyland world Penelope Leach seems to want exists only in children’s storybooks.

'No two babies are the same'
By Christina Hardyment

So Mother’s care is “best” in a child’s first three years. Next in desirability is a nanny, then a childminder, then a relative. Before you panic, read the small print: this is a survey of how infants adjust to the outside world, a measure of developmental milestones arguably as artificial as IQ tests or the 11-plus, and probably just as irrelevant to happiness. It measured the “ level of eye contact maintained with adults” and “ability to complete a series of tasks”, observed small children’s behaviour in group situations, and concluded that those who had a mother’s undiluted attention for their early years did “better” than those who hadn’t.

Penelope Leach’s team no doubt used irreproachable methodology in its survey. But if there is one thing that experts agree on, it is that no two babies are the same. Some fuss from the minute they emerge from the womb; others lie placidly drinking in life and milk alike. A spot of aggression at 18 months may mean an Alan Sugar in the making; failure to make eye contact a low boredom threshold. Moreover, non-working mothers from North London and Oxfordshire who made up half the survey were those who were happy to have researchers observing them, a group that, I respectfully suggest, must offer rather different results from mothers unhappily marooned at home, short of support and money, perhaps with a bored toddler using the new baby as a toy.

What the small print also offers is the real message that Leach, a babycare expert and fond grandmother, wants to get across: not that mothers should stop making arrangements to have their toddlers cared for, but that they should ensure that the care arranged for them is good care. The survey is a wake-up call for improving childcare facilities, not a rod for working mothers’ backs.

“That’s a relief,” said my daughter, a bit hollow-eyed in week two of her son’s little life. “I don’t want to trade you in for a nanny.” I pop in as often as she wants me to now that her husband’s paternity leave is over, but I can see that next week she will manage just fine. She has taken a year off work, then may work part-time — a plan typical of today’s young working women on becoming mothers, defined as much by financial imperatives as by career plans. What makes her life easier is being able to choose between several options when the time comes.