Life

IT has taken me a few years, but I have finally realised that the stork did not deliver me simply a bruised, beautiful infant. I'm sure every mother knows what I'm talking about. For even before you have had the chance to swoon over each toe and nuzzle into the intoxicating scent of new baby, someone else arrives to stay. With the oceanic rush of maternal love comes its omnipresent evil twin: maternal guilt.

Kate Winslet, for instance, felt she had failed because her baby was born by Caesarean section. How sad that, instead of celebrating the safe arrival of a child and preservation of the mother, we feel that unless we are having a full-on, bonding, fulfilling birth, we may not be as good mothers as we might have been. As a GP, I have always thought analgesia was a great medical advance - so why do I have friends who feel that they let down themselves and their child by asking for pain relief during labour?

And yes, we all know that breast-feeding is preferable. But the emotional fall-out when a woman is - for whatever reason - unable to, can be traumatic. I have a friend who stopped breast-feeding, in much turmoil, after six weeks. Before the birth, she had bought every book on breast-feeding imaginable; she had the bras, the breast pump and the resolve that she would be breast-feeding until her child was at least a year old. By the end of the first month, which she later described as "living hell", her nipples were raw, the child cross and grizzly, and she, exhausted, was barely able to look out from under her gloomy, guilt-laden cloud. She was afraid to stop trying as she felt as though, in "giving up", she would let her baby down.

The minute you take your baby out of the house, you discover that everyone has an opinion on your maternal abilities. I remember queuing in the Post Office with one of my babies, happily congratulating myself for being organised enough to get out of the house before noon. Then the baby started to cry. "Needs fed," the woman in front of me grunted loudly, and with alarming derision. It seemed that everyone else knew the reason for my infant's lack of delight and I, as mother, was the one responsible.

As your child grows, the opportunities for guilt accumulate. Barely a week goes by without some new piece of research saying that children in daycare are less emotionally stable, or that the offspring of working mothers are at a social advantage. Since having children I have, at various times, worked just about every permutation: not at all, part-time and full-time plus. And there was guilt attached to every one of these options.

When I was at home all the time, I always knew people who were breast-feeding long after I gave up - or telling me that it was really time I stopped, otherwise, I'd never get the baby to take a bottle. There were always better organised mothers who could get their children to eat vegetables, or who were going to swimming lessons, toddler gym, music, junior French, and dance class far more often than me.

There were also parents who never lost their temper with their child, would talk animatedly to the baby all the time, and had an unquenchable enthusiasm for the entire back catalogue of Maisy Mouse. I felt guilty for not doing more with my children while I had the chance, and I felt guilty because when I was at home all the time, I missed work.

However, when I was at work, I was fully conscious of the blissful pleasure of such delights as going to the toilet by myself, finishing a cup of coffee, and having uninterrupted conversations with adults. Naturally, while I was at work I felt badly for enjoying it and of course, I worried about my children and the effect my working had on them.

The reason why guilt is such an intrinsic part of motherhood is surely complex, but must be tied to our deep desire to do everything possible for our children's happiness. When considering schools for my eldest, it occurred to me that I could probably, in a no-holidays-for-the-next-10-years kind of way, just about afford to send him to private school. I visited the schools in question. They were lovely: suffused with money, computer equipment, and intelligent class projects - all done under the banner of school crests flanked by Latin mottos.

All yours, cheque aside, if your darling can get through the entrance exam (sorry, "readiness for entrance assessment"). At this point I began to feel nauseous. Having my child assessed on the basis of 45 minutes observation and - heaven forbid - rejected, was very disquieting. So, what to do? Subject your child to his first experience of the examination failure, or miss an opportunity in a school with good reputation and facilities? Catch-22, guilt either way. In the end I withdrew all the applications and felt far better for it.

But I have increasingly come to realise that guilt is an effective tool for the continual propagation of the species. While it might be uncomfortable and unpleasant for a mother's thoughts to harbour the ongoing concern that she "could do better", Mother Nature knows that by making mothers adept at worry, guilt, and anxiety, she has ensured that we will do our utmost, time and time again, to ensure that our children are happy, nourished, warm and well.

Maternal guilt is so inevitable that maybe it needs to be reframed as a sign of the deep concern mothers hold for their offspring. Mother Nature got that name for a reason. And a mother's happiness has to come second.

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