Mumhood

Daisy was very funny,very warm, practising mumhood.

We talked about a Four Corners programme that had depicted the relentless burden that children with disabilities were to their carers – whose mumhood was completely denied in that programme.

But, no, for the average lady columnist in the tabloid press, there is really only one type of woman who is worthy of trust and admiration: she must, of course, be not simply a mother, she must be 'a mum', although she can get away with not being a mum if she is 'suffering the heartbreak of infertility' and lost in envy of those who have reached the nirvana of mumhood, and wants to look at photographs of 'bubs' and smell their heads; she must love shoes, and the television production of Pride and Prejudice that starred colin Firth; she must find it impossible to resist chocolate, and enjoy drinking wine with 'the girls' while having a good old giggle about how men would never be able to cope with the pains of labour.