'My children are lucky that I'm not there'

My children are just as grumpy as the next woman's. (The woman who stayed at home when hers were young.) The five of them, aged 9 to 18, slam doors, swear and leave areas of the house knee-deep in unwashed clothes.

I run the old tape through my head: “Where did I go wrong?'' Answers that pop to mind vary from the bad example I set — tidiness appears nowhere among my middle names — to blaming modern life, which tempts them to stay up late exchanging non-news on chat rooms.

A dose of Unicef

The one thing that has never occurred to me is to ascribe their faults to early childcare, as Unicef seems to think I should.

A study from the United Nations Children's Fund finds that infants who are cared for outside the home can turn into children who are depressed, withdrawn and suffer from behavioural problems.

To me that sounds normal for a teenager. But Unicef's Florentine researchers are “concerned'' that two thirds of women in developed countries delegate the rearing of their offspring to nurseries and childminders.

By the yardstick of early exile from the nest, my children should be psychopaths. I returned to work when my first baby was 6 weeks old. It was tough — but on me.

I was exhausted and emotionally torn. I don't think it did the children any harm. If anything, such mental health as they display is largely due to the childminder who talked soothing rubbish to them.

I see no correlation between working mothers and sad children. It depends on what kind of childcare you find.