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New research shows that 40% of teenagers blame their busy working mothers for their own problems, says Linda Kelsey, who knows the toll that juggling can take only too well.
Back in the late 1980s a new virus spread like the latest computer worm. Only working mothers caught it. It was called guilt.
During the "have-it-all" 1980s I was editor of Cosmopolitan magazine. It was while I was on maternity leave in 1988 with my son Thomas, now 15, that I started to notice all the scare stories about the damage that was being inflicted on their offspring by the new breed of working mother, selfishly racing back to work and letting the really important job - bringing up baby - be done by a nanny. As if we didn't have enough to worry about, what with trying to be perfect wives, loving mothers and not nodding off in the middle of a crucial meeting out of exhaustion.
I decided that what was needed was a magazine for women who "do it all" rather than those who supposedly had it all. She magazine, under my editorship, was relaunched as "the magazine for women who juggle their lives" and working mothers lapped it up (circulation rose by 40% in two years).
One of the things that kept us working mothers going - alongside the much-needed pay packet and a perhaps naive belief that our children would ultimately benefit from having stimulated mothers - was the knowledge that by the time our kids were in their teens we would be over the guilt hurdle.
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