I Don't Know Why She Bothers

Daisy Waugh is a journalist who has written for The Independent and The Sunday Times, contributed to Radio Four's You and Yours and presented Channel Four's Travelogue show. In her new book she wages mini-rebellion on the Repressive Sentimentalists who have held the stage for far too long since women ventured into the world beyond their kitchens.Mothering skills are now scrutinised, measured, judged, discussed and disapproved of like never before. The bar is set so preposterously high, it's impossible, at least in the early years, not to feel like a long lost loser: and honestly, mothers only have themselves to blame...Motherly love is ferocious, intense, fathomless, unconditional and absolute. It is no myth. But the pastel shaded bake-your-own saintliness which has grown up around it is humbug. Daisy will add a dusting of reality to the sickly-sweet bake-your-own rubbish by covering topics such as breast pumps, other children, sleepovers, swearing (yours and theirs) and contagious diseases.It's time to burn the maternity bras and Daisy is the first at the stake to exclaim, 'Enough! Life is short. Mothers adore their children. But they're people too. And that is more than just a mother.'