What's the best way to be a mum?

When I was growing up my mum worked. She didn't rush out to an office in a smart suit, instead she ran a small business with my dad, but she was no less absorbed with her career than a high flying city woman. She worked out of the shed in our garden and I recall her spending most of her time out there, she claims that wasn't the case, but I can only rely on what made an impact with infant me.

She would go to markets in London to sell their wares, and while I was tiny I would come along too. But as soon as I went to school I was left behind, aware that my mum wasn't there at night and that she wouldn't be there to send me to school. As I got older she started to travel abroad as the business spread it's wings.

Once I sprained my ankle at school and there was no one there to come and pick me up, until my sulky older sister returned from school to begrudgingly drag me back from the doctor's surgery. Another time I lay in my bed crying for my mother after a bad dream, she was outside working and didn't hear a thing. Fortunately a lovely friend of hers came up, calmed my fears and dried my tears, but it still wasn't my mummy.

Rightly or wrongly I always felt as if the interesting part of my mum's life was the one away from us children. The things she wanted to do all revolved around work, and I felt as if I was constantly left behind while she pursued the fascinating things that she really wanted to do. My abiding memory of her was that she was always trying to get away to do something for work, and that I was vainly trying to catch her and make her stay with me. It left me with a chunky chip on my shoulder and the conviction that being a stay-at-home mum was the best way to bring up your children.

I always planned that when I had my children I would give up work and be there for them. Not for them the patchwork of inadequate childcare and unwilling grandparents who made up the landscape of after school care during my childhood. Instead I would be there, freshly baked cakes in hand, ready with a smile whenever my boys needed me. They would never feel that my attention was elsewhere or that my priorities lay anywhere other than with their wellbeing and their needs.

So how is it that with four children aged from one to six, I now spend most of my time working, shooing them out of my office as I race to meet deadlines and very little of it baking cakes or prioritising the children's joys and sorrows?

Circumstance has a lot to do with it. Just as it was when I was a child, money is tight. I didn't marry a rich man, I married one I loved instead. Big mistake if you want to be a stay-at-home mum. My husband is lovely and a fantastic dad, but he doesn't earn enough to allow me to stay at home in any style. I suppose I could forgo all luxuries and stick to my principles, but I am not sure how happy that would make anyone. I have a weakness for a comfortable life, and making do and mending simply doesn't appeal.

It's also a lot trickier to live the frugal life in London, where you are surrounded by other parents in the advanced stages of affluenza. Sure my kids could be the only ones who had no new clothes, toys, holidays, trips out etc, but would that make them happy? Having been poor in my own childhood (the business wasn't that sucessful), I know the answer to that is no. I will never get over the humiliation of turning up at school in one of my mum's jumble sale finds, only for some spoiled brat to rush up in peals of laughter revealing to the whole school that I was wearing her cast off. I still blush hotly at the memory.

But I also discovered that perhaps the reason behind my mum's distraction is that for some women the satisfaction of bringing up children isn't enough. There is a reason why women fought for the right to work, and that's because for many staying at home with only the washing, ironing, cooking and babbling of a baby isn't enough.

I adore my children, and I love my days spent looking after them. I wish there were more of them, but if that was all there was in my life I think I might just lose the plot. Every occasion which has seen me unemployed in my life, and there have been many, I have always started some new project to distract me. This blog was begun when I was on maternity leave with my twins, and you can see from the early entries just how devoted I was to it.

You see I can sit still and dandle my babies for only a short period of time before my mind starts racing off to find something else to employ it. I hope and pray that this doesn't have make my boys feel that the interesting part of my life is the bit that doesn't involve them, because this is far from the case.

If I split up my life into parts, I would say the part that sustains me and makes it all seem worthwhile, the bit that resides in my heart and soul, the bit I would save if my life burnt down, is the part that contains my family; my sons and my husband. But the part that keeps my mind alert, the part that gets me the respect I crave and the feeling of success outside the home, is my work. I would ditch it in an instant if my family required it, but I do relish the chance to be me, and not just a mum or a wife and, to be frank, I like earning my own cash.

I think that makes me selfish, that I can't seem to give up the part of my life that is all about me, and swap it for one that is all about my boys. I wish I could. I have lots of friends who have done this, with varying degrees of success, but I know I couldn't step into their shoes, within a week I would have set up a business baking cakes or decided to run the PTA, just to give me something to do as well as washing socks, finger painting and seeking out the best playgroups.

I suppose what I aim for in life is to create a good balance. At the moment I feel everything is skewed towards work, and that makes me sad. I live in hope that I can push the scales more in favour of my family, while still keeping on enough work to keep me sane and solvent. But in my line of work it tends to be boom or bust, so you are either run off your feet or twiddling your thumbs.

I often wonder if anyone feels they have got it right or if every mum, whatever her choice, is destined to beat herself up as she attempts to create that elusive 'perfect' childhood for her children.

One of a kind?

I think I may be about to smash an illusion under which all parents labour - that their precious little darling is a unique, one of a kind, exclusive edition. You see the more time I spend with other parents of small boys, the more I realise that they are all cast from the same mould, or moulds. There are the little lads who love nothing more than mud, football and scrapping, then there are the girly boys who adore playing with glittery pink dolls and abhor the rough and tumble of male horseplay.

I have one of each so far as my eldest definitely spent more time trying to get into princess costumes than he did playing outside in the mud when he was a little un, while number two is much more of the male persuasion, with stomping in puddles and making a mess coming high up in his list of priorities in life. The twins have yet to nail their colours to the mast, so I am still watching this space to see which path they will choose.

However, far from being special these character traits are shared by many of their little boy pals. We went for dinner with a couple of school parents on Friday, who have twin boys in my eldest's year at school. They have one of each type of boy, and when we discussed our boys we almost found ourselves finishing each other's sentences as we fell over each other to say 'Yes, mine do that too".

From the fact that any direct question about their day or friends is met with a blank 'Don't know' or 'I've forgotten', while they can drivel on for hours about the intricate ins and outs of the arcane plot of Ben 10, to the tricky relationship balance that exists between and man's lad and a girly boy, it was as if they had been living with our two for the last few years. Of course there are differences, their boys are football mad, while mine aren't in the slightest bit interested, but I think that's go more to do with family affiliation than anything intrinsic to their characters.

Another friend has a son who is a couple of years older than my eldest, and seeing what she goes through with him is a bit like having a time machine, whereby I can fast forward 24 months to see what's in store. Each phase my boy enters, she has been there and done that, from the sweet and cuddly, to the mummy obsessed and the teenage sulky strops. For her talking to me must be like deja vu.

But it's not just friends' children who make me realise that many of those things I consider special to my children are actually shared by all and sundry. Whenever I see the latest pictures from the Beckham's boys parties, I realise that it's just what my boys would choose should we suddenly win the lottery and have the financial clout to give them their wildest dreams.

Perhaps it doesn't matter if our children aren't quite as much one of a kind as we might like to believe though. After all we still love them to bits and they each have their own foibles and idiosyncrasies that make them stand out from the crowd, even if it is only in their doting parents' eyes. In some ways it's even comforting, because when things go tits up you know that you aren't the first and won't be the last parent to face any the challenges your children throw at you.