One husband, two children, reasonable cooking skills. Not much to show for my 50 years. Which is why I know I would have had a better and fuller life — had I never been a mother. '

An interesting article in todays Femail section of The Mail. Do read it all, here's an extract to whet your appetite:

'And yet... when I look back now, I can see that I found much of my two decades of motherhood a boring and isolating experience.

I know that many mothers reading this will contradict me, shrieking that motherhood is the most enriching experience available to women. All I can say is that for me, motherhood was, in large part, a gruelling, largely thankless slog in the dark.

(I was not surprised when a study earlier this year revealed that young, married couples who have not started a family have the happiest relationships — while couples with pre-school children were the unhappiest.)

For all its joys, parenting can stunt and sometimes kill our relationships with our partners, squashing them under the tonnage of sleeplessness, stress and the daily grind of raising a family.

It sucks us dry. It inhibits our growth as individuals, saps our strength and takes away our confidence in ourselves.

It also forces us into singing the praises of a role which, if we only dared to be honest about it, leaves many women feeling suffocated.

I am a member of a small book club, and suggested we read Lionel Shriver’s honest and unusual book We Need To Talk About Kevin, which tells the story of a mother’s inability to bond with her troubled son.

When we met a month later, not one of the ten women in the group had liked the book. In fact, they hated it. Too dark, too ‘unrealistic’, too shocking, they said.

‘What mother could ever feel like that about her child?’ one woman asked.

‘What does Lionel Shriver know about children?’ another argued.

I listened to their objections, not surprised by them, but felt disappointed that this fascinating book hadn’t sparked a more nuanced and honest debate about the nature of motherhood, rather than a censorious and aggressive defence of it.

Why are women so afraid to talk honestly about the negative side of being a mother? We talk freely enough about the parlous state of our marriages, so why can’t we do the same about having a family?'