TWO-THIRDS of all women in Britain work. Half of all children under five years old have mothers who work.
Yet "working mothers" is still often a dirty word to the women themselves.
Psychologists, social workers and teachers all know that working mothers are just as good parents as the stay-at-home kind.
Tests have shown that the children of working mothers do just as well at school, are no more likely to become delinquents, and are just as happy as children whose mums are at home all day.
Yet women who work are torn apart by guilt every time they wave goodbye to their children.
Miriam Stoppard is a glamorous 42-year-old who has a top executive job with a chemical company.
She is a qualified doctor, she is married to playwright Tom Stoppard, she runs a home for him and their four children, and she writes books like other women bake cakes.
So she is everyone's idea of Superwoman.
But she has also been known to burst into tears when a meeting has run on for longer than expected and she has been late home to her children.
She knows what it's like when a small feverish face looks up from his sickbed and says, "Don't go to work today, Mummy."
She knows what it's like to spend a lunch hour dashing round buying school socks.
Miriam says:
"There are obvious practical problems, the most important being finding someone nice and loving to look after the children while you go to work.
"But even if you've got the best arrangements in the world for taking care of them, you're going to worry about something.
"We all feel guilty about so many things, but the guilt about leaving our children goes very deep.
"I find it very hard to cope with, because, like practically every other woman around today, I was brought up to believe that my children need me, that I should be there at all the good and bad moments they experience, that I and I alone should be their source of love, comfort and companionship.
"I also know that I'd be a horrid wife and a bad mother and a sad influence on the whole family if I stayed at home all the time.
"Many women work because they absolutely have to for financial reasons. I feel very sorry for them if they are the sort of women who would genuinely be much happier at home with the children. It must be terrible.
"It is easier for me to appreciate work because I really want to do it. But it doesn't make the problems of leaving the children any easier."
Miriam Stoppard stresses that working mothers need the help of their husbands.
She says: "Tom is not only supportive. He is positively enthusiastic about my work.
"He encourages me in everything I do, and does his best to minimise the guilt I feel.
"He helps in lots of ways. We have a rule in our house that whoever cooks does not clear away.
"So after every meal that I cook, he and the boys do the washing-up.
"If you don't have the support of your husband, it is 10 times more difficult to work."
Miriam's children are seven-year-old William and four-year-old Edmund, and she has two step-children, Oliver, 12, and Barnaby, nine, from her husband's first marriage, which ended in divorce in 1972. She says:
"The way to cope with working is to organise your mothering.
"I believe there is a certain amount of loving that a mother can give to her children, and if you are a working mother you just have to pack it all into a shorter time.
"Another important thing for a working mother is to choose some badges of motherhood and stick to them. In our house I am the cook. My children expect me to cook the family supper, and we always sit down together to that meal. I make sure it's the best meal of the day.
"I've also made sure that no one else gets up to them in the night, if they need someone. I don't believe in bed times, but one of my rules is to be there when they go to bed.
"Another thing I've learned is that working mothers don't have the time to go into huffs. They mustn't be at odds with their children when they're not with them all the time.
"I'm a great believer in showing love, saying it. If you are not with your children all the time, when you are you must give the cuddles and the praise for the whole day.
"Mothers should praise their children a lot, because it is from praise that we develop selfesteem, and that gives us confidence.
"But I also believe that children should see all sorts of emotions in their parents. It is right to show them anger, if you are angry with them. They are growing up in a world where they will have to cope with a whole range of powerful emotions, and so it is right that their parents should teach them to expect those emotions in other people."
Like every other working mother, Miriam Stoppard sometimes wonders why she does it.
"The biggest single change in my life that came with motherhood was that everyone wanted a piece of me. I feel I belong to everyone else.
"I love clothes, but I never have time to shop for them.
"My hairstyle and my make-up haven't changed for ten years. I don't have time for myself.
"And when I do have a few minutes, I do something irrational, like getting out all their school clothes for the week and folding them neatly. Something I didn't really have to do.
"But it makes me feel a better mother. And in the end that's the most important thing of all."
