OMG I've become Daily Mail Mum

So the big political news for mums this week is the child benefit cuts. They're not going to be introduced until 2013, and I may well be back at work by then, but if I'm not J and I are going to be one of those families hit pretty hard by this, in fact, one of those families the Daily Mail are getting all hot under the collar in defense of. I'm stunned, how did I end up being on the same side as the Mail? I think part of the problem is that somehow being a stay at home mother (the DM obviously doesn't consider families with stay at home dads....) is equated with 'small c' conservatism, 1950s values, housewifery etc. I would consider myself a staunch feminist and find it endlessly frustrating that the assumption is made that stay at home mums hold 'traditional' values. Surely in fact being a feminist should elevate the role of child-rearing as an important, intelligent role (alongside working if that's the choice / necessity). In fact, is stay at home motherhood only seen as anti-feminist because a traditionally male-orientated society branded the role as inconsequential? Your thoughts, ladies, would be appreciated.

Ed, David and Nick - spot the daddies.

Now I can't be alone in noticing that all three party leaders are the fathers of very young children. I'm sure somewhere political commentators are speculating on the effect this will have on key policy areas like child benefit, nursery education and maternity care. All fascinating and relevant to us fellow parents, but the question I'd really like to ask is just how much childcare do this lot do?

On the face of it they all make quite a show of being hands-on parents - Cameron dutifully took his paternity leave as did Nick Clegg (his wife Miriam actually went back to work first) but I'd love to be a fly-on-the-wall and witness the day to day childcare negotiations in their families. Does DC formulate his Question Time strategy pacing the house with Florence at 2am? Is Cleggy pureeing carrots after a hard day of coalition negotiations? Has Ed endured the hell that is soft play? They all seem suspiciously puke /poo /puree free......

Commiserations to Mummy Miliband

I've been glued to the Labour leadership contest, not just because I'm a geeky political junky but also due to my new incarnation as mother of two boys. My most pressing parenting dilemma is how to deal with the constant spats M and S have over their toys. Should I intervene on the behalf of the muggee? Let them fight it out? Remove said toy altogether?.... It's tough but imagine how Mummy Miliband must feel. I've (probably) been deluding myself that the toddler stage is the worst. I can just about get my head around teenage emnity but, but, but, what if they're deadly rivals in their 40s? I'll be a little old lady by then and the last thing I'll want is my boy's slugging it out on the national stage. Boys, boys, boys, whatever you do, please don't go into politics.

No, I don't want your pit bull to say hello to my babies.

In the part of London where I live, dogs are part pet, part weapon. Pit bulls are the prevalent breed and their owners range from middle age dad's in vests and slightly scary grannies to, well, the kind of person you'd probably avoid getting into a spat over the odd unscooped poop with. Now, I'm a dog lover but I do not want these muts anywhere near my darling boys. Yesterday when one lunged for S in his pram I made a rather dramatic swerve to get S out of drooling distance. And, for the umpteenth time the owners response was to look at me as if I was a laughably neurotic Mum and mutter, 'he just wants to say hello'. Yes, well I'm sure that's what the owners of those Staffies that savaged a three year old down the road from us thought and I'm not going to take the chance. Pit bulls aren't breed to 'just say hello'. If you want one of those, I'd recommend a labrador.

Feeling fragile? Avoid Facebook at all costs.

For someone with very little opportunity to get out, a spare laptop and the odd fifteen minutes of free time inbetween removing sludge from high chairs and refereeing a spat over Scoop (a yellow digger to the uninitiated), Facebook might seem like the perfect opportunity to catch up on your social life. Trouble is, I'm finding my FB sessions increasingly depressing. It's a bit like those studies that feminists used to do of women's self-esteem after reading glossy magazines - looking at bite-size, cherry-picked snippets of my friends' lives makes me feel like everyone is living a much more glamorous existence than me. This may well be true but it's also a result of the fact that Facebook effectively encourages us all to do our own pr and distill our lives into the most appealing chunks. For example, as a former tv producer I know all about the sheer grind of production, yet when I see posts about my friend's new jobs I nearly always just feel jealous of their fascinating new project, not relieved that it's not me that'll be working 'till midnight five days on the trot. As I almost never post myself, I'd say I'm more of a FB stalker than a proper user but if I did constantly update my status there's almost no way I could avoid looking like a tedious smug mum. It would be all, 'look at the boy's tickling each other, aren't they cute'. Maybe we should dedicate a FB day to tedium - everyone could chronicle the dullest task in their day and thereby make everyone else feel that their life is actually quite exciting in comparison.

Have you gone back to work yet?

No, no, no and mostly when people ask me this I feel like a total slacker / dullard / betrayer of decades of feminist struggle. Am I to blame if the Pankhursts are turning in their graves? Quite a few of my friends who've worked hard for good careers take the line that women should go back to work or we might as well live under the Taliban. The problem is who then looks after the children? Well, in general it's other women, just poorer ones, usually from Eastern Europe or the Philippines, so I'm not sure this is a great feminist triumph. Ultimately, most mums I know (and quite a few dads) would like to work part-time but this hasn't been an option for me as my old career is not what you'd call child-friendly. Now I'm in that tedious situation of trying to work out what I can do that would fit around spending lots of time with my gorgeous boys and would still be mentally stimulating, use my skills, pay filthy amounts of cash etc. etc. Any ideas?!

Are they twins?!

I get asked this on a daily basis. Mostly, I smile patiently and say yes, this is X and this is Y. On a good day I'm thinking how nice it is that having twins cuts through our usual reluctance to talk to strangers and has meant that in the last year I've got to know nearly everyone on our street including the slightly insane. On a bad day I suppress the urge to bark 'no you idiot, I just had two identical looking babies at the same time, now let me get to the shops before one of them starts screaming'.

Twins do attract attention, even in the part of London I'm from which has an extraordinarily high proportion of them, I suppose mainly because of older mums and IVF. Mostly I love having twins, so mostly I love this attention and what I especially love is when people stop to tell me that they're a twin or that they had twins years ago. This is different from the random, pointless 'I knew some twins once and they were great friends / mortal enemies / gay', comments that you get, these are genuinely fascinating insights into a special bond that society can't get enough of.

When my twins were newborns my partner and I went to our local chemists to get some eye drops and the pharmacist came out to look at the boys. He seemed surprisingly misty-eyed for a man in late middle age and asked J and I if he could smell them. There was something so touching about his manner that we lifted them out for him to sniff, at which point he told us that he'd had twins two decades ago but that his daughter had recently died of a brain tumour. I'll remember this incredible encounter for the rest of my life, it was one of the earliest insights into both the amazing joy and the heartbreaking vulnerability that parenthood brings.