A lot of people feel that as parents they should go it alone

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"A lot of people feel that as parents they should go it alone. But it is unrealistic and even harmful to give children the impression that you are indispensable and the only person who can care for them. Children should be allowed to form relationships with other people, and that includes the other parent, friends and professional carers." In other words, Elle, get that husband of yours on the next flight and let him get up in the night.. More than one-third of mothers who return to work after the birth of their first child give up their full-time careers within two years, research shows. Suzie Hayman is agony aunt for Women's Own magazine and writes on family matters for Relate. However, in a labour market in which part-time jobs, working from home and freelance employment are more and more common, women are increasingly unwilling to entirely sacrifice their role as mothers for the sake of career.Maybe it is possible to have it all But only if you are prepared to accept some help.

You have to make a decision and then not look back, otherwise you're going to feel you're always in the wrong place and that you're failing in all the areas of your life."Many people, of course, have no choice about work; their financial input is essential to their family's survival and their employer is not prepared to be flexible about hours. Dr Sue Behrman is a stress specialist with Prestige Health Ltd, which advises companies on stress management. "In the Eighties women were desperate to be up there with the men That is changing. With female colleagues, at least, it is now acceptable to take time off in order to make it to Johnny's sports day. The advice I give women suffering under the pressure to be a good wife, a good mother and a good career woman is ditch the guilt. If you know how to be a perfect mother, what's your excuse for messing up? In ways that our grandmothers probably couldn't imagine, women now are martyrs to the notion of exemplary motherhood - and that, we are told or suspect, involves forging a continuous, harmonious, one-on-one bond with your child, 24 hours a day, seven days a week - and damn well enjoying it.The demands women make on themselves to achieve in all fields simultaneously can cause considerable unhappiness.

Now more than ever women are bombarded with information about their child's development and emotional well-being (lots of it contradictory). You hope your childminder, au pair or nursery provides a loving, stimulating, happy and safe environment, but you can never really know - and reports of the damage done by nannies to their charges, whether accidental or not, fuels parents' secret fear that no form of childcare is ever 100 per cent safe.Getting it wrong is, of course, the biggest anxiety of all. But might other, more complicated, motives be at work? While the very well-off can probably afford a highly trained nanny with impeccable references and a real love of children, the rest of us have to settle for a more or less unknown quantity. On Sunday I was working until 2am."I do feel I'm not seeing enough of Phoebe and she is protesting a bit There really aren't enough hours in the day.