I Don't Know Why She Bothers: Guilt Free Motherhood For Thoroughly Modern Women

Daisy Waugh is a journalist who has written for The Independent and The Sunday Times, contributed to Radio Four's You and Yours and presented Channel Four's Travelogue show. In her new book she wages mini-rebellion on the Repressive Sentimentalists who have held the stage for far too long since women ventured into the world beyond their kitchens. Mothering skills are now scrutinised, measured, judged, discussed and disapproved of like never before. The bar is set so preposterously high, it's impossible, at least in the early years, not to feel like a long lost loser: and honestly, mothers only have themselves to blame...Motherly love is ferocious, intense, fathomless, unconditional and absolute. It is no myth. But the pastel shaded bake-your-own saintliness which has grown up around it is humbug. Daisy will add a dusting of reality to the sickly-sweet bake-your-own rubbish by covering topics such as breast pumps, other children, sleepovers, swearing (yours and theirs) and contagious diseases. It's time to burn the maternity bras and Daisy is the first at the stake to exclaim, 'Enough! Life is short. Mothers adore their children. But they're people too. And that is more than just a mother.'

About the Author :
Daisy Waugh writes 'Waugh Zone', a weekly column about her family life, at the front of the SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE. She has been writing for newspapers and magazines for many years - as an agony aunt, restaurant critic, interviewer, property 'expert', and travel writer. She has published seven novels and has also written a travelogue about living in Africa. She lives in London with her husband and children.

Review :
It is a hilarious, timely book - and a rare and potent antidote to the guilt, exhaustion and anxiety that threaten to poison every aspect of modern motherhood. To read this book as a new mother is to know the pure joy of someone speaking for - and up for - you at a time when you have not the resources to do so yourself...fantastically energetic, heartfelt and witty identification of all the absurdities created by maternal guilt...a hilarious, timely book. The provocative I Don't Know Why She Bothers by Daisy Waugh is one for women who feel life is too short to make their own fish fingers! Waugh's book is not so much a call for bad mothering to return as a return to a more laissez-faire parenting, liberated from all the fear and guilt women impose on themselves...Waugh is refreshingly frank, swears like a sailor and debunks the sanctification of motherhood with relish....This is probably one of the funniest parenting guides you'll find. I Don't Know Why She Bothers isn't a guide or a handbook; it's merely saying what a lot of women think. No doubt the Mumgelicals will want to burn this book and Waugh's effigy, but I think it should be given away free with every pregnancy test. This self-help book deserves pride of place by on slummy-mummy Bridget Darcy's bedside table.