All we know is that the school achievement, IQ test score, and emotional and social development of working mothers' children are every bit as good as that of children whose mothers do not work.

Parents who are cowed by temper tantrums and screaming defiance are only inviting more of the same. Young children become more cooperative with parents who confidently assert the reasons for their demands and enforce reasonable rules. Even if there are a few rough spots, relationships between parents and young children run more smoothly when the parent, rather than the child, is in control.

Ideas about mothers have swung historically with the roles of women. When women were needed to work the fields or shops, experts claimed that children didn't need them much. Mothers, who might be too soft and sentimental, could even be bad for children's character development. But when men left home during the Industrial Revolution to work elsewhere, women were "needed" at home. The cult of domesticity and motherhood became a virtue that kept women in their place.

Not until Freud's writings became popular did descriptions of infants center on relationships with their mothers. The idea that children have feelings of any lasting importance for their development is a very recent invention (or insight if you wish).

The best way of thinking of an attachment in my view, is to see it as the outcome of an interaction between two people, each of whom contributes to the quality of the relationship. Most parents can promote a secure relationship with a calm, pleasant, patient baby. Only particularly sensitive and patient parents can promote a secure attachment to a difficult baby.

Parents ought to feel more comfortable about the care of their children than some experts would seem to permit. If children were so fragile and parenting so difficult to learn, where would we all be as adults?

All we know is that the school achievement, IQ test score, and emotional and social development of working mothers' children are every bit as good as that of children whose mothers do not work.