In Mothers Work! I declared that perfect childcare doesn’t exist and that the fictional creation, Mary Poppins, would be struck off by today’s standards. Beyond nannies I share my own experiences of hiring an au pair to add to the childcare we already had (a terrific husband and wife childminding team) because like many working families we recognised the potential benefit to our careers and our marriage of having help beyond the standard 8am-6pm. It is not selfish or indulgent to have time with one’s husband at the weekend (why oh why do nurseries not open then?) or to stay after work for leaving drinks (this is essential professional wheel greasing) or to go on a work overnighter (this could be your ticket to progression and er no, I’m not talking about sleeping with the boss). Sadly, each of these activities is usually out of the question, unless you have family to hand or an awesome au pair. An average au pair could of course facilitate each of these outings but the ‘awesome’ ones allow you to do them without backward guilty glances. So it is that I read with glee a feature in Monday’s Guardian - that I thought I’d cancelled whilst in France this week – about Michaela Hansen, the 50 year old founder of Hamburg-based ‘Granny Au Pair,’ an older generation au pair agency. That is, women in their 50s, 60s and 70s discovering the world, and perhaps themselves after a lifetime of tending to their own offspring, one family at a time. How marvellous is that? It reminds me of the original thought I had for the Mother the Mother movement I started this year – grannies geographically remote from their own daughters and daughter-in-laws mothering the ones physically close to them – but which morphed into a broader appeal to help mothers. Since writing Mothers Work! and a brief fling with a German au pair we’ve had the pleasure of welcoming Grandma Chivers to town but if she weren’t here I’d be straight on the blower to Ms Hansen lamenting her idea whist feeling I was just about to have my cake and eat it.

Mothers Work! How to Get a Grip on Guilt and Make a Smooth Return to Work is published by hay House, £10.99 and available on Amazon. Read my experiences of living with an au pair and those of other mothers in chapter seven “Find childcare that fits your family.”

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