Is it right to leave your children in kids clubs on a family holiday?

What is the point of maternal guilt? It’s not a natural, bio-determined force with any benefit for children. It doesn’t protect them from predators or improve their health. It’s a wasted anxiety with historical roots stretching back a mere decade or two since the rise of the middle-class working mother. It’s a luxurious kind of angst when you think about it.

Sometimes these women are driven to Prozac and therapy by the daft voice in their head — and the bitchy ones on mumsnet.com — asking: “Why have children if you don’t want to spend all day with them?” Often, though, it’s the kids that suffer. Happy, confident children do not need to spend their maximum disposable hours with mummy.