Oh, mother!

PART of the problem is we know too much. From the day we bring them home from hospital we watch over them anxiously for at least a year, terrified they'll succumb to cot death.

When they turn 12, we monitor their mood, swings just in case this time it really is drug addiction.

If you're a working mother, your tots will complain and demand to know why you can't stay at home; if you decide it's best to be a full time mother, your teen will patronise you and wonder why you don't have a career.

You believe firmly in openness about once taboo subjects like sex, only to find that your children roll their eyes with embarrassed impatience. "God, mum, we know that!" But suggest that a violent video is not on and they'll sneer at your censorship. "Liberal mum, ha!"

You wholeheartedly endorse street proofing kids against sexual abuse, and support the Stay Safe programme; then in a row, your now streetwise child hurls "I'll ring Childline" at you, and you feel an unreasonable twinge of fear.

Mothering has never been more angst ridden. In an age that's far from innocent, we've taken on the burden of rearing not just healthy children, but children who are smart, independent, psychologically sound, non sexist, filled with self esteem, able to think for themselves, and of course kind and caring to old people (us).

And, oh yes, children who will do more or less what we say without us having to come the heavy. We hate to see ourselves as heavy parents.

So are there any golden rules for modern mothers, us daughters of the 60s and the decades beyond who were so busy crying freedom, we didn't have many thoughts about child rearing except that we'd make the boys and girls share the washing up? What have we learnt from our experience of mothering?

Well, one thing for certain, and that is that you can't have it all, and expect to sleep as well. That you're lucky if anyone helps you with the washing up. That working motherhood has produced a generation of men who know how to take care of small children, a lot of truly exhausted parents, but has done little to make our society value child rearing.

(It was amusing, if a little wearying, to hear the incomprehension in Vincent Browne's voice on a post Women's Day radio show this week: in raging 60s liberal mode, he sounded outraged that feminists like Noreen Byrne and Catherine McKinnon could agree with Nora Bennis that women's work in the home just isn't valued. Why are half of Ireland's female doctors GPs, he demanded, when there are only two women gynaecologists/obstetricians? At a guess, I presume it might have something to do with the fact women doctors may be less willing than male colleagues to sacrifice family life to gruelling years of training and long consultants' hours.)

A lot of us are more than a little mixed up about just how much we value children: on the one hand, we believe we're more sensitive to children's physical and emotional needs than previous generations, and anxious to do a good, even a better, job of parenting than our parents. On the other, I bet I'm not the only working mother who has given up a couple of hours of precious family time to go to a parent course. And of course when it suits us, we'll also argue that divorce is good for kids.

(Ironically, the be a better parent industry seems to thrive in conditions where families are small, and often under stress: in North America, there are endless upbeat books and magazines on how to have it all but get it right. An article about how to share parenting concludes: "When it comes to raising kids, the best parents are team players". Then again, its idea of family life is a little different to the Irish norm: the author reckons that the best examples of shared parenting are on TV - for example, Ross, Carol, and Susan of Freinds: "an ex husband, his ex wife, and her lesbian lover, who share the trials of raising their newborn child".

Childcare who should do it, who should pay for it, whether we shouldn't at least get some tax relief on it - remains a contentious issue in many Western countries. But hey, maybe it will broaden the children's minds - I know one seven year old who has a fairly sophisticated grasp of the roots of Basque nationalism after a succession of Spanish au pairs.

And wrong or not, by the time we're parents, we've got too many other concerns to want to campaign about childcare. They're parent concerns, that we share with our sisters working full time in the home.

Concerns that start in infancy, and just never seem to end: for a couple of years it's all sleeping, and eating, and toilet training, then which playschool, and when to start them in primary school. Before you can say relationships and sexuality education", they're asking to go to their first disco (yes, by the time they're 11 and 12 and in sixth class, many are interested in boys/girls) or to "hang out" in town. By the time they're 17, 93 per cent of teenagers are drinking, and many start a lot earlier - is yours one of them? Did you remember to warn your daughter about alcohol and sex? How would you cope with teen pregnancy? And yes, will you all survive the points race and the Leaving, that passport to the better life that puts immense pressure on parents and children every year?

Do you spoil them? Are you mad to spend days tracking down the last Tigerzord in town for the Santy present, especially when you hate everything about Power Rangers but don't want to disappoint your tot? To pay for Levis for your teenagers, and £90 for a pair of running shoes, when you still dress at Dunne's yourself?

All along, there are routine worries about health - is this the stomach ache that will turn into appendicitis? The fever that turns out to be meningitis? The teen diet that turns into anorexia?

It would hardly be worth it if it wasn't for the children themselves. Not just the small, messy, talcumed, cuddly babies that make mammies and grannies go all gooey and misty eyed, but the three year old who invites your child over to watch a video of kangaroos giving birth, the six year old who tells you at your tot's birthday party: "You don't look like her mammy, you look like her granny!" The adolescents who suddenly stop being ugly teenagers and start mothering you themselves. The kids who make sure you never get smug or pompous or old, because they'll jeer you out of it.

Sticky and sentimental, or what? That's mothers for you. Happy Mother's Day.