Pity poor mothers: the nanny always wins

We working mums are mocked and damned, selfish bitches all, in films like The Nanny Diaries. The inconvenient truth is that many mothers, including the most successful, have little domestic power: even the most inept nanny can rule the roost.

They do unacceptable things that you must meekly accept. When my daughter was a few months old I hired an Asian woman to look after her. One day I came back from a meeting to find several of her clan making tea and snacks in the kitchen. I couldn't tell her not to repeat the party because my baby had taken to her. Six months and many merry gatherings later, I finally asked her to leave. Then there was the reliable Bosnian who one day disappeared with my child until dark. I thought it was an abduction. But no, back they came, the child sticky, wet and cranky. They had gone to the airport to meet someone and the flight had been delayed. I told her off and she vengefully stayed away for four days.

Lucinda, a born-again Christian Afro-Caribbean, ate golden syrup cakes and watched TV with my toddler for all her working hours. When I gently told her to take the child out to the park, she said Christ would be displeased with my rudeness. An acquaintance, Helen, a solicitor, has just bust up with her neglectful nanny. She rang me: "I'm really worried what she may do" - a lawyer, cowed.

She, like most of us, feels caught. Children like continuity and get attached to carers, however inadequate; mothers don't want to distress the child and will go a long way to support the substitute parent. There is that fear, too, that the nanny will just push off. Carefully balanced work arrangements then fall apart and few bosses sympathise. Most working mums know this powerlessness; Spelman too, I daresay. And for that she does deserve sympathy.