Sure, you can take some time off work to spend with the kids but sometimes that's not possible and making arrangements for childcare can be costly, stressful and time-consuming.
 
Even Mummy and I are feeling the strain as our 17-month-old son's nursery has shut down for a fortnight and, shock horror, we've had to look after our own child ourselves!
 
Seriously, though, juggling work and family responsibilities appears to be getting more and more difficult for us all and a new report from Cambridge University revealed that growing numbers of people are concerned with the impact of working mums on family life.
 
Whereas in 1998, 51 per cent of women and 45.9 per cent of men believed family life would not suffer if a woman went to work, these figures dropped to 46 per cent of women and 42 per cent of men in 2002.

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Golden Boy seems to rise with the sun, so I’m usually woken by a little, 16-month-old voice telling me to “get up” sometimes as early as 5.30am.

Mummy and I will lay there silently, hoping he will see sense and go back to sleep, before further demands of “downstairs” and “breakfast” are issued.

It is often Mummy who will crack first and fetch him from his cot but earlier this week I decided to be better than I normally am in the morning and got him up myself.

We left Mummy to sleep and she came down to breakfast looking bright and cheery a couple of hours later.

My benevolence was repaid the following morning, as Mummy whisked Golden Boy downstairs soon after he woke up.

“Let’s allow Daddy to have a lie-in,” she said, closing the bedroom door. I was still quite out of it and fell back into a deep sleep seconds after they left.

Is there anything more glorious than a lie-in? So busy are we with our hectic, modern lives that the opportunity to enjoy a long, uninterrup

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It was great to quaff beer in the warm sun, check out some cool bands and pretend that I am still down with the kids.

However, I was flummoxed by the sight of children about my son’s age – just 16 months – who were being dragged around the festival site by their parents.

Who on earth would take a baby to a massive rock music festival? There is nothing positive a small child could possibly get out of it.

Some festivals, such as the Big Chill, accommodate children but most, such as Roskilde and Glastonbury, do not. Still, that doesn’t stop some parents from taking their kids along for “the experience”.

The poor kids I saw at Roskilde were caked in dust and baking in the hot sun as they were subjected to deafening music and increasingly squalid conditions. (Anyone who has ever been to a large music festival knows that any bush, wall, bin or tree will be used as a makeshift toilet eventually.)

Scenes witnessed by friends at last year’s mud-splattered Glastonbury included toddlers in tears as they were being hurried along through giant pudd

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Mummy and I have considered ourselves fortunate that our son, now 15 months, was always a good eater, and I’m amazed by what he can pack away.

On some days I think he eats more than I do. However, with all the running around he does, I’m not surprised he needs it.

Of course, what he eats is all good, nutritious food designed to help him grow up happily and healthily: he loves bananas, grapes, raisins and oranges; broccoli, peas and carrots; fish and chicken; and, above all, yogurt (or “ogut” as he calls it).

Sure he gets a treat every now and again – there’s always cake and custard for tea at nursery on a Friday – but we try to avoid the food that aren’t good for him, namely crisps, which he has never had.

So I was dismayed this week when I read a report stating that nearly a quarter of children aged 4 to 5 and almost a third of 10 to 11-year-olds in England were either obese or overweight.

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By 9am I had done three loads of sick-stained laundry and gone to the shop to buy croissants and the Sunday papers. No lie-in or relaxing morning for Daddy.

Anyway, a story on the front page of one paper announced that mothers in this country will soon have the legal right to breast-feed babies in public places, including restaurants, bars and trains.

My mum, who has been staying with us, was stunned that such a law needed to be created. “Don’t politicians have more important things to think about?” she said.

In a way, I agreed. I mean, do we really need a law to say it is OK to feed your child in a perfectly normal and natural way in public? It seems almost silly… until you hear all the stories about how women are made to feel shamed for breast-feeding discreetly in view of others.

Only last week a 23-year-old mother was told not to feed her three-month-old baby in a doctor's surgery because it breached health and safety rules. How ridic

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