MOTHERS' PLACE: Being both mother and worker makes any woman a heroine, writes Kathryn Holmquist

Kerry Katona, parent of a six-month-old, has been made "mother of the year" in Britain. I'm still trying to figure out why. Maybe it's because she was able to afford giving up work and so has plenty of time to flaunt the bloom of motherhood.

I think a mother of the year should be somebody with a couple of children who is working hard to combine career and family. We mothers who do it all are tired of feeling insulted by media commentators - mostly women - who seem to believe that a mother's ideal place is in the home.

A snide remark from a female commentator, to the effect that Mother's Day at least gave children of working mothers the opportunity to see their mothers, shows how far the backlash has gone. Claims that children in quality childcare are worse off than children minded solely by their mothers are unsubstantiated by a review of the research. And I refuse to accept that mothers who work outside the home love their children any less. As for time - the average working mother spends 10 minutes per day more with her child than the average stay-at-home mother in the 1970s.

What I most resent about this backlash against working mothers is the way such commentators make working mothers feel unjustifiably guilty, instead of the heroines we are as we struggle - and succeed - in two jobs.

Follow the criticism of mothers who work outside the home to its logical conclusion and you arrive at an antiquated view of society, where mothers rear children and fathers earn the money. This would mean that only childless women could work in the media, politics, medicine, psychology and social work, law, education, finance and business. It would also mean that fathers continue to be under the kind of earning pressure that keeps them from spending sufficient time with their children. And we would all be the worse for being deprived of the influence of mothers in working life.

When you're a mother of young children, with a job outside the home, and you are under so much stress that you feel you are about to break, the old-fashioned view can seem appealing. If you are working only for financial necessity and really wish you didn't have to, you may feel jealous of those mothers whose partners earn enough to support them so that they don't have to work outside the home.

You may feel especially jealous when you see that a few privileged women not only have the financial choice of giving up careers for full-time motherhood, but also have full-time help and childcare assistance in the home as well. These women aren't strictly full-time mothers - they have fulfilling leisure pursuits like home decorating, artistic activities, volunteer work, tennis and golf. It's an enviable position, if you are the sort of woman that doesn't need a paid career in order to fulfil herself.

Scrape the surface, however, and you may find that many such women have sacrificed their own career fulfilment and that their stay-at-home lifestyle isn't as idyllic as it appears. Because combining work and family can be so difficult, some women have given up their own ambitions for the sake of their spouses and children.

Women who have the choice to work full-time in the home should be as highly regarded as women who work outside the home. But they shouldn't be more highly regarded. They are not better mothers. They may not even be spending more time with their children.

And if a mother's ideal place is in the home, then so is a father's - but nobody criticises fathers for earning a living. Fathers are not immune to regretting time stolen from their children. Many fathers privately grieve when the more successful they become, the less time they can spend at home.

Working mothers are actually in a position of strength because they can justify refusing promotion or downshifting in a career in order to spend more time with their children. It's almost unheard of for fathers to get away with this, especially if the father is the sole earner for the family.

But of all the arguments against idealising full-time motherhood, the greatest one is that it prevents the introduction of proper social supports.

As long as society believes that mothers who work are bad for children, then society will blame mothers when families come under stress and when good quality childcare cannot be found. Failing to offer proper supports punishes children - but it is society doing the harm, not the parents.

Societies that truly value working mothers also value family. For example, in Finland, virtually all mothers work outside the home and high-quality childcare is easily available. Yet no mother is expected to work for the three years after the birth of a child, unless she wants to. During that time she is paid to be a mother and her job is held open until she returns to work. Many women take just the time they need, rather than the full three years. If they return to work, their childcare costs are heavily subsidised by the state.

Theoretically, a Finnish woman could have four children three years apart and take 12 years paid leave. Yet families in Finland are small, with two children being the average. If they don't want to take the three years' paid leave from work, they get subsidised childcare instead. These options are healthy and pro-family and give parents a genuine choice.

Let's stop blaming mothers and start putting the responsibility where it really lies, which is with a Government that pays only lip-service to supports for families.