Manic cake-baking at midnight. After-school activities and young social lives that require dedicated and complex organisation. Mother-of-the-birthday-boy meltdowns.

No Sex. No Nights out. No Sleep. Ever.

What's wrong with this picture? That's the question Judith Warner asked herself after taking a good, hard look at the world of modern motherhood, at anxious women at work and in bed with unhappy husbands.

By moving personally between the worlds of stay-at-home and working motherhood, interviewing numerous women and reading and seeing what our popular culture and politicians had to offer on the subject of motherhood in our time, Warner comes to a stark conclusion: that what is now happening in the culture of motherhood is nothing less that perfect madness.

Written in a lively, accessible and often amusing tone, this is a book that all mothers will be able to relate to.