I must declare myself first of all. I have always held that women should pursue their own career or have a job outside the home. I remember as a child I didn’t particularly want to be like my mother: five mostly naughty children who did little else but cause trouble of one sort of another. No,  I knew I did not want to be like her.

The first thing I asked my husband-to-be when he proposed marriage was: “Will you allow me to work?” In Malta in my time, men were reluctant to let their wives out of the house and into the working world. Even now, there are still men who feel diminished if they have a working wife although this is changing fast.

My husband-to-be assured me that there would be no problem. It was normal for women in Mauritus to work. Domestic help was plentiful and he even had friends who had a family of five or six children and whose wives worked. That clinched the love match. I had always intended being a working wife and mother.

My first year of marriage was spent at home, pottering about. We were renting a small house and there wasn’t much to do. I had a fulltime Indian girl who did absolutely everything – from making my coffee a dozen times a day, to peeling the vegetables for me to cook. A part-time gardener took care of the garden surrounding the house.

I was soon pregnant and between morning sickness and the time my husband returned from work – the sound of his footsteps outside were eagerly awaited – I read and read and played records. There was little else to do. The few women I was acquainted with were all working.

Once our eldest was born, after some months, I hunted for a job. I needed mental stimulation. I asked the British Council representative if she had anything I could do to help run the library. I did not have to be paid. So we arranged for her to send me boxes of books with her driver to be classified and catalogued. But I soon found that working at home alone was not very exciting. Although I was the first woman in Malta to be qualified as librarian I was not naturally a librarian at heart. But qualified librarians were scarce in Mauritius and I soon applied and got a job running a town library: the Carnegie Library of the Municipality of Curepipe, one of the coolest towns in Mauritius. It had a distinguished collection of books left by French émigrés who had fled the French revolution… and half the staff were on opium.

I shall never forget the wrench in the morning of leaving my darling 1975 baby with Maisie. The ties we have with our children are tremendous. I felt as if I was knitted to her. My dear father wrote discouraging letters remonstrating me for leaving our child with someone I hardly knew when she could barely be trusted with a broom as far as he was concerned. As if the guilt is not already there prepared to pounce from nowhere – the feeling of guilt for what you should be doing at home when at the office and guilt at home for the work left undone at the office.

And so I joined the club of working mothers. Half the time you think you should be baking jam tarts and making marmalade instead of buying Chivers while the other half is spent thinking of your job, trying to keep up with your reading.  The following year I was recruited to organise library and information courses at the University of Mauritius in conjunction with a Canadian development agency. I was also doing research, correcting students’ assignments well into the night after putting our second baby to sleep. Women take on two jobs at their peril. It is a fierce battle and let no one tell you it is easy. It isn’t. It is very hard work. You feel that you are doing children an injustice by not being there every minute of the day, as your mother was. Should you be allowing others to bring up your children? You are constantly questioning yourself.

Of course because I had excellent domestic help I did not have to worry about unironed shirts, untidy drawers or unwatered plants. But the guilt remained throughout my working life and only eased off when my children grew up into loving, ‘normal’ human beings and were able to fend for themselves.

I believe we miss our children more than they miss us. I like Yeats verses about love: “It is a pity beyond all telling, is hid in the heart of love. The folks who are buying and selling, the clouds on their journey above. These and the cold wet wind threaten the one I love.” One constantly has to restrain one’s imagination and the painting of dreadful scenarios. But of course, this does not stop just because they are married and have children of their own. I still call them when I hear an ambulance in the distance and ask if everything is alright.

But it is impossible to know in advance the strength of feelings for the young baby normal mothers have and the need to be with their child. This strong emotional bond has to be lived to be understood. Leaving your baby with someone is one of the hardest decisions in life. At least it has been for me, although I don’t think it has affected my daughters in any way.

Speaking to other working mothers helped. My psychologist friend Catherine Hein who was in Malta recently to give a seminar on working mothers, what else, lectured at the University of Mauritius and had three naughty sons. She would assure me that a child who is left at home, in the hands of an able carer, a good mother substitute, will not suffer psychologically. Her three sons are now grown up and all following sturdy careers.

I worked because going against one’s nature is simply not healthy. I knew that sitting at home all day with a baby would lead to unhappiness. Women make better mothers and wives when they have the self-respect which a job gives them. Surely having a mother who is developed and creative is a good thing? What fun can a mother who is isolated with her sink all day, fighting dirt and invisible germs which are lurking ready to attack our family (or so we are told) be to children?

Coralled in the domestic space, women are sitting targets for the media, radio and TV as well as the older weapon of the women’s magazines. (They still are. Just listen to the radio and TV in the mornings and early afternoon.) The message that women’s place is in the home with her labour-saving devices is still reinforced today. Such devices could cut down on drudgery but would also perpetuate it, by making possible ever higher standards of domestic hygiene and comfort to which the housewife could aspire. I was never taken in by all this. I do what I can to keep a neat home but I have never let a little dust bother me otherwise I could so easily spend my day with a feather duster in hand and do little else.

But there is no doubt that striding forward into the world with children hanging on to your legs is doubly difficult. Yet women have always worked in earlier times and in other societies, I keep telling myself. They have made a major contribution and brought up children too. It is only as they try to join the structured world of commerce created by men that it has produced this conflict with childcare. It is still a working world created by men for men.

Why is motherhood like some skeleton kept in the cupboard and why do most of us collaborate in keeping our children invisible?  We have the terrible fear that to concede that there are emotional pulls or practical complications will be used against us in the work place. I recognized at once that our children had to be visible. Together with my husband they were the most important part of my life. I remember us deciding to take our then four-year-old to our first conference in Nairobi. This taught her many things. She quietly looked at her picture books while papers were being presented by several speakers. She enjoyed a glass of milk and biscuits during the breaks and put her head on my lap for a nap when the academic papers and her picture books became too boring. She came to understand the necessity of silence on certain occasions. Here was a chance to see a part of Africa and who was going to stop us from taking her along if she was not going to be a nuisance? No one did stop us in fact.

I always understood that a mother’s emotional well being effects the quality of her mothering. Women who find some fulfillment and sense of self-worth in their work life are better mothers, and there is no doubt that an at-home mother who resents her lot is harmful to her children. We are all subject to our nature. A working mother brings a connection with the outside world… she is often better equipped to help her children than a purely domestic goddess.

But I soon realized when I returned to Malta that a working mother is only as good as her childcare arrangements. Here relatives are used a great deal as substitute child carers. Then there are the lucky few who earn enough to afford excellent replacement care. Whether women can be working mothers or not really hinges on the kind of childcare that is available. (Mr Prime minister please note).

Many women don’t use their considerable abilities outside the home because they are allowed to be lazier than men. They are taught to be competitive only physically with other women. Men are more involved with ideas and they have also been forced to develop themselves mentally more than women have, although this is changing.

I sometimes get embarrassed listening to the banalities some women discuss although I admire them in many other ways. One way out of this is to go out and get a job.

But the dual role has its hazards. Most mothers have a work persona and a mothering one. In order to cope with their dual responsibility, women find that they have to be efficient to survive. Getting the balance right is so much more complex than we could ever imagine before becoming parents. How to stay emotionally available to your family while succeeding in the market place is the issue of our time. A woman always weighs up her actions and their effect on her relationships. How will promotion and longer hours affect her family? Her colleagues? Her husband? Struggling always to find a balance between work, life and womanliness, career and children, she walks a tightrope between two worlds, facing daunting criticism of both her roles.

But it is up to the individual. Some cope better than others. For one thing, it is a question of stamina. There is no doubt that a great deal of stamina is needed for this dual role. Then there is determination and the ability to achieve a patchwork of working and parenting which are entwined into a satisfying whole. But although it is far from easy those who achieve it have a sense of fulfillment.

Many women have a choice whether to work or not but soon, there will be no choice for most of us.