"What do you mean he's not potty trained!" she would yelp at me panic-stricken whilst shovelling home-made organic baby food into her youngest, terrified that proximity to an unpotty trained two-and-a-halfyear-old nephew could result in social ostracisation. And in middleclass English society it does.

Ditto America - shortly after a New York friend moved here she informed me that her two-year old would be bilingual Irish/English by the time she was four because she was going to Trinity under pain of death. I told her if she carried on like that she would have a lap-dancing heroin addict on her hands by the age of 14 - her relief was palpable and our friendship was sealed.

From the vantage point of not having to be a competitive mother, I rather approve of it. There are worse things to compete over than one's ability to be a good parent, like the size of your house, the the make of your car or the pertness of your breasts - all of which seem to be ambitions we have heartily (and depressingly) embraced. We have "yummy mummies" - Brown Thomas babes with cavernous multi-pocketed baby bags and SUVs - but they are buying their home-made cookies and flavoured breads in Avoca - the easy way out.

In other, more developed western cultures there is a timetable by which your child should be sleeping through the night, weaned, on solids, using a potty, walking, talking, reading, writing, wiping their own bottom, etc. If you waver a few months before or after these important milestones you will either gain the respect of the other mothers as a "Supermom" or be reviled as a "Bad Mother". It is control freakery at its most impressive. At last - something tangible and terrible to worry about for the sake of it. Never mind the wrinkles and the cellulite, ladies - you might be poisoning your child if you do not feed him exclusively on home-made organic produce. If your child is not potty-trained at the right time or is weaned too early or too late, they could develop terrible psychological problems and end up in prison. Or therapy! You could be thwarting their future ambitions to be a doctor if you don't have them speaking as gaeilge 15 minutes after exiting the womb. And that's before we've even started with the sewing and the baking.

Parents here are happy to just fling money at children's birthday parties, bowling, adventure parks, MacDonalds - Thunder Road Caf� if you're posh - whatever. Oh no - this is not up to standard at all. What we Irish mothers need to whip us into shape is the high-maintenance home party.

This is where you fix it for 30 little girls to sew themselves handbags made from bits of discarded denim and decorate them with buttons, sequins and patches which you have been collecting and cutting for the last three months. Or the camping party for all your son's classmates where each child goes home with a baked-bean billy-can soldered with his initials. This thing of shoving them in front of a DVD with a family pack of Tayto is just not good enough, ladies! It's time we got up to speed and finally embraced the truly neurotic nature of modern parenthood.