Deborah Coddington: Voice of reason among yelps of feminine frailty

I'll be spanked, metaphorically, for saying this, but I've concluded, after another sojourn in the land of my father's birth, that some English women are barking.

Take Sandy (not her real name), owner of the homestay in a rural village. When we arrived 10 minutes early she flew into a rage, threw her hat on the ground, accused us of giving her heart pains and behaved so badly we nearly headed back to London if not for the £1500 ($3468) my daughter had forked out in advance.

In that weekend's Telegraph, Clare Latimer, who once fed Prime Minister John Major, whined Gordon Brown's eating habits showed his incapacity to rule Britain. Latimer was "dismayed" that, late at night, Brown committed the food crime of heating his dinner in the microwave.

Apparently, prime ministers should keep their staff on very late, and insist on a three-course meal, because if "he can't handle his own diet, how on Earth can he be expected to handle the country?"

Woof, woof.

And speaking of going to the dogs, the Guardian in August ran a feature by journalist Michele Hanson who "hates camping and admits her beloved boxers are out of control" but nonetheless decided to attend "doggy boot camp". It rained. The tent was small. Hanson couldn't sleep. Words I'm not allowed to say come to mind. They rhyme with "singeing bomb".

Then Hanson confirmed my prejudices about English women's inability to cope with pressure: "After lunch ... it is here in Sainsbury's carpark ... my lack of sleep catches up with me and I crack up. There are no seats in the carpark, so I have a little breakdown, throw myself on to the verge and weep loudly, like a madwoman ... screaming with a tomato face".

Before you rush off to the Human Rights Commission, I personally know and love sane English women, but in my readings that August week only New Zealand-born Louise Chunn, a leading journalist and editor in Britain for 20 years, talked sense. Made redundant in November last year, now freelance, she wrote in the Guardian an account of her years juggling kids and fulltime jobs - missing their first words, steps, and schooling, but spared readers any bleating.

"I am not terribly sentimental or guilt-ridden about their babyhood. In fact, in inverse proportion to many women I know, I feel that the older children get, the more important it is to keep an eye on their progress."

Amen to that. I can't imagine Chunn having a tantrum because there were no seats on a hot day, or because her clients arrived 10 minutes early (and "Sandy" told us she used to be a Fleet Street journalist).

But I particularly related to Chunn's reminiscing on "the big question for many women my age was will having children affect my chances of having a career?"

Now, she says, the question has switched to, "how will my job affect my children?"

Like Chunn, I fell into the former camp. We didn't fit our jobs around our children. We met deadlines come chickenpox, pregnancies, and caesareans even. We'd fought hard to be taken as seriously as our male colleagues; we didn't want to lose that respect by making demands. There was no paid parental leave but, guess what? The world didn't end.

Today, as Chunn wrote, timetables must fit the nursery. The pregnant woman is treated like a fragile goddess, unable to carry out certain tasks, to go into "danger" zones. The office is cluttered with mothers bleating like ewes about leaving their children for the day.

As Chunn wrote: "It isn't easy to get work done when significant numbers are on maternity leave or working flexible hours - and it isn't always fair on their child-free colleagues either."

And, right on cue, when I returned home the Families Commission called on the Government to extend paid parental leave from 14 weeks to 13 months.

The so-called feminists who support this won't like to hear the "inconvenient truth" from Dr Nicola Brewer, departing CEO of Britain's Equality and Human Rights Commission, who said extended maternity leave was "threatening women's progress in the workplace".