Back to school

A big shout out to those of our advertisers that are working mums. The oldest and - at times - one of the hardest professions in the World is even tougher if you have kids. Oh, yeah, it's already really hard having kids in the first place...

Opinion seems to be split between when or even whether you should tell your kids what you do for a living.

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of good advice out there, a quick Google got these:

• A very frank confession from an Australian
• Random madness on Yahoo Answers
• A reasonably balanced piece from the Daily Beast

When we tried to work out what advice to give, we realised we can't. There is no single answer. It makes sense that the best outcome is probably that your kids never know. For many people, this is the same as 'no-one' should ever know. But if your situation means that they might end up finding out, then this is something which you might want to manage in advance or at least work out how to do so.

The only thing that is probably seriously good advice is don't get caught in a lie: if you are confronted by one of your kids with the question and lie, there is a good chance you can seriously damage both your authority and the relationship. If they are asking the question, you are already probably in deep shi*... Most of those outcomes are worse than either working out how you will react in advance or having your answers ready for them. Even if it is true, you can't tell them that 'I have done this for you'. You need to explain much more about how you made your choices - or ended up without choices - to make them understand; and none of that is 'their fault'.