My daughter is now 16. She has friends whose mothers work. She has friends whose mothers have stayed at home. I do not see any marked difference in the behaviour of the girls whose mothers work and the one whose mothers have chosen to stay at home.

There is, however, a difference betwen different friendship groups at her school, and what they get up to. There are kids whose parents take no responsibility for them and let them go out in town every Friday and Saturday night, either condoning or turning a blind eye to the fact that their 16 year old daughters are using fake ID and going into pubs and clubs. The inability or unwillingness to set parameters and boundaries for one's children is not a particular feature of either stay-at-home mothers or working mothers, in my experience: it is down to different approaches to parenting, and some are a lot better than others.

My daughter's group does not socialise in town - they go to each other's houses and hang out. My daughter had her 16th birthday party on Saturday night. 6 of her friends came round. They made sushi and chattered away in the kitchen before going upstairs. At 9 o'clock my partner and I went out for a meal at the village pub. We returned at midnight and I expected to find a bunch of harridans running around my house. Instead, 5 of them were already in bed, and the two who were still awake were watching a DVD on the computer in another bedroom.

Of the 7 girls who were there (including my daughter), two of them have mums who haven't worked. The others have mums who work full or part-time - yes, some even have the dreaded "career". The thing they have in common is parents who set parameters and expect certain standards of behaviour.

From what my daughter tells me, the girls who go out to pubs and clubs are, at her school, the exception rather than the rule.

I can only speak from my own experience, and prefer to judge based on what I see myself.