By Elizabeth Heathcote
London - Gina Ford is a woman on a mission. "My next challenge is to change things in this country for mothers," she says.
"I have been observing mothers for 30 years and I think it is harder and more stressful for them than it has ever been. Mothers are so exhausted they can't see the wood for the trees. Let us pin the government against the wall. Let us say,we want change now. Not in three or four years, but now."
There is no doubt that the most controversial childcare expert in Britain is a powerhouse. A self-confessed workaholic, Ford has written eight books in the past seven years. Her most famous, The Contented Little Baby Book (CLBB), has sold half a million copies and continues to outsell all-comers.
In reaction to the liberal nursery regimes of breastfeeding babies on demand and co-sleeping that took precedence in the Seventies and Eighties, Ford advocates a strict routine from birth.
Loved and loathed in equal measure, she has divided parents and experts and, in the process, achieved that rare feat of seeing her name move into common usage. New mothers whisper about whether little Toby or Clementine is being "Gina-ed".
Her latest book takes a break from childcare manuals. Good Mother Bad Mother is a mix of memoir - her own and other women's- and musings on the fate of today's mothers. She draws from her experience working as a maternity nurse to more than 300 children and, after writing CLBB, of advising readers over the phone.
Good Mother Bad Mother is primarily about guilt, and as such is guaranteed to strike a chord with women. "My mother asked my auntie the day before she died, 'Was I a good mother?'" says Ford. "Those words have been asked of me probably hundreds of thousands of times by so many mothers.I think it's a question that every mother asks herself."
She believes that women need to stop quibbling about "whether your children have brown rice or white rice or whether you breastfeed for six months or a year. Women have spent years trying to liberate themselves and fighting men, now they are fighting each other. Did burning the bra help women at all? No,it's just a waste of time.
"Mothers are made to feel guilty if they go back to work and put their children into care, but children have always been cared for by other people. Years ago children grew up in an extended family, cared for by aunties and uncles and grandparents and neighbours. The only difference nowadays is that some women choose to pay for their childcare."
Ford believes that mothers who stay at home to bring up their children suffer too, isolated and increasingly carrying the burden of care alone.
"Mothers feel guilty now if they want to spend a couple of hours away from their children. That would never have happened 50 years ago. By the time baby was two months old they were off to granny's for a night, or the neighbour had them for the afternoon."
The government, she believes, needs to recognise how drastic and irrevocable have been the changes, and how damaging for mothers.
"In my view they should pay women to stay at home and rear their children if they want to, so that mothers who don't want to go out to work are not forced to. And for women who choose to go to work, there should be better childcare and it should be subsidised. What mothers do not need is to read books that say that if they put their children into childcare they are possibly damaging them. We need to go about resolving childcare, not say to mothers you must stay at home."
But aren't her own books part of the problem?
"I don't tell people how to bring up their kids," she says. "I tell them about feeding and sleeping. How they choose to deal with other issues is up to them."
Gina's early marriage broke down before she had children - a source of great sadness to her as well as a fact frequently cited against her methods.
I wonder if her empathy with mothers has anything to do with the criticism she has experienced since CLBB. Sheila Kitzinger, the natural childbirth pioneer, dismissed Ford's routines by saying they "may work for dogs".
Penelope Leach, a leader of the liberal school of child-rearing, said that controlled crying - part of Ford's armoury in extremis - could lead to attachment issues. One mother even tried to get the NSPCC to investigate her routines. The charity declined.
Her inspiration comes from her own mother, who was 20 when she had Gina and died of cancer, in 1998, just as Gina was setting out to write CLBB.
Good Mother Bad Mother is an elegy to the sexy, well-dressed woman she describes, who certainly broke the mould in the working-class rural Borders of the Sixties. She was independent and strong-willed, and married a man who was spoilt and self-centred. He left when Gina was two,and she was raised within the extended family. It was a poor but wholesome childhood.When Gina was nine, her mother took a job asa waitress.
"It changed her, gave her a sense of identity and independence.From then on I realised the importance of work to women."
Their relationship was very close,volatile and lots of fun. The two of them, so near in age, became best friends early on. "My mum had an incredible sense of humour. Her cup was always half full. She would not allow negativity into her life. I'm like that. She would say, you must march to the beat of your own drum even if you march alone. You must stand up for what you know is right. It has made me an incredibly strong person."
As with most truly driven people, you sense her childhood was tough as well as colourful. Her mother suffered periods of depression and Gina says they took turns to mother each other. She tells an anecdote from the day her father left. "I remember the furniture van came and he said, 'I'm going to leave, I'm giving you two and six but you have to look after Mummy'. And I remember thinking, God, two and six isn't going to go very far."
Ford insists she plays as hard as she works. She lives between Edinburgh, London and Switzerland and relaxes by doing makeovers on friends' houses, cooking and shopping.
"I am known as the Imelda Marcos of the North."
And she is slowing down-a bit. After a health scare last year she now works "12 hours a day instead of 18".
So what makes a good mother? Her own mother qualified, despite her shortcomings, and that of course is the point. It is the love that matters, and that, she says, needs to be directed at yourself, as well as your child.
"You know how on an plane they always remind parents, that if they have to make an emergency landing, to put on your own life-jacket first before you put on the baby's? I used to say to new mothers, 'Tell me, now you're a mother, who's the most important person in your life?' They would say, 'Gina, that's a stupid question - my baby, of course'. And I would say, 'No. You must be the most important person in your life. Because if you don't look after you, you could end up where you can't look after your baby.' Don't feel guilty about having needs."
Ford's top tips for a happy baby
Gina Ford believes that by following her strict feeding and sleeping routines, you will anticipate your baby's needs before it cries. By structuring feeds during the day and making night the time for sleep, parents will have fewer broken nights too.
1) Do not feed a baby every time it cries to demand food. Stick to routine feed times and look instead for other reasons why the baby might be crying, such as over-stimulation or tiredness.
2) Establish a bedtime routine (bath, cuddle, lights out) and follow it daily so baby learns that these associations mean it is time to sleep.
3) Limit the length of baby's daytime naps in accordance with the routines. Too much sleep during the day will disturb nighttime rest. If necessary, wake up the baby.
4) New babies need calm and quiet. Limit visitors as far as possible in the first two weeks.
5) Swaddle a new baby (half-swaddle from six weeks) for sleep. This is very comforting.
- Good Mother Bad Mother is published by Vermilion. - Independent on Sunday