Mariella Frostrup

I hate the thought of my children being glued to a screen. Children only play on computers all day because their parents let them.

Finding extracurricular activities with your husband that are unrelated to children, family and work is a priority.

One of my few childhood memories is as an eight-year-old, refused permission to watch the Hitchcock season on Irish television, sneakily viewing 'The Birds' though a crack in the living-room door. It transformed my hitherto perfectly enjoyable half-mile walk to school, down a country lane patrolled by watchful birds, into a terrifying ordeal.

Once you've raised a child to adulthood, you can only be as demanding as your offspring allow.

I'm a control freak. And more so now that I have children.

We're naturally programmed to endure a muddle of emotions as we leave childhood behind.

In my child's-eye view, whenever I was exposed to pain, it meant that my mother had let me down.

I can't sleep in an isolated place without pills, earplugs, and both my children in bed with me for fear of scary, feral characters with a hankering for the wilderness.

Nothing can prepare you for the all-consuming nature of motherhood, and I am very aware of my good fortune, as I spent years fretting about whether I'd ever meet anyone to have a baby with.

Had Elizabeth Bennet known how wildly Darcy's heart beat for her, 'Pride and Prejudice' would barely have made it into a short story. Their torturously slow-burning romance is a classic example of how men and women still struggle to communicate the most basic of emotions.

The great advantage of being human is that we can employ rational thought and resolve to change our circumstances.

Loneliness and rootlessness are just symptoms of an insecurity that assails us all when hitting this midlife moment. The world appears intent on blanking you out.