"Full time mummy is not a job title. It is a biological status.”

“Full time mummy is not a job title. It is a biological status” is the latest over-the-top sensationalist sentence to be spouted from the mouth of UK reality TV star and columnist Katie Hopkins.

Hopkins has written a blog deriding the one-third of British mothers who stay-at-home to care for their kids, and 47% of Australian mothers of under 4’s who stay-at-home. She claims it “makes my buttocks clench and my teeth itch” whenever she hears someone describe themselves as a ‘Full Time Mummy‘.

She writes:

Imagine the recruitment ad. ‘Full time mummy wanted – no experience necessary, no qualifications required. Must enjoy regular coffee mornings and Cath Kidston.’

Wherever ‘full time mummy’ goes, the ‘hardest job in the world’ is never far behind, clutching at her skirts – reminding us all how terribly brave her choice has been.

That’s the thing. The choice of life without work is a luxury many could not afford to enjoy. The full time mummy deceit is free membership to a club of stay-at-homers that never made it back to work and don’t have to.

A full time mum mentality excuses you from getting a real job like the big girl at school with her permanent sick note for games lessons.

She’s right in one regard. No qualifications are required to be a mother. No one can fully prepare you for what you will encounter, and the only experience you will take into it is that of your mother’s before you.

But does that make it of any less value?

Her argument, that stay-at-home mothers are there by choice, and that it is a luxury, ignores the simple fact that many stay-at-home Mums cannot afford to go back to work.

In Katie’s circles her full time Mummy friends may drive the luxury cars and spend their mornings drinking lattes but in the real world, many stay-at-home Mums are simply there because child care is so unaffordable they have no choice.

The average wage of a working woman in Australia is just over $700 a week. The average cost of childcare is around $100 a day.

For many families having a second income earner – i.e. Mum – is sinmply not realistsic – it’s too expensive to go back to work.

Surely even Katie should know that the cost of childcare has exploded in the last decade – even in the UK where it has risen by 77%

Her poisonous column, obviously written whilst lounging in her chesterfield sofa whilst her full-time Nanny cared for her kids shows absolutely no understanding of life as a stay-at home-Mum.

From Katie: "Personally I would rather boil my head in a saucepan of haddock soup than stay at home all day picking up spaghetti hoops off the kitchen floor... It doesn't make you an interesting person to sit next to at dinner."

I say to Katie, listen up: some women do choose stay-at-home motherhood. Many I meet on a daily basis have had a full and varied career, some lawyers, some public servants, some as carers for the elderly. These women have now chosen to ‘pick up spaghetti hoops’, but what’s it to you, Katie?

They don’t take subsidies or government benefits, they don’t leave their kids at your house when they just have to nip off to a meeting, they don’t leave all the volunteer duties at school to someone else, as they are too busy. This is their choice.