There's dough and there's dough

I have an admission to make: I make my own bread. Farmhouse white, crusty wholemeal, feta and thyme - you name it, I bake it. In my grandmother's time, this would have been something to be proud of, a skill possessed by any wife and mother worth her salt. But my mother's generation, the bra-burning trailblazers who opened so many doors for women, are surely throwing up their hands in despair at the current fashion for all things home-bound.

How dare I and my contemporaries harbour desires to make the perfect pavlova when we should be bashing a path to the top of our high-flying careers of choice?

A few years ago I would have been reluctant to admit how easily I had abandoned my career in favour of life as a housewife, but I'm starting to realise I'm not alone. Thanks in no small part to Nigella Lawson, we are starting to see cooking as a form of relaxation, as well as a hobby to be practised and perfected. There are some who take the domestic goddess crusade to the next level and even claim to enjoy housework, but then it takes all types, I suppose.

For me, there is something rather retro-glamorous about kneading dough on a wooden block in my kitchen even if I have to block out the screams of my children while I enjoy my little daydream. I always feel as though I should be wearing a pinny with a flowery print and listening to the wireless. I do wonder, though, if I'll wake up one day in a cold sweat and think where the years have gone while I've been striving for the perfect souffle. My brain will be rotten from lack of use, my office skills hopelessly out of date. I'll be unemployable - unless, of course, I find a company that needs someone to bake them some flapjacks for afternoon tea.

It's true that women want to have their cake and eat it. After all, what's the point of cake unless you can eat it? Why can't we hold down a demanding job and be a competent housewife, adoring mother and devoted wife?