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Kitchen Goddess Nigella Lawson says all mums feel like failures

Although Nigella Lawson almost singlehandedly created the Kitchen Goddess ideal – even she admits when it comes to motherhood she feels like a failure.

The TV chef who is mum to 18-year-old Cosima and Bruno, 16, and step-mum to her husband’s daughter Phoebe, says there is too much conflicting advice for parents which makes her doubt her own parenting choices.

“I think it’s impossible to be a mother without a huge sense of failure. Not that I think of my children as failures. I think they’re wonderful. But one is always aware of what one isn’t doing right,” she told the Radio Times.

“People who don’t have children imagine that their whole lives would be all right if they had children, but they don’t realise that having children gives you lots of problems; one is constantly worried.”

Like most mums it seems Nigella also turns to her friends with her parenting worries: “I was really helped by a friend recently because I was thinking, ‘Oh, God, I’m not strict enough’ and this friend said to me, ‘Look, Nigella, you don’t choose whether to be a strict mother or not, you really are what you are. It’s not a decision.’”

And refreshingly it seems like Nigella is just like the rest of us admitting that she doesn’t always keep on top of the housework – although she has recently moved to a £12 million house in Chelsea!

Do you agree with Nigella that there is too much conflicting parenting advice? Have you ever doubted your parenting choices?