Yes we know about being a mum. You’re on call 24/7, you wipe up dribble, vomit and poo constantly and you don’t get paid for it. It’s so unglamorous.

But you never hear this stuff from people lower down the socio-economic scale. These views tend to emanate from Western Middle-Class mothers, many of whom were in a position to give up careers to have children (a luxury in itself). And now, they seem to feel cheated.

And that is although often the moaning mummies tend to be able to pay for those things they don’t like doing – like cleaning – and afford babysitting or a nanny if they wish. Which makes these posts insulting to a large number of women who cannot afford the leisure and would never have the time to pen a blog about how tough it is.

I find this whole new trend is offensive to those who have lost their kids. Those whose kids are missing. Those who have had to abandon their kids because above the number allowed by their State or religion, or conceived out of wedlock. Those who have tried and failed to have kids naturally. Or have tried and failed to adopt.

It’s offensive to the kids themselves. Would we have wanted to feel that we were a ‘job’ to our mothers? And them reminding us and telling the world about how unrewarding and tiring it was especially it wasn’t even paid for?

And of course these statements are offensive to those who actually do have the hardest jobs in the world. You want to try and tell a miner in China or a sweat factory worker in Bangladesh that you have the hardest job in the world because you have to soothe your child back to sleep at night? Or do you want to ask my cleaner who hasn’t seen her kids for three years whether she’d rather clean the vomit off her own kids. Or mine?

This is offensive because kids are not a job. A job (and I have done a few) is something you do for other people, a place where you navigate the whims of others in order to earn money. With no passion often, certainly no love. Caring for your children, that you chose to have presumably (after all as a modern woman you could have chosen not to) is a privilege, a joy, a time to learn and relearn through their eyes.

This might be a cultural issue. I am Italian after all. A country where ‘I bambini’ are a pleasure to have around, are part of society, they sit with you at dinner table, you take them to restaurants with you (not just to special ones where they are allowed in) and the customer service improves rather than getting worse when the little people arrive. It might be because I am an adoptive mother and I went looking for that job high and low with every bit of me. Yes I did. It might be because I think even your daily ‘job’ needs to feel pleasurable. Or maybe all of the above. But I think being a mum is the highest form of honor I have been offered in life. Being with my children is the most enriching, fun, educational, creative part of my day and night. And it is rewarding, each minute of it is (OK maybe not the cleaning the poo bit). I feel grateful for their presence and the gift of our bond and companionship every single moment I can.

Ultimately the way we live anything from parenting to working to spending time with others or alone is all about attitude. I know I have chosen mine. And instead of spending time concocting a narrative about how hard done by I am, I am forever grateful I even got to choose.

A crisis situation like the one affecting about 70,000 children in this country necessitates way more than a guideline here and a passport there. It requires a serious overhaul of a system that is inefficient, out of date and fundamentally not developed with the child’s interest in mind. The whole process needs confidence in it and around it and right now, a flimsy passport isn’t going to do this.

Children’s Minister Edward Timpson said: “For too long children have been left waiting – in many cases over two years – for the stable, loving homes whilst prospective adopters have been dissuaded from offering those children the security they need.” The issue is, Mr Timpson, the passport does not even attempt to address the fact that children wait too long. To do so would require tackling the enormous weight of overly bureaucratic processes, the inefficiencies of the Family Courts and the lack of consistency between them and social services.
Most importantly, the Government has completely ignored the need for a regulator which would ensure a smoother process for children who languish in care for years. Until the Government does not seriously take responsibility to address this, we will not see the step change we have been promised for years now. Meanwhile we continue wasting time and lives. But then again Mr Timpson hasn’t even got time to meet with me, so what do I expect.

It was horrible. It made you feel small. And useless. That’s nothing compared to how it feels to not be adopted. As I write adoption in the UK is in a sadly dysfunctional state. The system is broken and it means that there are thousands of children awaiting adoption- 4000 approximately at present. In the past year, there were less than 300 adoptions.

It’s not for lack of potential parents either. Each year there are hundreds of couples who apply and go through one of the most searching processes just to be allowed to adopt. And often they give up.

Why? Because local authorities and councils are applying rules of their own making, something is wrong. The authority vacuum and the lack of any leadership on the part of the government means that it takes at least 2 years and 7 months for a child to be adopted. But first they have to be removed from the family that can’t or won’t look after them. And that isn’t happening because the system thinks that keeping a child in a family that can’t or won’t love them is better than finding them someone who will.

By the time a child is adopted they may be around four years old.

By the time a child reaches five, it is put into the too hard basket and is less likely to be adopted.

And if you’re a black or mixed race child, forget it. It probably won’t happen.

These children will have suffered first at the hands of a family that neglected them and secondly at the hands of social workers and local authorities who simply have no motivation to place children with new families. Instead they try to keep them in the place that has made their childhood a memorable one for the wrong reasons.

You can make a difference. Please, please respond to this by clicking here and signing our petition and urging your friends and colleagues to do the same.

For their sake.

In fact on the occasions we were offered children as a transaction – and this is documented in the article- we declined. As for money, well yes of course you have to spend money to adopt. You spend to fill in forms. You spend money with your local council on the Home Study so a social worker can probe your lives. You spend money with the UK government. And you end up spending loads more money because quite often the latter messes your around. We spent money on airfares and accommodation in Mexico because we felt that if we waited for the authorities to come up with a match for us it would never happen.

As for the notion of a ‘dream family’ again that is totally inaccurate. The concept itself suggests some sort of genetic selection. Quite seriously if you wanted a dream family would you adopt children from parents you had never met? Yes we hoped and dreamed of having a family but as for a dream or perfect family well if you think adoption is a route to perfectly formed children in every way then you have another giving. It is about giving children who do not have a home, a place to be safe, secure and loved. It’s about sharing and caring. That was our dream family, and luckily despite governmental inefficiencies it has come true and hopefully with my work more children will have a shot at a proper life. As for buying a dream family, anyone with that notion is probably not the person to care for children.

Not surprisingly my childhood continued to influence me. I have always been concerned about the environment, our planet, sustainability issues and the fact that there are so many children in this world just waiting for a home. For a number of years I held a major global position at Greenpeace. When my husband and I were married we were not desperate to have children. However, there was an unspoken sense that we would, and it might be a little unconventional.

We are, to all intents and purposes, both fertile. But we chose to adopt.  That point of view immediately put us at odds with the chattering classes who declared how wonderful it was to have their own children. It also put us on a road that often seemed to lead to nowhere; a route that appeared to be laden with booby traps and endless obstacles. They dug up every inch of our lives. Yet instead of each step making it easier, it became harder.

I began to wonder if this was actually an attempt by the UK government to make adoption difficult. When our local council told us we were ‘too white’ to adopt one of the many mixed race children available, we knew something was rotten in the system.

Many people give up at that point. In fact, many people give up long before this. Just the fact that you are being judged constantly, almost as if you are a criminal, makes it tough. My husband and I were lucky. We had the financial resources, the know-how from working in big business, and most of all, a united belief that we were not going to let them beat us.

When we found the route to international adoption stalling we took matters into our own hands and went to Mexico to find our baby ourselves. It was the beginning a road trip, that would be both physically and emotionally gruelling as well as funny and poignant. We met selfless people running orphanages, mothers who had no choice but to give up their babies in a strongly Catholic country and, in a Starbucks off a highway, a lawyer who traded in babies and had convinced himself it was not only legal but moral. We met people who had nothing but wanted to do everything they could to help us. We took our marriage to a place that isn’t easy and it came back intact.

Needless to say, we didn’t accept the lawyer’s offer but lots of couples do. We did it legally, at times sailing very close to the wind in our discussions with various governments. And when we brought our daughter home thinking she was safe at last, she was arrested at Heathrow. The nightmare never stopped. And for many people it is too much to bear.

Speaking to other couples about their experiences with adoption I realised something had to be done. There was a lot of suffering going on but not very much adoption. I decided to write Mexican Takeaway because I felt that most of the books written about adoption were overly sentimental and personal, rather than inclusive.

Adoption is still in many ways a taboo. I want it to be something that is acceptable, natural and, most of all, accessible. Yes, there have to be rules, but right now the rules are inhumane and immoral. They do not work. I decided that at the very least I could try and campaign to change some key ones so set up Adoption with Humanity.  Our aim is to transform the process of adoption into something that is not about forms and unworkable rules, but puts the interests of the children, the adoptive parents and birthmother at its core.

This is so complicated it is hard to know where to begin, except to feel dreadfully sorry for the couple. Turning to the general question of surrogacy, I will lay my cards on the table now and say that personally, I do have a problem with the concept. For me it is another example of a consumer world where anything is available at a price. For me surrogacy does not seem to be about wanting to be a family but rather about ‘wanting a baby.’

While I understand there are many ways to become a parent including adoption, IVF or remarrying someone who already has children I do struggle with the moral issues around surrogacy. Is it morally right to pay someone to be pregnant for you? I know I’m not the first to ask that question and there are better minds on the job, but nonetheless it is a tough call.

For me it isn’t, just as it wasn’t right for the corrupt Mexican lawyer we met during our travels to adopt our daughter, to organise payment for poor women to have children by the same father so that couples could adopt children who were already a ‘family’ and looked alike. This is explained in my book Mexican Takeaway.  Both situations are troubling because they are all about the needs of the parents and have nothing to do with caring for children. For the lawyer it was supply meeting demand.

It’s not just surrogacy that is the problem. It’s the fact that because it’s possible to buy something on the open market, then it is automatically assumed that it is okay to do so. You’re seventy, have money and want a baby? Sure, there’s an IVF doctor somewhere who will do it for you. Never mind about the child and their future past teenager hood with no living parent. Are you a wealthy single woman who has no need for a father but just wants someone with perfect genes? Get down to the clinic and for a tidy sum you too can have that perfect child injected into you.

What is right and what is wrong?  Have we crossed a line so far we can’t see that we’ve commoditised babies into a business?