Advice on how to bring up your children, alongside warnings about the dangers if it is not followed, is omnipresent. How parents behave towards their children, how we talk to them, play with them, how many activities we enrol them into and whether we put too much pressure on them, or don’t help them enough are now seen as the factors that determine the kind of adults our children will become and the opportunities that they will have when they grow up. But much of the advice on offer is contradictory; what was fashionable one day is blamed for creating the wrong kind of behaviour and outcomes for our children the next. Accused of rearing a new generation of cotton-wool kids, do we let our children roam free or might we be branded negligent? Do parents who indulge in a regular tipple at home allow children to see normalised responsible drinking or is this a recipe for breeding binge-drinkers? Are you a model mother if you read nightly to the kids, help with homework, tirelessly take them to galleries, ballet, tennis – or are you a monstrous Tiger Mum?

We all want the best for our children, but even if we take all the parenting lessons and read all the manuals now on offer, will it help us to be a perfect parent, and how much does how we parent matter?