Jackie McGregor The adult problem many people were surprisingly unprepared for

Surprisingly, of the 99 replies her post had already received, everyone had said the same thing. I was amazed that it had been the unanimous choice of the all-female responders - having to make dinner every night! Feeding the clan was the number one problem they’d felt unprepared for.

Then I remembered when my son was at primary school, I used to have a cartoon on the fridge with a woman sitting in a chair, her head dramatically in her hands with the caption, ‘Why do they want dinner every, single, night?’ I found it amusing, then another school mum visited on a playdate, looked at it, announced she found it terribly depressing, then burst into tears! I barely knew the woman, but she had four kids, a husband and an elderly parent to feed daily, I felt her pain.

The reason I’d put the cartoon on my fridge was to make light of something that I too, found quite daunting. The preparation of the evening meal is something that is perpetually on most mums’ minds (in the interest of fairness, many dads cook too, but it was all mums who had answered my friend’s social media post).

According to a UK survey the average woman has around six dinner recipes that they tend to rotate each week rather than trying new recipes.

Globally, women cook more meals than men in every country. In the UK research revealed 71 per cent of women cook at least once a day in contrast to 46 percent of men.

I’ve often woken in the morning and my first thought has been, what am I going to make for dinner tonight? I’m not a natural cook, I hate it! I’m lucky that my family are not fussy eaters, they scoff down whatever is put in front of them.

Meal creations for me have always been a hit or miss affair. It’s either edible or it all goes horribly wrong, and I end up producing something even Hannibal Lecter would struggle to keep down.

Perhaps the reason so many women declared this as the part of adulting they weren’t prepared for, is because our mothers made it look so effortless; I know mine did.

My generation (Gen X) regarded household chores as a woman’s biological destiny and a labour of love, but life admin isn’t something many of us actually relish, it’s simply essential stuff that must be done.

Women may find daily dinner preparation challenging because it’s an endlessly unfinished task, a culinary Groundhog Day.

Meal-making goes beyond putting food on the table. There’s the mental load of buying the ingredients, prepping, cooking, serving, then cleaning up afterwards. Most women do this without any help, which can be a bit jarring in a time when we’re all mindful of stranger’s feelings and the message ‘be kind’, is the global mantra available on scatter cushions and T-Shirts, yet so few want to help mum in the kitchen!