ARE your kids suffering from an overdose of "smother love"?

Mums, who are pretty much blamed for everything from bed-wetting to nuclear proliferation, are now being blamed for creating a new generation of mummy's boys.

According to self-confessed mummy's boy and editor of Fathers Quarterly magazine Rob Kemp (obviously no relation to ultra-macho actor Ross Kemp, who would karate kick his own mother into the middle of next week if she attempted to wipe a smudge from his cheek by spitting on her hankie), "smother love" is making life hell for the women who go on to marry the victims.

He says men shirk when it comes to housework because their mums did everything for them when they were growing up. Men can't so much as boil an egg because they were allowed to play football in the garden while their sisters were taught to prepare cordon bleu cuisine in the kitchen.

And men can't cut it in an adult relationship because their girlfriend won't follow in mummy's footsteps and sign up for a life of servitude.

But if you ask me, this is only half the story. It's not just mummy's boys we should be wary of - it's the growing posse of mummy's girls, too.

It's not just boys who are being cosseted and pampered at home these days. Girls are barely expected to lift a finger either, unless it is to text a friend or flick the telly over to Pimp My Ride (usually when you are getting to the crucial twist in Midsomer Murders - damn them and their innate mastery of the remote control).

Equality has reached most modern households. Unfortunately, it's not that we now expect boys to do more around the house, we have just given girls our blessing to do less.

In some ways I have to say I find mummy's girls even more creepy than mummy's boys.

I read last week that Cheryl Cole, wife of footballer Ashley Cole and one-fifth of Girls Aloud (even if you add all five together there's still not enough flesh to make a normal sized woman), had moved her mum into the marital mansion to look after her.

She's 23, for goodness sake, not 13. Demanding that her mum leaves her husband and two younger sons back in Newcastle to come and wash her smalls in Hertfordshire is a bit much, even for a pop diva.

And don't even get me started on those Windsor girls. Posh princesses Beatrice and Eugenie barely draw breath these days without their mother by their side.

Fergie is always twittering on about how she and her daughters are best friends, how they go clubbing together, how they tell each other everything. One of the girls - I won't even pretend to know which - has gone so far as to transfer colleges so she can be closer to her already ever-present mother.

Yes, it's nice when mums and daughters are close. But when you can barely get a copy of Hello! magazine between them, they are too close for comfort.

Maybe it's time some mothers learned to say Goodbye!


* People get irate over the silliest things these days. They're even getting hot under the collar about blouses.

Right-minded folk - especially those who favour right-leaning tabloids - were virtually foaming at the mouth when skinny supermodel Kate Moss finally revealed her debut collection for Topshop a couple of days ago.

She was given three million quid, they screeched, and all she could come up with were knock-offs of her own cropped denim shorts, military jackets and mini flowery frocks?

But isn't that the point? The young women who shop in Topshop want to look like Kate (without the stringy hair and idiotic boyfriend).

If she had designed a collection that was reminiscent of my wardrobe or Babs Windsor's or the Dalai Lama's, I think the mini-Moss brigade would be rightly miffed.

But instead she has wheeled out a cheaper version of her own iconic favourites, plucked from the depths of her flat-pack, melamine MFI wardrobe, which is precisely what they want.

Personally, I wouldn't be seen dead in one of her mono-shoulder, egg yolk yellow, frou-frou frocks.

But I, like most of the people wittering on about her collection at great length in the red tops, am not exactly her target audience.

Twiggy in a nice M&S twin set is more my style these days.