Edel Coffey: Some women may not enjoy motherhood and it's one of the last taboos

The Lost Daughter and best-seller Breaking Point have opened up a conversation - you might even call it a wound - about the realities of having children. How sometimes you feel smothered, how you might not enjoy every minute - and what that means for us as women. 

Jessie Buckley starring in The Lost Daughter

There is a scene in the film The Lost Daughter, where a mother is lying on a sunbed on the beach. Her young daughter is bored, and wants her mother’s attention. She keeps pushing her face hard into her mother’s, kissing her aggressively, nuzzling her forcefully until it hurts.

The scene travels the uncomfortable fault line between a mother’s desperation for some personal autonomy, and a child’s complete entitlement to that autonomy.