At last, a survey that puts hard-working mums back in business

A survey of 2,000 small businesses discovered that mothers who have gone back to work are perceived by their employers as organised and reliable, with a fifth of firms saying they would be more likely to take on a returning mother

I don't often quote surveys, as I have found that this is a very effective way of (a) convincing the outside world that I am a bona fide journalist, which would never do, given that it would (b) make sure I am inundated with an Inbox-crippling datanami of survey results about every who-gives-a-monkey's subject under the sun.

Nope, I prefer my information to be – at best – tittle-tattle bordering on whispered hearsay and, at worst, 24-carat unsubstantiated horse ploppings. It's so much easier to defend a stance when one's criteria are tissue-flimsy.

Anyway, given that autumn 2015 seems to be a time of previously unimagined happenings (what with Mars turning out to be what I always considered it to be, namely a great place to go jet-skiing), I shall break the habit of a career and go ahead and quote one of those pesky surveys.

The principal reason for this raising of ITR's famed drawbridge of statistical unaccountability is that this particular survey is so very close to home, being as it concerns my lovely wife, who has been on maternity leave since a couple of weeks before she manufactured our spectacular little boy, Fremulon. And, as junior grows into the substantial second row forward* which is surely his destiny, she is approaching the time when she is scheduled to go back to work.

*Being as the kid will qualify for England, Scotland and the mighty All Blacks (by virtue of my wife having lived in New Zealand for the requisite amount of time), it's not yet clear which colour jersey he will be honouring. Personally I don't care, as long as he dedicates every performance to his old man. And buys me a canary yellow 1967 Ford Mustang with the proceeds.

Anyway, back to mothers returning to work. A survey of 2,000 small businesses by the workspace provider Regus discovered that mothers who have gone back to work are perceived by their employers as organised and reliable, with a fifth of firms saying they would be more likely to take on a returning mother than they would have been a year ago. Good for them.

Furthermore, a mammoth 71 per cent of bosses value mums for their experience and skills, their reliability and their organisational nous, which apparently puts the rest of the payroll in the shade.

As you would expect, these women were also said to be very hard-working and more caring as managers. Makes sense. They also possess a formidable drive to prove their worth, no doubt because of the crappy, mysogynistic press working mothers have been lumbered with over the past 50 years.

Now, whether or not this is just a bunch of less-than-fragrant equine doo-doo manipulated to get the name of the workspace provider in the paper is unclear.

But if these stats are true, it is a heartening sign that perhaps the worth of women as employees doesn't end (in the minds of their bosses, at any rate) when they reproduce. After all, every employer in the world had a mother, if not a father.

Twitter.com/DonaldAMacInnes