Women should scrap the guilt over childcare and shoot some pterodactyls instead

I don't know many grown ups who don't suffer a rainbow of pangs - working too much, working too little, not socialising sufficiently, socialising too much. Guilt signifies success. The worse you feel about things, the more successful you are.

Parents, mothers mostly, seem to suffer the worst for guilt. Those who work take swipes at those who stay at home, to cover their guilt for leaving the children behind, and those who stay at home bash on about how tough it is, to cover their worry that others think they're lazy.

A major study published this week by Harvard University, in Massachusetts, taking in 24 countries, has found that the adult daughters of mothers who worked are more likely to be in work themselves. They are more likely to be in managerial positions, work more hours and earn more money than those who had stay-at-home mothers. They also do less housework.

For sons, the career outcomes were non significant but they took a more active role in parenting and caring for family members than those of mothers who did not work.

The paper's abstract ends with the words: "Our findings reveal the potential for non-traditional gender role models to gradually erode gender inequality in homes and labor markets." That's a bold claim and good luck to them.

The study has been hailed as providing comfort to women who go out to work, a demographic traditionally targeted as selfishly leaving their children to turn feral and mush brained while they laze about, revelling in "careers", a state of being that should be exclusively reserved for men and childless women.

But what of the women who stay at home? Are they to be swamped with guilt pangs that they're raising workshy daughters and chauvinistic sons?

My guess is that if a child has a mother aware enough to make herself feel guilty by reflecting on her parenting choices, that means they're likely to turn out quite alright.

"We hope the findings from our research will promote respect for the spectrum of choices women and men make at home and at work," the researchers say. "Children benefit from exposure to role models offering a wide set of alternatives for leading rich and rewarding lives."

On Facebook this week a phrase has been doing the rounds: "In a society that profits from self-doubt, liking yourself is a rebellious act." Liking your own choices is also subversive.

The Harvard researchers are right: a wide range of role models is the best way to raise successful children but it also might be best way to cut down on women's guilt about how they decide to balance their work and home lives, showing that choosing differently isn't choosing wrongly.

IT'S a slight tangent, but women's roles and role models were at the front of my mind at the cinema this week too.

In the trash summer blockbuster San Andreas, which sees an earthquake split the US almost clean in two, the Rock goes about doing the bulk of the saving but his on-screen daughter, Blake, at first glance an average hotpants-and-cleavage screen cipher, also gets in about the action.

Rather than languishing through the rumblings of the threatening fault line she rescues two brothers, hot-wires a landline, raids a fire appliance for survival kit and has a pack of hankies at the ready when they're badly needed.

In Spy, another romp, the lead female character rejects the only recently longed-for advances of Jude Law at close of the film to go off into the sunset with her best pal instead. Sistas before mistas, is the moral. Jurassic World lets its formerly uptight female lead rescue the beefcake male lead from the claws of some sort of flying dinosaur hybrid.

These are only three examples from a summer packed with new film releases, but they've left me heartened that women's on-screen roles are subtlety altering. Though my heart sinks again thinking how indicative this is of how depressingly vapid women in blockbusters - the films that reach the widest audience base - usually are.