It’s a tough gig being a woman. For starters, you’re judged around whether you’re a mother or not. If you are a mother, you’re then judged around being a good one or not. I can’t do anything about being a woman and I’m four children too late to regret being a mother, but try and stop me rebelling against being a “good” one.

Now before you get your knickers in a knot, of course I love my children – and I do a decent job of caring for them. But I am over the cultural guilt we use around “mothering” to control mothers into “behaving” by curtailing our individuality.

It strikes me as no coincidence that the cultures in which mothers are most revered are the same ones in which women are most oppressed. Religion also plays a critical role here; I was raised as a Roman Catholic and Mary – mythically virginal or historically not – has a lot to answer for.

A good mother has all the qualities of a good wife and then some. The transformation is gynaecological, but the expectations are similar – she is selfless, she is a saint. A “new mother” is by default a good one as she has a “clean sheet” (let’s leave aside the realities of childbirth and assume she’s out of the birthing suite) and gets a laborious pass to martyrdom, but only so long as she is breastfeeding.

From there until about 12 months a good mother’s success is measured in grams, specifically the grams her spawn puts on. And in case you’re confused about how much exactly that should be, it’s enough so that your baby can be described as “chubby”, but not enough to be nicknamed “boombah.”

A good mother is a smiling mother. She is without foibles and oddities. Her hairdo is practical yet feminine. Her jawline is distinct but soft. Her clothes are fashionable but practical. She is confident and also vulnerable. She is a subtle filigree of implicit contradictions, because although we like our stereotypes, we like the tensions better as long as they are unobtrusive and of little consequence – that is, they don’t get in the way of her being and doing what we expect of her.

Good mothers must be extraordinary in the ordinary; they must cut a mean square gourmet lunch with food pyramid considerations, make sure to have on hand a month’s supply of Weet-Bix for breakfast and a year’s supply of toilet paper, find matching socks under duress, bake perfect school raffle cakes at a moment’s notice, and know their seven-times tables – by heart.

Good mothers know how to behave. They don’t get drunk at school discos, don’t swim naked in lagoons, know the words to anything released in the noughties, or unsubscribe to the school newsletter.

And so I grimace when people call me a “good mother.” It’s a compliment that carries such a weighted judgement it’s impossible for me to accept it. All I hear is the assumed right to control me. An expectation of my behaviour. The dreaded possibility that I have conformed.

The truth is, mothers are innately just like everybody else. Complex and flawed. We cannot, nor should we be expected to, conform to an ideal. It seems obvious, and yet there are insistent messages around good mothering everywhere, every day.

As one friend put it, we are not in the business of producing carbon copies on a production line. It’s the bits of “us” that we give our children that make them ours.

I don’t want to be put on a pedestal, as if through some strange birthing osmosis I have been elated to godliness when I’m actually being shackled in a box. I have not acquired a taste for the submissive in being a mother.

This is my rebellion. Let your comments be your charge. I will stand my ground. I am not a good mother, nor do I aspire to be.