What was it like as such a young mother?

Rachel Johnson, 53, a mother of three, lives in london, as does her mother, charlotte Johnson, 76, a mother of four. AS I GET older, I never stop marvelling that my mother had me — her second baby — when she was just 23. I’ve got jars of chutney in the larder older than that!

My mind also boggles that she was a grandmother at 51, yet I am doomed to wait years for that (get a move on, kids!)

So my question to my mother was what was it like to be such a young mother, even in the Sixties, when everyone these days waits till they’re pushing 30 or even 40 to become parents? ‘What do you think when you see your grandchildren and realise some of them are older than you were when you had your first children?’, I ask. (My ‘children’ are 22, 24 and 26).

‘I think they’re not as grown up as I was,’ my mother answers. ‘I had three children by the time I was 25, and I loved how people said: “But you’re so young.”’

My mother was the first one of her peer group to have children.

‘The upside of having you all in my 20s was I had enormous energy. I loved being with you, and I loved your littleness, your tiny clothes and seeing you all together.’

I had to ask a supplementary question — whether she had treated me, her only daughter, differently to her three sons. To my surprise she said yes.

‘You were much more complicated and difficult but because you were a little girl I knew how your mind worked when you were being naughty or rude,’ she said.

‘But I was never naughty or rude,’ I protested. ‘Yes you were!’ she corrected me.

In almost every photo I have of us together I’m hugging my mother, and I remarked on this to her. ‘I obviously felt special,’ I said. ‘Even though you paid me 50p to iron the boys’ shirts before they went back to Eton.’ ‘Yes, you were,’ she said. She is beyond special to me.