My mother caused a splash with Margaret Thatcher over washing

Margaret Thatcher with her twin children, Carol and Mark, at their home in Kent in 1959. The twins always got a good scrubbing at the end of the day, according to their mother. Photograph: PA

Other people’s washing habits are not a new subject for media frenzy (Letters, 6 October). In 1961, my mother wrote an article in Family Doctor, a magazine of the British Medical Association, suggesting that cleanliness was not necessarily the most important thing for parents to focus on. Her comments provoked a furious debate in the popular press. The Daily Express accused her of attacking people for being too clean, a TV crew came to interview my siblings and me, and famous people were asked for their views. Margaret Thatcher MP, the mother of twins, was happy to contribute. “I think the doctor may have overstated her case a bit … the twins need a good scrubbing at the end of the day … and they get it.”
Emma Dally
London

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