Verity Johnson: Why we need more un-cool mums

There is nothing worse than a "Cool Mum".

I don't remember what I got for my 18th birthday. But that's because I have the memory of a particularly absent-minded bumblebee, not because I lost a significant amount of brain cells in a blur of cocaine in the back of a limo with my mum. This, according to Nicola Austen, is apparently how I should have spent my birthday.

Nicola Austen, a 37-year-old mother from Kent, was this month jailed for nine months for possessing 12 packets of cocaine, which she had intended to give to her daughter. The plan was to take it in the back of the limo on the way to London for her daughter's birthday.

Even if I didn't have strong views on recreational drugs, I know there is no way I would ever do this for my daughter.

Firstly, I am very bad at sourcing cocaine. I was once in a bar, chatting to a man who seemed to have crammed the entirety of a Tiffany's shop into his earlobes, when he leaned over and said, "Hey, you want some coke?" To which I replied, "No thanks babe, I'm diabetic." Secondly, I wouldn't do this because I don't ever want to be a Cool Mum.

What is a Cool Mum? Have you seen Mean Girls? It's Regina George's mother. The mum who is her daughter's best friend; who drinks with her kids, smokes with her kids, swaps sex stories with her kids ... basically the mum who thinks she's still 18. Nicola Austen is a Cool Mum.

My mum, on the other hand, is definitely not a Cool Mum. My mum, thank Christ, is the sort of woman who knows how to stew fruit and source fluffy panda socks. And I am very, very grateful for it; there is nothing worse than a Cool Mum. I know there are a lot of mothers who want to be their daughter's bestie. But really, no one should want to be a Cool Mum. We should want to be the most Un-Cool Mums possible.

Why? Un-Cool Mums give their daughters something to aspire to.

To be cool, people have to christen you as such. This means that to be cool you always have to be thinking, "How will I look if I do this? How can I impress people? How can I make sure that everyone knows how awesome I am?" It means that you spend a lot of time thinking about yourself and others' opinions of you. In short, it's being very self-involved.

But being uncool rejects this. Being uncool means you couldn't give a flying fig what the kids are doing, or wearing, or saying. Such indifference to fashion and popularity says "I know that there are more important things to worry about than what people think of me". It means you're much less concerned with yourself and image.

It's a nod to the fact that you aren't really that important in the scheme of things.

That's why we need Un-Cool Mums. These mums know that there are more important things than their own ego. It's almost irrelevant exactly what they consider more important. It could be kindness. It could be gardening. But in acknowledging that their image is irrelevant, they also acknowledge that there is room in life for bigger things than the self.

That is the most important thing you can tell a young adult.

Youth and young adulthood is a cocoon of narcissism. We spend all the time thinking about ourselves - "are we babin'? Are we funny? Do people like us? God, aren't we fascinating?"

But when we have an Un-Cool Mum we have something to define ourselves against. We will go through the cycle of adolescent vanity, telling ourselves all the time, "I'm much cooler than my mum!" And all the while Mum will be there, calmly demonstrating that there is something beyond this narcissism binge. There is a higher state of adulthood, where you aren't so tiresomely, boringly self-absorbed.

And this is how we learn to grow up.

We look at our Un-Cool Mums, stewing apples and giving to the blind, and we eventually realise that they are showing us something beyond ourselves. Cool Mums show us we can never escape our own ego. Un-Cool Mums show us that the world is infinitely more fascinating than our own tiny lives.

So if I ever become a mum, I will be a very Un-Cool Mum. Because I would hate to have my daughter stuck in the reckless fug of self-adoration that is our 20s.

Yes, oh yes, I can see fluffy plums and stewed panda socks galore in my future.