When Bridget [Jones] does finally get pregnant, she 's bound to mess it up, but what I tried to show is the importance of love and kindness rather than perfection, and the importance of support from friends who help you to laugh at your mistakes and pick yourself up afterwards.
That's when the idea for Mad About the Boy arrived. It wasn't even a Bridget [Jones] story initially - then I realized I was writing in Bridget's voice and it grew from there into a Bridget novel.
In terms of parenthood, I think the pressure has amped up massively too. Some parents are setting the bar ludicrously high in terms of doing things "right," and seeing children more as products to be perfected than simply children.
More than two years after Mad About the Boy was published, the [Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries ] movie started coming together. I felt better about the material, and found myself writing a letter from Bridget to her son: explaining the original story of how he came to be, from his own Mum.
I got into my usual obsessive writing frenzy, using all the material I'd worked on for so long and crafting it into a little novel [Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries].
I think the pressure to be perfect generally in life has amped up massively in the last twenty years: especially for young people with the advent of social media.
Bridget Jones' Baby, at heart is about the gap between how you expect life to turn out and how it actually does.
![When Bridget [Jones] does finally get pregnant, she 's bound to mess it up, but what I tried to show is the importance of love and kindness rather than perfection, and the importance of support from friends who help you](http://cdn.quoteddaily.com/images/helen-fielding/when-bridget-jones-does-finally-get-pregnant-she-s-bound-to-mess-it-up-but-what-i-tried-to-show.jpg)
