My mother only told me she loved me once. That’s why I say it to my own daughters all the time, says Daisy Goodwin

Love you honey.’ “Love you too, mom.” It is the call and response that ends every phone conversation with one of my daughters. Sometimes it will be me who confesses love first, sometimes them, but we know something is wrong if it doesn’t happen. It’s not a huge deal, but I know I’m better off if we’ve made the effort.

Now aged 23 and 32, both have left home, but we talk on the phone most days.

It’s casual stuff, but like so many seemingly casual exchanges in families, it’s loaded with meaning. Finally, I tell my girls that no matter what happens to them that day, they need to know that I will always love them, unconditionally.

I might be ticked off that they’ve left behind the handmade snood I spent weeks knitting for them, or they’ve ‘borrowed’ my favorite earrings, but that doesn’t change the basics.

As long as I’m around, they have a devoted trampoline that will always cushion their fall. It won’t stop things from hurting or protect them from harm, but it’s there.

Of course, you might be reading this and think I’m saying the bleeding obvious: Don’t all parents feel this way about their kids? And if so, why do you have to tell them all the time? Actions certainly speak louder than increasingly meaningless affirmations.

Some argue that the phrase ‘I love you’ has become so ubiquitous – casually whistled to everyone from colleagues and new acquaintances to shop assistants and particularly helpful waiters – that it feels cheap.

When presenter Stacey Solomon professed her love for her husband and son several times a minute – as well as saying it to the new families she meets – during her BBC show Sort Your Life Out recently, critics urged her to pack it in .

Are we not actually failing as parents, they argue, if we have to keep telling our increasingly spoiled children that we love them; An adequately parented child should know they are loved without the need for all the performance and verbal pats on the head?

To those people I can only say this: You are lucky. Only people who have been lucky enough to grow up taking love for granted can be so dismissive or irritated by those three little words.

Having a parent who constantly reminds you how much they love and appreciate you is a priceless gift.

I was five when my parents divorced. My mother, the interior designer and cookery writer Jocasta Innes, left my father Richard, a film producer, for a younger man and a life other than the one that made her so unhappy.

As a child, the only time I remember my mother telling me she loved me was when she explained to my little brother and me that she would never live with us again.

“Don’t you love us anymore?” I asked.

“Of course I love you, you silly goose, but I have to live somewhere else,” she replied.

Even when I was five years old, I knew that when your mom tells you she loves you, there shouldn’t be any ‘buts’ involved.

I had a friend in elementary school whose mother always used to hug and kiss her at the school gate when she came out. My friend used to blush and push her away, but I remember how envious I was of the undoubted embrace.

I couldn’t help but feel that if I had been more lovable, my mother would still be living at home. It has taken me a lifetime, and my own two children, to realize that my mother’s decision to leave was just that, her decision, and that I bore no responsibility for driving her away.

My parents spent the next two years fighting for custody of me and my younger brother—a battle that my father ultimately won. During these years, we children were sent to live with my grandmother.

I still remember her Yardley lavender-scented hug and the sturdy tweed flesh. But above all, I remember her saying, ‘I love you so much, dear Daisy.’

She always told my brother and I how much she loved us. It was a warm spot of comfort in an otherwise bleak and confusing landscape. At a time when my mother had largely disappeared and my father was working abroad, this was something to hold on to.

Children are literal creatures and it is important to hear the words, unprompted. My grandmother had lived in India as a young woman and, like so many Brits living there at the time, sent her children, including my father, to boarding school in England when they were very young.

I suspect she had always regretted not keeping her children with her, and her constant reminders of how much she loved us were filled with the words she had not been able to say to them.

It’s tempting today, when we seem to be in the midst of a mental health epidemic, to long for the simpler times of my grandparents’ generation, when emotions were felt, not expressed, less medicalized.

But I think it’s a good thing now that parents and children can talk openly about their love for each other without embarrassment. When I see my male friends hugging and kissing their grown sons, I feel nothing but relief.

As an adult, I have always been fascinated by difficult mother-daughter relationships – I write about the instability between opera singer Maria Callas and her mother Litza in my new novel, Diva.

Maria was not the favorite child, and Litza hardly noticed her until Maria began to show her incredible talent. Litza would tell her that she only loved her when she sang, and so young Maria grew up feeling that the only thing lovable about her was her voice.

That kind of conditional love is very hard to get over. When the soprano’s voice began to fail, it was a double blow: she lost not only her livelihood, but also, she thought, the only reason anyone would love her.

When I was seven, my father remarried and my brother and I lived with him and my stepmother. Being a stepmom is not an easy role and I don’t blame mine for not bathing in unconditional affection. But her smiles were all for a job well done, not simply for existing.

Her attitude often left me feeling that the only thing worth about me was that I was good at exams.

That’s why I’ve always been careful to tell my kids that I love them when they fail an exam or don’t get the job they wanted.

They need to know—and also hear—that my affection is not something they can win or lose.

When my girls were little I used to read them a book called Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney.

It features Big Nutbrown Hare and Little Nutbrown Hare, who compete with each other to express how much they love each other. “I love you to the moon and back,” says Little Hazel Hare.

My children always tried to be better than the Moon; to the universe and back, to the chocolate factory and back.

My mother would have thought the book silly and silly, but I found it reassuring that it openly addressed this question so fundamental to childhood: is a mother’s love really infinite?

I really didn’t care how many times I read it.

It’s not just my kids who get the ‘I love you’ treatment. I say that to other family members when I say goodbye – because I love them, and also because if I get run over by a bus, I want to give them a good memory.

I also say it now to my closest friends, although they don’t always say it back; friends of 30 years deserve to be appreciated.

It’s a problem unique to the English language that we have to use one word for all the different kinds of love: parental, friendship, patriotic, and romantic.

I may say it often, but always on purpose – it’s definitely not the verbal equivalent of “xoxoxo” that I put at the end of emails.

The question is, I suppose, does declaring to my daughters that I love them make me a more loving mother?

In my experience, the answer is an unequivocal yes. In the same way that smiling itself can lift your spirits even when you’re feeling absolutely miserable, I think telling a child or a friend or a partner that you love them takes you a little bit further in that direction.

And if anyone thinks that all this expression of love makes children needy, I can only say that, in my experience, that is not the case.

The people who made me feel confident and self-sufficient as a child were my grandmother and father, who smile every time I walk into a room.

Their consistency meant I was able to internalize their love, and—contrary to my mother’s anxiety-inducing declaration—made me feel uplifting to the world.

Take it from me, no child was ever hurt by being told they were loved by their parents.

It’s hard for parents to get it right and I would never claim to be the perfect mother. But at least my girls know I will always love them to the moon and back.

• Daisy Goodwin’s novel Diva (£20, Head of Zeus) is out now.