Wh en Debbie Siegel hears her husband and their 5-year-old daughter pull into their Newton driveway at the end of the day, her stress starts to build. “I feel the tension in my shoulders,” she says.

Marital strife? No. It’s the prospect of the inevitable battle over dinner options with little Hannah. “I hope there’s not a major temper tantrum and we can just get to the table,” says Siegel, a woman confident enough to head her own company, Westchester Mortgage, who nonetheless fears a meal with her own child. “She doesn’t even allow me to get the whole menu out. She immediately stops me mid-sentence and tells me she doesn’t like what I’m making.”

What’s for dinner, mom? It sounds like the most benign question, doesn’t it? But figuring out what the heck to make, day in and day out, that will satisfy all those at the table — the carnivores, the vegetarians, the pasta-tarians — is an enormous stressor for many mothers. If you want to really make mom happy this Sunday, forget the flowers and agree to eat something other than chicken fingers — without complaining.

Here’s how dire the situation has become: An author who interviewed hundreds of moms says dinner angst ranks among the big three worries for mothers, up there with not wanting to have sex with one’s husband and generalized “bad mom” guilt.

“Dinner throws me over the edge almost every day,” says Amy Nobile, co-author of “I was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids.” Nobile, of Hingham, says she takes solace in advice a pediatrician gave her years ago to judge vegetable consumption on a weekly, not nightly, basis. “I’m on a five-year-plan,” she adds.