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As a parent, what "issues" annoy you the most?

216 replies

willow2 · 06/03/2006 17:39

OK, what is it that gets you ranting? Holiday prices, education reforms, the state of the maternity service? What would you change most, if you could? Discuss...

OP posts:
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expatinscotland · 06/03/2006 17:42

Vaccines and healthcare for young people and education. That fact that they are STILL dragging their feet over getting the damn Prevenar vaccine to infants really p*sses me off.

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Twiglett · 06/03/2006 17:43

vaccines
tony blair banging on about 'choice in education'
other parents Wink

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Twiglett · 06/03/2006 17:43

oh and other people's kids .. they're just .. well .. not as nice are they? Grin Grin

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BadHair · 06/03/2006 17:47

Don't get me started. Too late, you already did. OK then:

Poor design of high street boys' clothes.
Inflated costs of holidays outside of school term times.
Lack of interesting, well-paid part time work. PT seems to be synonymous with brain-dead in recruitment terms.
The way that children are expected to watch crap TV programmes then pester their parents into buying the associated branded toy / game / comic.
Salty, sugary, fatty crap marketed as healthy for children.

Oh, stop me I have to answer the phone.

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expatinscotland · 06/03/2006 17:47

the lies they told us w/regard to the vaccines. the way thiomersol was left in them for so long after they KNEW it was a neurotoxin. all to save a buck, literally.

kids should be offered the VERY best in healthcare, in all ways. full stop. i'd be willing to pay for it and even to take cost cuts on care for myself if we actually saw kids getting what they deserve.

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CountessDracula · 06/03/2006 17:48

Food marketed to kids that is shite is my bugbear

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WideWebWitch · 06/03/2006 17:49

maternity services and the crapness of them
schools and the crapness of them
crap food being marketed to children and parents, school dinners
vaccines and the thimerosil thing
tarty clothes on children
lads mags, I know it's not strictly a parenting issue but they are pure porn and I think they're VILE, I hate the thoguht that my son might think their portrayal of women is normal or that my daughter will have to live with the results of them
Kyoto and the environment and bloody Bush being a tosser about that and many other tihngs
GM foods
World poverty
Globalisation
Global warming adn the fact that it's now discussed as 'Climate change' JUST so business could pretend it wasn't necessarily the world warming up, oh no, it was change not WARMING
God, I can't seem to stop now I've started!
Will come back I'm sure!

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Enid · 06/03/2006 17:50

-'healthy' foods - like Danone yogurt drinks (full of sugar and crap IMO)
-junk food advertising to kids
-expensive holidays in holiday time
-parents who send their primary age kids to private school despite having an excellent state primary on their doorstep
-attitudes of employers to maternity leave/parents with children
-lazy parents who cant be arsed to cook proper food

god there are loads more

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Pruni · 06/03/2006 17:53

Advertising crap food/toys to kids.
Lamentable attitude to helping women to breastfeed.
Surprisingly, for someone so keen to rant, that's about it for me.

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WideWebWitch · 06/03/2006 17:55

Oh yes, I know what else, flexible working and the fact that millions of clever, hard working, women can't find work that fits in with having children and is reasonably paid.
Pay inequality

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tallequineinafedora · 06/03/2006 17:58

my single biggest bugbear is the casual way in which "mother" is used when actually people mean "parent". ALL the blummin time. Drives me and DH up the wall. the worst example is when people talk about "mothers" leaving their kids at nursery and babies/toddlers being better off with their "mothers" etc etc. I say this is the worst because it shifts a deeply important debate onto the wrong ground, making it a very difficult debate to have. On one side it provides deeply damaging fodder for the Mail/Express women really ought to be at home crap; on the other side it risks masking some important issues about how we bring up and care for our children - issues that need to be debated.

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coppertop · 06/03/2006 17:59

Parents having to fight for the most basic of services if their child has SN.

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ScummyMummy · 06/03/2006 18:00

*private school system
*tube ticket machines that won't let you buy child tickets, forcing you to stand in queues miles long with children gibbering with boredom
*the almost univerally low expectations people have of fathers
*Having to exaggerate your child's illness to have even a chance of getting a GP appointment with the next decade

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Wallace · 06/03/2006 18:01

Gosh...I can't thnk of a single thing Shock

I'm either very chilled, or brain dead...

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tallequineinafedora · 06/03/2006 18:02

to continue a theme - the skewed way in which we (society, media, govt, not mn!) have these debates. the recent debate about the gender pay gap was one of the worst examples. I never saw anything that pointed out the fundamental but blindingly obvious factor of the lack of sahds. We seem to be incapable of seeing all sides of the scales

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harpsichordcarrier · 06/03/2006 18:05

the fact that putting the signifier "children's" in front of anything seems to justify it being sabby and second rate:
menus
books
films
clothes
music, in particular
mskes me cross
these thing should be the best quality

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harpsichordcarrier · 06/03/2006 18:05

shabby

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expatinscotland · 06/03/2006 18:06

i guess i'd have to say, how little value is placed on children. a society is only so poor as it treats its children.

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Pruni · 06/03/2006 18:31

OK I do get worked up about some more of these.
I hate the fetishisation of motherhood to the point where it is seen as a noble cause and opportunity for utter perfection. Crapola.

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Pruni · 06/03/2006 18:32

And yet I wonder if I'm taking part in that just by posting on this site? Hm.

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moondog · 06/03/2006 18:33

Themed polyester mix duvet covers and matching curtains.

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Kathy1972 · 06/03/2006 18:37

The way everything is gendered now and comes in pink versions for girls, even things that didn't used to. Crayons, bicycles, buggies - even saw a pink stairgate in the last Mothercare cat.

And, as Tallie says, people saying 'mother' when they mean parent. Grrr.

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petunia · 06/03/2006 19:11
  • The price of holidays outside term time.
  • Building housing estates (in our case an estate with 1300 houses) which initially have plans for a school, then when the builders realise that they won't get as much money from a school as they would houses, abandon building one, leaving residents to get their children in to the local (and in our case) crap primary school.
  • How everybody is an expert. Doesn't matter if they've never had children or had them 30-40 years ago (thinking of my FIL here who thinks he's an expert in everything), they've all got some comment to throw in.
  • The way you're made to feel guilty if you go out to work (and put children in to childcare) and made to feel guilty if you stay at home (to look after your children).
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Greensleeves · 06/03/2006 19:14

Old farts who sit in the buggy space on the bus/train because they think that their age entitles them to more room even though they are in fact smaller than the average person;

People who sit in the family carriage on the train and then scowl malevolently at my children for making the noises that children make when they are awake;

Children's menus which consist of XXX, chips and beans, XXX, chips and beans, XXX in the approximate shape of a Diplodocus, chips and beans, especially in restaurants which actually do quite decent food for adults;

Filth-encrusted highchairs with sticky straps

Sanctimonious ubermums who want everyone to KNOW that they don't let their child eat anything that hasn't still got soil clinging to it;

Specialist schools;

Inappropriate television programmes being shown before the watershed, particularly gratuitous dead body shots on the evening news;

Drunken, offensive, socially oblivious louts who infest crowded buses and frighten my children;

Ill-disciplined, grubby little scrotes with crew cuts and combats who career around soft play areas/playgrounds with the sole objective of ruining it for all the other, smaller children - stamping on heads, climbing the wrong way up slides, roaring pointlessly and pelting one another with balls. And their mothers who sit facing the other way sipping Pepsi and gossipping to their bloody friends about how hard it is being a mum and how much they paid for their skirt in TKMaXX

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welshboris · 06/03/2006 19:15

Has to be the food thing, total shit, sugary salty full of posions.

At eye-level, in bright colours, adverts everywhere, "celebs" asscoiated with them (Yes Beckham and Linekar I mean you), free gifts with sugary cereals. And what do fruit and bottled water get? Bugger all. plain packaging and hidden away from children in supermarkets

Also the way holiday companies charge more for room supplements etc for single parents making it virtually impossible to go away.


The way single mothers are portrayed on TV, the one from Coronation street drops her daughter for a man, the one from Emmerdale is a benefit cheat, the one from Eastenders is a gymslip mum who delved in heroin

(Breathe Boris breathe)

The TV programmes aimed at our children and the masses of useless merchandise that goes with it


No doubt this thread will run and run, I know Ill be back!!

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