Why do so many posters hate mothers/children

But many of those comments were posted by parents. One Mum actually was accused of lying when she said she had two young children simply because she disagreed with the poster.
A small number of posts came from people who were not parents and would not ever be parents.
What irks me is that whilst so many agreed on the necessity of children (and I don't disagree with that myself), it would be a different story if it was a Mum living on a council estate with 5 children desperate to be moved into bigger housing. Then we would see all the, 'shouldn't have had all the kids, then' posts, and nobody would mention the declining birthrate, the need for children, etc.

MN as a whole is not supportive of benefits. SMP (which I fully support, think should be more and longer) is, actually, a benefit. When some talk about it in the same way others talk about the 'welfare state', parents and non-parents included, there's uproar about 'not supporting women'. It's funny how support for women seems to be limited to those in professional occupations, whilst women in low paid jobs struggling with finance get told they should have tried harder at school, or asked why they had yet another child.

SAHMs come in for stick from working mothers and vice-versa. Parents sending their kids to private school get stuck from parents who don't/can't. And don't even get me started on the endless child behaviour threads where all the perfect parents come out to talk about how their children has been sitting perfectly in restaurants since the age of three.
But one or two child free people comment on a thread which as taxpayers they have every right to have an opinion about, and suddenly it's 'what's with all the child haters?'

@ObelixtheGaul

well said!! 👏🏻

Feck it, it was this one. @fitzwilliamdarcy had linked it above but I think she withdrew the post when I said I didn't want to link them. www.mumsnet.com/talk/childfree-mumsnetters/4947526-maternity-leave-equivalent-wild-speculation?page=1

Are you sure it wasn't an AIBU thread? I can't find anything on the Childfree board suggesting mothers shouldn't be able to have sabbaticals. There is another thread about sabbaticals but that one simply proposes that everyone should be able to have a 52 week sabbatical during the course of their working life.

I've googled and there are several possible candidates for your thread in AIBU which I can't be bothered to trawl through.

The reason I'm querying is that I really don't think the Childfree board is a nest of mother-haters or child-haters. It's actually the 'Mnetters without Children' board and there are posters there who would have chosen to have children had it been an option for them.

Generally, I see far more dislike of other people's children across the whole of MN; post about, say, children in restaurants and you'll get tons of responses from parents who claim they only really like their own children and have no time for any others, and don't want children in restaurants because they go to restaurants to get away from children for an evening. (For the record, I have absolutely no problem with children in restaurants).

Six months doesn't work well because babies don't wean until six months, so if they don't take a bottle (thanks DD ) they can't really be left.

@Goldenbear we can't keep having kids because we have an aging population. Eventually those kids will get old and we'll need more kids to support them. People should (and do) have the number of kids they want and can support. We address our societal problems by training people who are of working age, targeted immigration, incentivising people to return to work, not wasting excessive money on government vanity projects and people's freely made life choices.

Personally I don't think having 6 months of paid leave would be that hard going or unreasonable to expect a return to work after that point

No, the UK is definitely not Denmark, I have family in Scandinavia but I am British and I think of the differences in my experience of having children, particularly when my second was born under a Tory government, would have been vastly different if my Great Grandparent hadn’t decided to move here!

But I digress, I am trying to follow your logic so the declining birth rate in the UK, highest in the G7, is ‘irrelevant’ so by that logic the replacement rate is ‘irrelevant’ then? But not having enough children creates problems for public finances and the Labour market. As you point out there are waiting lists on the NHS, a majority of which are as a result of providing health care for an ageing demographic. If we don’t have young people how are we going to pay for this healthcare and the corresponding pensions? So we have a housing shortage, how do you suggest we build houses with an ageing population where are the workforce coming from. Don’t say AI as building houses (DH is an Architect and knows the challenges of the Labour shortages in this area and the delays it puts on projects) is not going to be done by robots anytime soon!

Why would you advocate for limiting maternity rights and in turn advocate for a hostile economy to young families the puts talented, skilled workers out of the workforce when we need that talent to grow the economy- this is inherently regressive and counterintuitive! Woman taking one maternity leave after another looks like a practical approach to a hostile economy to young families as childcare costs are simply unaffordable. I didn’t have to do this when I had my DC in 2007 and 12 and I knew plenty that had a break in between especially around the mid 00s!

Sorry, I'm not going to link the thread as I was under a different username.

I’ve been on MN since the 00s and no it has always been political but I don’t recall lots of debates about entitled Mothers and calls for maternity leave to be slashed!

Governments all around the world are paying women to have children. (Have a look at what's happening in South Korea).

Why? Because children are a NECESSITY.

I agree OP. Those threads annoy me.

Question: Things could be better... Discuss...;
Answers:
"Why?!"
"Things weren't better for me, why should they be for you"
"Things used to be worse, be more grateful"
"You want these things better, well what about this thing and that thing?!"
Blah, blah, bloody blah.....

Can you link? I saw the one @musixa referenced but not this one.

No, I think we're talking about different threads.

The content (not even vibe, just stated content from the OP on) was that women who aren't mothers should be allowed have sabbaticals but not mothers because maternity leave. I argued that sabbaticals should be available, but to everyone and nothing to do to mat leave, but no that wasn't enough. It was just an intention to punish women for taking maternity leave. I was honestly very surprised by some of the posts.

If it's the thread I'm thinking of, I'm not sure why you got that vibe from it. A constant theme was the difficulty in getting the other types of leave you mention (which applies whether childfree or not). No one wanted ML taken away or reduced; the suggestion was that other types of leave should be more easily available.

The original point was that it is hard to work for 30, 40, 50 years with no break - when I say 'break' I mean 'period of doing something different' not 'holiday'. Unless you are childfree or a parent who, for whatever reason, was not able to take proper maternity leave, you can't really claim to understand what that feels like.

Well the only comment on this thread I could find was this:

I just dont like children or mothers that are none stop talk about their kids.

This poster hadn’t started this thread to make these comments but has said that she finds it annoying.

@ttcat37

^ obviously, but as it is predominantly a parenting forum, child free by choice (CFBC?) people who come on to complain that people talk about parenting, and make digs about parents (when they’ve never experienced being a parent, by choice), have got a fucking nerve.^

I have literally never once seen anyone “complain that people talk about parenting” or “make digs about parents”.

It’s perfectly possible to argue that policy doesn’t always have to favour parents over non parents without being anti parent. I am a parent and I am perfectly capable of seeing the perspective of a child free person on these issues. Parents aren’t a single homogeneous group who only need to talk and think about their children.

Mumsnset is not and never has been exclusively about parenting or for parents. Frankly the joy of it is that you can talk about more or less anything from philosophy to space exploration to the cost of insurance with a diverse group of people without having to funnel everything back to talking about kids.

You might want to look around and notice some of the other stuff on here.

"I just can't be arsed" = "I just won't admit I'm talking through my arse"

Translation: "I can't provide examples because they don't exist."

I think there are some posters that think only a certain type of mother matters. I've seen plenty of threads where parents of older disabled children are told that their and their family's needs, don't matter.

@betterangels @BiscuityBoyle you’re both welcome to RTFT, waste your own time rather than mine

I'd like to see that, too.

Can you provide a link to someone complaining about parenting being talked about? Thanks.

I don't think it's relevant that birth rate is declining. There are 60 million people in Britain - those who want kids will have them, those who prefer not to, won't. It's better that there's active choice rather than women having dc because it was expected.

I think there's the tile of unintended consequence - we want women to have opportunities, choice etc but if we make ourselves too expensive or difficult to employ, businesses will quietly just hire men instead, wherever possible.
I don't think 6 months full pay with the expectation that women return to their job and don't take several mat leaves on the bounce, to be that terrible tbh. People have to take responsibility for their own lives and can't pass the bill to their workplace or taxpayer. If the country was swimming in money, it wouldn't matter if the state paid for all this stuff but it's not the main priority for me tbh.

Denmark does have good subsidised childcare and an expectation that fathers are equally responsible for child rearing. There is also an expectation that both parents work and sah isn't really a thing there, largely because they have good childcare options. I don't know how they've managed to pay for it all but Britain isn't Denmark. We still have huge waits in A&E, waiting lists for operations, failing transport systems, housing shortages etc. I just don't think paying women to be home for a year and putting no limits on how often a woman can do that, isn't a spending priority.

Who on here has complained about people talking about parenting?