The Yorkshire shepherdess and the snowflake generation

[Marcia1989]

www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-9438725/Our-Yorkshire-Farm-star-Amanda-Owen-gave-birth-eighth-child-husband-ASLEEP-upstairs.html

Sorry for link to the Daily Mail. It was the only non-paywalled article but her comments are also reported in The Times and The Telegraph.

She runs a sheep farm in a remote part of Yorkshire and has 9 kids. She thinks that parents do not raise their children to be sufficiently independent, to look after themselves. She didn't really do home-schooling with them because she doesn't want to be a helicopter parent - she expects them to just get on with it. She expects all the kids to help on the farm and they don't really do devices/TV etc. Having watched her TV series, I agree that her kids seem admirably self-sufficient and mature and I do think generally it's really good for children to have some responsibility. But, I do also wonder whether a lack of individual attention is detrimental to them. And there will be some kids who don't get on with it, and is it really right to just leave them to it?

What does everyone think?

[quote Marcia1989]@LunaNorth we have to know more . I generally think her approach could be applied elsewhere, but it is difficult because our current culture doesn’t encourage it, eg schools expect parents to be heavily involved, not safe for children to play independently outside etc etc[/quote]
Yes it could, you don't need to live on a remote farm to teach your children to look after themselves.

i like her. shes down to earth and her kids seem well rounded.

shes is like the supervet now, started quietly and now enjoying fame a little too much for my liking

I stand corrected!

I'll be honest, the article is the first I've ever spent any time thinking about the issue, and all it said was that it was "his farm" and that he "lived on the 2,000-acre plot of land" with over a thousand sheep. I suppose they briefly mentioned annual tenancy later, but it was unclear, and the impression given was very much established-and-successful-farmer-marries-young-girl-who-knocks-on-his-door.

I suppose we could chalk it up to another way that the DM is shit. But I retract earlier statement about ambition.

I agree with her to an extent, I do think a sense of independence and figuring things out for yourself is a healthy thing to encourage in your children. I dont really like the term snowflake, I feel you're automatically pigeon holing everyone under a certain age as incapable which isnt the case. Her way of life works for her and her family, I admire her work ethic and her energy but it wouldnt work for me. Certain things she does do happen in real life, just thinking of things like children that attend selective schools so have to travel cross city from a young age which is usually done by public transport or if parents work longer hours then having the ability to make themselves breakfast or the like to give them a break (that's probably not a great example) but I dont think you have to live on a farm in the middle of nowhere and give birth alone to be able to teach independence and confidence in your abilities.

Agree @Frogartist and I think her attitude is the thing that really helps kids: let them do stuff themselves and give them guidance if they need it. They get parental attention and praise when they work on the farm, which encourages a work ethic. And the family has a strong, unified sense of purpose which really knits them together. I know I am guilty of doing stuff for my kids because it’s quicker or I can’t bear to watch them mess it up.

@Nancydrawn

I stand corrected!

I'll be honest, the article is the first I've ever spent any time thinking about the issue, and all it said was that it was "his farm" and that he "lived on the 2,000-acre plot of land" with over a thousand sheep. I suppose they briefly mentioned annual tenancy later, but it was unclear, and the impression given was very much established-and-successful-farmer-marries-young-girl-who-knocks-on-his-door.

I suppose we could chalk it up to another way that the DM is shit. But I retract earlier statement about ambition.

yes I think the key with any daily Mail article is to take it with a very large pinch of salt

I grew up in the midlands and went to school in the next town by school bus which took an hour and a half. So it's not just rural kids that have long commutes to school.

Interesting that you're so unbothered and uninterested that you know what she wears and came in a thread specifically to comment

Err...did you misunderstand why some of the text in the OP was blue? Something special happens if you tap it with your finger or cursor so you see I’m rather more qualified to comment on her clothes, which I’ve seen, than she is to comment on strangers’ parenting, which she hasn’t. Unless she was talking about the calves and lambs being snowflakes.

She comes across as insufferably smug.

@Nancydrawn

*Why do you think 'fortunate' rather than hardworking and ambitious?

She is where she is because she made it happen. She wasn't born into it.

I think she knows she's lucky, but it's largely luck if her own making*

Yes and no. I suppose I'd be more impressed with her ambition if she worked herself up from a trainee shepherdess to owning her own farm, rather than marrying someone who already owned a farm shortly after arriving as a young trainee. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but it's not that she built this life from scratch. She clearly works hard and has ideas, and fair play to her for dreaming outside of the life that she was born into, but there was certainly a decent amount of luck in her position. (What if he had been married and not divorced, e.g.)

On a side note, I don't know why the Daily Mail keeps wide-eyeing at the "quick" nature of their love. (E.g. "Owen met her husband in 1996 when he was already divorced with two children, after she arrived at his farm as a 21-year-old trainee shepherdess. They quickly fell in love despite the age gap.") I mean, I suppose I do (to rile and to shame), but they never fail to impress me with how shit they can be.

Amanda wasn't working for Clive when they met, she had been sent there by the farmer she did work for to pick up a tup from Clive.

So a chance meeting that developed into a relationship just like many relationships.

It's a tenanted farm. Not owned by Clive. There are very few tenanted farms out there that don't have some kind of diversification these days (to stop us all being poor yokel farmers as inferred by a different poster) Amanda's form of diversifying to bring a bit more money into the family pot is just a bit more unique than the usual offering of holiday cottages and meat boxes

If she really used the term "snowflake" my opinion of her has just plummeted. But it may well be something the Mail has put in her mouth.

@MiddleParking

Interesting that you're so unbothered and uninterested that you know what she wears and came in a thread specifically to comment

Err...did you misunderstand why some of the text in the OP was blue? Something special happens if you tap it with your finger or cursor so you see I’m rather more qualified to comment on her clothes, which I’ve seen, than she is to comment on strangers’ parenting, which she hasn’t. Unless she was talking about the calves and lambs being snowflakes.

Oh right. So you're basing your assessment of her on a daily Mail article Nuff said

And so unbothered you resend the thread, and a newspaper article, and continued to post. Odd.

The eldest daughter is studying medicine at York university.

I don't know where the kids go to school but there are plenty of schools closer to that farm than 2 hours away - Kirkby Stephen must only be about a 30 min drive.

Amanda wasn't working for Clive when they met, she had been sent there by the farmer she did work for to pick up a tup from Clive.

I've already apologized, and I mean it. My back was up because I really hate phrases like snowflakes, and I read the article, and I got the wrong impression.

The new information doesn't change my mind about it being really quite blinkered not to think about how other people's situations might be different than yours, or to think about structural problems/changes have affected this generation. But it does change my comment about her ambition, and I feel foolish for taking a DM story at face value.

She sounds a total pain in the neck. Who cares about her and her eight kids.

@Viviennemary

She sounds a total pain in the neck. Who cares about her and her eight kids.

So why bother commenting? Just scroll on by. Personally I think she must be doing a lot right those kids seem wonderful.

@stairway

She’s lucky that nothing bad has happened to her children regarding accidents etc. She was lucky that she gave birth alone and nothing bad happened like a major bleed or the baby needing resus.

Quite. DS was "healthy" - scanned regularly enough but only cos they thought he was big. He came out blue and in need of immediate ventilation. If we'd been even minutes from hospital we'd likely not have him

@Nancydrawn

Amanda wasn't working for Clive when they met, she had been sent there by the farmer she did work for to pick up a tup from Clive.

I've already apologized, and I mean it. My back was up because I really hate phrases like snowflakes, and I read the article, and I got the wrong impression.

The new information doesn't change my mind about it being really quite blinkered not to think about how other people's situations might be different than yours, or to think about structural problems/changes have affected this generation. But it does change my comment about her ambition, and I feel foolish for taking a DM story at face value.

I think it's fair enough to be irritated by smugness

I've not read the Mail article but have just watched the '5 years on the Yorkshire farm' episode and there's a lovely scene where they're all swimming in a tarn and she's saying how lucky they all are to have so much nature so I'm probably biased too.I suspect the reality is probably somewhere in the middle.

She also reflects on her own childhood in Huddersfield which whilst good, she feels wasn't what her own children have, so I think her smugness maybe comes from a place of being able to give her kids 'more' than she had. And I think most good parents want that.

That’s generally how threads about articles work I know it’s all a lot to process.

@garlictwist

I don't know where the kids go to school but there are plenty of schools closer to that farm than 2 hours away - Kirkby Stephen must only be about a 30 min drive.

It's already been pointed out on the thread that the school is 30 mins away but the bus takes 2 hours cos if individual pickups along the way

@MiddleParking

That’s generally how threads about articles work I know it’s all a lot to process.

In my experience people who are unbothered about the subject material generally scroll on by and don't continually invest their time in something they don't care about

Never heard of her and if she uses terms like “snowflake” to be disparaging of other youngsters, shame on her.

Ah well, congratulations on learning something about the limitations of your experience.

I saw the article. I don’t know anything about her other than what I’ve just read on this thread, but I do agree on her opinion on parents being to blame for the whole “ snowflake” generation. There are so so so many entitled kids, young adults out there who expect everything handed to them because they have been brought up that way.