Did you have a 'mumsy mum', if so, what was it like?!

[Toffeepie123]

I'm currently pregnant with my first baby and just musing over mums in general really.

My mum was anything BUT a 'mumsy' mum. She drove sports cars that were unpractical, smoked dope on occasion and was a free spirited hippy in many ways. Very disorganised and if she did pick up from school (not often) she would rock up in her leather jacket and red lipstick in her low down sports car.
She also worked full time so we usually went to childminders.

I absolutely hated this and would envy my friends with mumsy mums sooo bad!!
Many of my friends mums worked part time or not at all to fit around the kids. They'd bake with them, help out school PTA and go all out on fancy dress days!! They'd have packed lunches with their favourite things in such as frubes, babybels, homemade brownies etc.

My mum on the other hand would forget and scrabble around last minute to find an outfit so they were always crap! Packed lunch would be a sandwich with whatever was in the cupboard. Adequate but not really thought out compared. I'd have loved to have had a baking afternoon with her or had her take part in the school activities with the other mums.

Looking back my mum was a young mum and very much her own person and I appreciate that now, however I still think I'd have preferred a mum 'dedicated' fully to her kids as opposed to making their kids fit into their lives.

It was very clear that as much as we were loved, my mum also had a life outside of the family too. Whereas my friends mums were very much child focused. Their social circle was other mums and they'd make all choices around small kids such as choice of car. My mum would never dare be seen in a people carrier!!

As an adult my mum is a better parent as her free thinking and non judgemental attitude is fab to be around. But even now, she would rather be at a festival getting pissed than at a garden centre having lunch like my friends mums, despite being being a grandmother of several kids. She also still smokes pot.

I can laugh now but it really did bother me when younger!!

So I am intrigued to know.

Did you have a mumsy mum? What was it like?

I imagine it to have been very comforting and must have made you feel very secure.

If you are a mum, are you 'mumsy'? Does it come natural or is it an effort to be that way?

I am currently looking for a family car and can't bring myself to buy a people carrier so I am sympathising for the first time with my mother's dilemma..

I had an awful mum. I always wanted a mumsy mum. I never felt wanted or loved. She did very little for me. I remember age 4/5 standing in a chair to get food for myself out of the fridge. I often spent countless hours on my own in the house. Siblings were older so would be in their rooms ignoring me so it was really on my own.

I’ve often wondered how different life would have been if I had a nicer mum.

I often was “sick” on special days at school where we had to dress up so I would pretend to be ill as I knew kids would laugh if I came in school uniform.

Christmases were awful though because mum insisted on being mumsy, doing it all herself an because she was essentially a cooking and cleaning robot the rest of the year, no one even thought to help and she never asked! As a result she was massively stressed. I would so rather she'd have bought some ready made veg, bunged it all in the oven and sat with us as we played with our toys. But all day was spent in the kitchen!

Mine was the same. Rejected any offers of help, tied herself to the kitchen all day and then spent the evening sitting in there literally wailing because it had all been left to her.

Yes same @WoodenFloors - Christmas is supposed to be a happy day not a day when a woman feels worthless over food. I'll never forget when we were all 14-18 (I'm one of 4 and only a year between each of us) and mum marched in the day before Christmas Eve, declared she was SICK of doing Christmas dinner and we were all ungrateful and therefore she'd be making pizza instead. She was bluffing but we all cheered and said that sounds brilliant - she saved face by indeed making pizzas on Christmas Day (no doubt expecting us to moan that we missed her usual food) and it was the best Christmas dinner we ever had.

IMO being a 'mumsy mum' is all well and good until you realise a human being with normal human being feelings is inside there and simply striving to be a small child's (or their own) perception of perfect is too much pressure.

I feel sorry for some of these mums that they're considered bad parents because they didn't wear Laura Ashley ankle length frocks and bake scones on a weekend. I imagine they were too busy being true to themselves and working to keep a roof over their ungrateful children's heads

Was my Mum a Mumsey mum- hell no!
Was she a goddess in the kitchen, nope but I admired her so much more then any Mumsey Mums.
Because she was a dentist qualifying in the 1950s when only a tiny percentage were female. She was glamorous, played jazz music loudly, loved to socialise, adopted a baby when she was 50 with her 2nd husband, who sadly left her as a single Mum 10 years later, had custody battles that she won, found love again in her 70s, etc etc, fashionable and slim until the end
So many stories and memories- and laughter - wouldn’t have swapped her for the world

Jesus this is so regressive.

No I didn’t - she is an individual person with her own qualities not prescribed to her by society. Which is what I am too and what I hope my children will be! Thanks mum.

I don’t remember baking or doing crafts with my mum ever, or her reading to me after the age of two. I remember walking to the park with her, or going to feed the ducks. She was a SAHM until I was 8 and cooked from scratch every day. I don’t remember her ever hugging me. I think she dedicated herself to being a mum, but she wasn’t particularly warm and I’m not sure if she’d count as mumsy. I’d never talk to her about anything of substance.
I’m not particularly mumsy. I can’t bake and haven’t done crafts since they were about 5 or 6, except at Christmas when we go overboard. We do snuggle up and hug a lot and I read to my youngest until about 7 when he got the hang of it. I do cook from scratch, work part time and do all school drop offs/ pick ups and events, so there’s that! On the plus side my eldest 2 are teens and are very open with me, especially dd14 who tells me everything!

I don't think it's at all important for a parent to be domestic with their children (apart from making sure that they are able to cook, clean, care for clothes, do basic household maintenance etc by the time they leave home) but I do think it's important to spend time doing stuff with and for your kids. For some people that will be cooking or sewing. For some it will be playing sports. For some it will be fixing things and doing building work. For some it will be singing to them and teaching them to play a musical instrument. It's not about a particular female stereotype, but about spending time letting your child see you do adult stuff and gradually teaching the child those skills. It might be teaching your kid to ride a bike, and spend weekends cycling with them on increasingly adventurous routes and teaching them bike maintenance. It might be arranging for your children to watch you in court and teaching them the skills of logical argument and debate over hundreds of dinner-time conversations.

@allfurcoatnoknickers - Thank you for your post. I was beating myself up a bit here for my lack of baking and jigsaw time. I also work full time and believe in “throwing money at the problem” of world book day

I still hope I am a good mum though and try my best for them every single day,

@Frazzledazzles Aw thank YOU! I'm always a bit confused by threads like this - I didn't have a personality transplant when I became a Mum! I didn't bake and do jigsaws before, why would I now? I also hate garden centers...always have, always will.

Just going to leave this Glennon Doyle quote here - she's more eloquent than I ever could be.

*Mothers have martyred themselves in their children’s names since the beginning of time. We have lived as if she who disappears the most, loves the most. We have been conditioned to prove our love by slowly ceasing to exist.

What a terrible burden for children to bear—to know that they are the reason their mother stopped living. What a terrible burden for our daughters to bear—to know that if they choose to become mothers, this will be their fate, too. Because if we show them that being a martyr is the highest form of love, that is what they will become. They will feel obligated to love as well as their mothers loved, after all. They will believe they have permission to live only as fully as their mothers allowed themselves to live.

If we keep passing down the legacy of martyrdom to our daughters, with whom does it end? Which woman ever gets to live? And when does the death sentence begin? At the wedding altar? In the delivery room? Whose delivery room—our children’s or our own? When we call martyrdom love we teach our children that when love begins, life ends. This is why Jung suggested: There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent.*