What’s the deal with whole families going shopping together?

[Enfys1982]

Is it just me who find this really odd and slightly codependent? My mum hated us coming shopping with her as I think she partly enjoyed the peace quiet and we’d get under her feet. As would my Dad! Even now she won’t take him shopping with her. Yesterday in Sainsburys I was struck by how many families there were doing their shopping together. Both parents and kids. I saw one family with a mum dad and three kids plus a baby in a buggy, and another with parents kids and even grandparents. A few weeks ago I was in Primark and there was a family of four shopping together, mum wanted to buy something and instead of the dad and kids waiting they all went through the tills together. I mean surely they didn’t all need to do that?

Is this a new thing?

It baffles me when people get annoyed or bothered by this kind of thing. Someone does a mundane thing in a way that you would not do yourself. Who cares?
I sometimes shop on my own sometimes with the family, sometimes it's delivered. I like an extra pair of hands to help carry things or someone to chat to.

@MysteryBelle I was responding to whoever asked why old people go shopping at 11 on a Sunday when they could go anytime. But due to multitasking I pressed reply when I meant to press quote

This has to be up there with tge most ludicrous things you're posted.

Ooh maybe we could make it into a competition (to show how what sheltered lives we have apparently), and see what other bonkers theories we can come up with.

Prize for the most extreme.

I'll start:

When i see women doing a big shop in the supermarket alone, I wonder if they are abusive control freaks. When I get home, I cry thinking about her family who obviously can't eat what they actually and are living in fear, having food withheld as punishment for not doing what they are told.

Ah, that makes sense! Actually funny, a visual of people wandering around aimlessly comes to mind 😂

Well, we must tolerate the lower classes having something to entertain their dreary little lives mustn't we. Classic.

I’m sure an hour in Sainsburys is not the toddlers only trip out that week. Food shopping trips generally don’t traumatise toddlers for life.

No I love it, we do the shopping together and then go out for a nice lunch and take the dc somewhere to play for a few hours. It’s a good way to have family time and accomplish a necessary chore.

This is peak MN, I will have to remember to point out to the multiple families I saw walking around Waitorse earlier today that it is a class marker, of all things..... can't wait to shame the single women who was elegantly dressed hovering over the reduced section to highlight how she isn't in keeping with class..

In the next instalment of MN, the patriarchy assumes women should do all the shopping, the mental load is too much...

To be fair, it’s a well known trope with retail workers “it’s raining in the school holidays so everyone is going to bring their kids shopping”. And they do! Has been the case for years, probably since supermarkets have existed. But really, it’s the poorly behaved ones that make it noticeable. Nobody notices well behaved children in the same way.

We don't go as a family for a few reasons
A, its too stressful watching what direction dcs gone
B i like the peace
C dh would buy so much random crap. ( last time what was then average £100 pw he spent £265. Couldn't fit it all in cupboards etc. And not much to actually make whole meals with, everything for spag bol but no pasta or spaghetti
D i love grocery shopping and like to just mooch about

OP I know it’s so terribly middle class to not want to spend time with your family , but some of us actually enjoy the company of our kids , and even gasp our husbands - shocking I know!

I agree, it is a weird way of trying to insinuate a class marker, I will bet my house that if it came to pass that families no longer went food shopping together it would illicit multiple gaurdian cif articales and 1000 posts threads on mn around the mental load and patriarchy of men staying at home while the other shops.

I find it weirder that so many people get shopping delivered when they're not house bound.

You find it weird that shopping habits have changed across the world, whilst also unironically using the internet?

I suppose you're an extreme outlier who has never ordered anything online

Never did it as kids and I wouldn't do it now with DH but it doesn't bother me if others do.

I’ll answer that one for you.

When I first did it, I had a baby and it was so much easier than taking her with me. Then I realised how much of my life Id wasted in a supermarket.

Now the kids are much older - it takes me five minutes to plug the list into the app then ten minutes to unpack and stock the cupboards. which I can also do at 9pm at night once I’ve cooked and washed up for the day (or my husband has done that, because yes, we share).

Freeing up something like an hour a week in to a life that includes a full time job and ferrying teens to and from a zillion classes.

Or, if you like, 52 hours a year. Or, if you like, two and a bit full days of my very precious time.

Having said that, when we do go supermarket shopping we do sometimes go all together. Not always, but it happens. Shoot me.

Hope that clears things up for you.

I've had our main shopping delivered for more than 10 years.

I find it odd that ANYONE goes to do a big shop at all!

Living very rurally, as I do, means you have fewer delivery options (no Ocado or Waitrose for us) and the supermarkets you can order from are often not that well stocked. I got absolutely fed up of orders being full of crap subs for what I actually wanted and stopped online. Now I do a regular big shop for basics and buy locally from markets, butchers etc for fresh.

I normally go during the week with one child. If we go at the weekend we normally all go as the kids enjoy it and it's good to get them out of the house. We tend to split up and take a kid each though.

@AgathaSpencerGregson

I get it. Each to their own. I hate shopping in person for almost anything so I'm happy to have less choice if it means I don't have to go there myself.

My comment was a bit tongue in cheek though!

I find it odd when women take their male partners clothes shopping when it's clear they don't want to be there.

The men traipse around after them, getting in everyone's way. I've lost count of the times I've had to ask them to move so I can look at the things they're standing in front of.

Well if I take a female friend then Ive got to wait around while she also looks at stuff, take into account where she wants to go, she wont carry my bags or be bossed around by me about what we're doing!!

If I go on my own I havent got anyone to bounce ideas off

So bag carrier partner it is!!

This is another dying breed of person. My kids buy pretty much everything online. Future men will be spared this horror of a weekend activity.

I think it's odd to think this. If we need some stuff we'll both go, he might look a bit bored in my shop, then we'll go into a shop for him and I'll probably look a bit bored. The alternative is that he spends a morning on his own in a shopping centre, comes home, I get into a car and drive back to the same shopping centre for the afternoon. Hardly an efficient use of time is it?

Or you could go to the shopping centre together and look for your own stuff separately?

I'm just wondering why the vast majority of women's clothes shops seem to be cluttered up with men who appear to be there under sufferance. It's even worse now they're on their phones as they have zero awareness of their surroundings so they don't look where they're going and you have to practically bellow in their ear to get their attention if you want them to stop blocking the aisles of move away from what you're trying to look at.