Things you learned about life from MN

[VoltaireMittyDream]

I grew up before the internet and reality TV, so all you could know about people came from fiction, and the world around you.

I never knew any cocklodgers growing up.

All the men (and most of the women) I knew were uptight, tortured workaholics - which wasn’t great either, and the men still demanded a disproportionate amount of emotional and administrative and domestic support from their female partners.

But until I joined MN I had no idea how many men out there take no pride in a work ethic or professional identity, and feel no responsibility to pay their own way. And it is SO common on here - across class and education levels and cultures and nationalities. All these freeloading men! I never knew!

I also had no idea how much variation there was in couples’ approaches to money. Long-married couples with strictly separate finances who insist on being paid half for a pint of milk. Families where all child related costs come out of the mother’s earnings & the father’s money is all his own. Couples where it’s totally normal to talk about money, and couples where it’s completely taboo.

And sex! I’m in awe of the people who have sex every day even when their fastidiousness requires them to cover the bed in special sex towels beforehand and boil wash the sheets immediately afterwards and hose themselves down with disinfectant before and after.

I also had no idea how all-consuming elder care was until my own experience brought me to the Elderly Parents board, and I discovered a whole massive parallel universe of ageing parents whose ‘independence’ comes at vast emotional, professional, and financial expense to their daughters.

What other different realities have people had their eyes opened to on here?

How many people stay in bed and let their young children entertain themselves downstairs in the mornings 🤯

That some people don’t expect their adult children who still live at home to pay board! My brother included who had to pay board himself but has accepted his adult kids’ refusal to do so!

They say toilet brushes are very unhygienic.

Yeah, men never think to put a bin next to the toilet ffs!!!! Who is even raising these 'men'??

What an abusive man looks like, how it's ok to say that you won’t tolerate it any more and how to help someone escape.

Thanks so much MN ❤️

Of course many of us learned how to make one whole chicken last a full week! Making 4 dinners and at least 4 lunches from all the leftovers!

How batshit some pet (mainly dogs) owners are.

I have family and friends with dogs and I obviously understood that they loved them a lot. I like dogs myself. But I just always assumed that there was still a hierarchy, in that as fond as you were of them everyone understood they were pets, and not the same as humans, with different needs etc.

Anything else I've seen on here before directly experiencing it myself was just a 'huh, haven't heard of that but everyone's different.' But seeing so many people genuinely declare that they'd save their pet over another human from a fire, etc. is the only thing that completely surprised me, to the extent I remember that thread nearly a decade later!

I agree I learned a lot about invisible disabilities on here.

More lighthearted - that it's massively unreasonable to go into a self-service cafe and go and queue up while the other one sits down at a table. You get your food and then you look around for an empty table - even though there might not be one...

Because in 2026 GCSEs are important. So many doors are closed and options restricted if young people don't have at least maths and English GCSE. Young people have to keep retaking them until they leave education.

Back in my day there were January sittings for retaking O levels for any subject. This doesn't happen any more.

Have you considered that a lot of women have issues and insecurities around their weight because people like you are saying “Goodness - I had no idea people actually ate and enjoyed food and dared to admit an interest in it!”?

I feel Mumsnet changed my life and was going to start a thread about this! I joined when I was a very bored trailing spouse and had nothing to do and it's been so eye opening.

1. I thought I was from a middle class background only to be firmly told that I'm aspirational lower MC. I don't care either way, but I've learned a lot of class signifiers that I would never have known about.

2. the higher education board. My parents were fairly invested in my education in the sense that they went to parents days, got tutors or extra support if we wanted it and university was expected. I had no idea that parents trawled through student forums, made spreadsheets about different universities with details such as UCAS points needed, cost of accommodation, university rankings etc. A lovely poster sent me a spreadsheet about which university accepted certain UCAT scores for medicine and I used it for my own DC. This level of investment blew my mind and I even joined the student room.

3. How unbelievably uptight people can be about food. Especially children's diet. Posters getting upset about children eating toast/rice Krispies because "they are empty calories" and suggesting wholemeal porridge with chia seeds instead. We all ate toast as a standard breakfast and the 'empty calories' (which I agree about) didn't cause death by malnutrition.

4. how utterly unaware and sanctimonious people can be about circumstances that don't affect them. I remember a thread where a poster had had a really bad year and had scraped pennies together to go Portugal as shed got very cheap tickets to Faro. Poster was looking for recommendations of places to stay, when posters helpfully told her they'd never consider going to Portugal and to try Martinique or Cape Verde instead. Or when people who pay £18k+ a year for private school say they aren't wealthy at all, but just prioritise education.

I had only heard of Prince/King Charles before.

I have never heard anyone ever mention the rest of the freeloaders in real life. Yet there is a whole board where people make up BS about people they have never met.

@TheOchreLeader I do think the give MNs a bad name, I don’t want to be associated with the batshitterey.

Approaches to parenting that seem to me ill-advised:

1. reluctance to be authoritative (no boundaries = frightened, insecure child)
2. not allowing sleepovers or trips away with scouts and guides etc under any circumstances because of the risk of sexual abuse (there is a risk, but it's not the case in every household and campsite, and the job of parent is to raise an independent adult)
3. judging the actions of teachers and complaining to school to get the decision changed over even the smallest things (me to DC: 'I understand why you think it's ridiculous that you can't wear your coat in registration in Winter but the rule is there so you can put your coat on outside, where it's even colder; no organisation can function properly if people decide to ignore the rules so I'm with Mr X and expect you to take your coat off inside')
4. stopping and starting potty training (I struggled with this but we persisted because the time had come at 28 months)
5. being in charge of GCSE and even A level homework and revision (how is the DC going to cope with the exams?)

This is a parenting forum but I have been taken aback by some of the strongly held views I have seen here, and the muddle some families live amidst.

That people on here wash towels after every use. Blows my mind

Yes.
Also words or phrases.
The word ‘gotten’, for example, gets a lot of hate on MN. I’ve used it all my life as have my parents and grandparents.
Also, the phrase ‘can I get a coffee please?’ is assumed to be an Americanism for some reason that I find bewildering. Again, it’s standard where I live.

A lot of people forget that Irish and Scottish people generally have rhotic accents (ie they pronounce r’s at every position in a word), and are amazed when it’s mentioned that, say, some of the rhymes in Julia Donaldson books don’t work for everyone.

I learned from MN that Shaun the Sheep was meant as a pun (for shorn), as it doesn’t work in my accent. There was an amazing thread where a couple of posters simply could not get their heads round the fact that that wasn’t immediately obvious to everyone! The Shaun the Sheep characters spoke with English accents and apparently that should have been enough to make the pun glaringly obvious! Even though the word shorn wasn’t used at all, that was irrelevant…we still should have just known 😂

Haha, never knew that about Shaun the sheep, because, obviously, Shaun does not rhyme with shorn!

As for rhotic r, the drawer misspelling as draw mystified me until recently, when I asked about it on here!

That class still exists, but only on MN.
That women can be so mean to other women, sometimes it feels like being back in high school.

I learned that other people’s children are sharing the household chores by the time they’re seven including cooking dinner several times a week.

Also that most MNs live in Scotland or London.

How do you pronounce Shaun?

@Toomanyteeth the Shaun the Sheep character originated from the Wallace & Gromit film A Close Shave, hence the play on words.

Seán 🙂

Ah, that makes sense in context, thanks!

I thought I was from a middle class background only to be firmly told that I'm aspirational lower MC. I don't care either way, but I've learned a lot of class signifiers that I would never have known about.

I remember being surprised to learn, for the first time, that it's rude to be the first to cut off the "nose" of a wedge of brie at a shared meal/cheeseboard etc. Some people could not get their head around someone never having being taught this. Just bonkers! I don't even think I would have known any adult figures growing up who would have known this themselves, let alone thought to take me aside and pass on the knowledge and it's not the kind of thing you can just pick up by observation..

Sorry for sounding thick , but that doesn't make it clear to me how you would pronounce it. I would still pronounce that as Shaun. Could you spell that phonetically for me.

I really hope I haven't offended you.

I think it might help if the poster described how they pronounce “shorn” as opposed to “Shaun”.

If the poster’s Irish, Shaun might sound a bit like Shah-n, whereas shorn would have a rhotic R sound.

I’ve been shocked at the amount of terrible men out there and what some women will actually tolerate.

The amount of men who won’t pay their fare share towards their own children and many are solvent men with jobs and careers and perfectly able to contribute but just won’t or don’t.

That there is a generation of infantilised young men who would rather be gaming than dealing with real life.

That I wasn’t the only one to have a mother in law from hell.

That what some consider a reasonable salary is way above anything I have ever earned (and I still have a reasonably good life).

Yeah, like @Dontevenlookatme said, shorn is pronounced with a clear r (does everyone pronounce it that way?). Shaun has no r. Shawn?

I'm not great at phonetic spellings.