To wish that my mum wasn't so small-minded?

[cupcakesandbunting]

My mum, bit of a female Bernard Manning; men should be men, women should be women and brown people are funny

Anyway, we were in ELC last week and DS who is 3 started playing with the blue toy pushchair. I mentioned that I might get him one as he makes a beeline for the one at playgroup, and mum did this face like I'd said I was thinking about buying him a nailgun to play with. "He's a boy" she said. I remarked that so was DH and he pushed DS round in a pushchair, to which she went "that's different, he's DS's dad" to which I then said that next she'd be saying that only little girls couls play with toy kitchens because only women cook.

Then she told me to shut up.

AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!

My mother is far more tolerant than me, she is a full on bra burning feminist with years of published work behind her.

I, aged 4 in 1974 was given a brown dolly, in a Silver Cross pram. I was heard uttering to it, "I'll look after you darling, know your real mummy left you in the sun too long."

I requested that dolly and was ingrained sexist and racist. Much to my mothers disgust.

My mum is a nightmare. Ramadan coming up - my husband is Muslim - and black, but we will come to that in a minute - and I mention to her that he will be fasting again and she sighs the biggest sigh and says

"I mean, he is living in England now so he should live by our rules."

And the black thing, looking at a photo of our dds back in the winter - so they looked just a little tanned instead of very tanned - she says "oh that's lovely, they look almost normal"

She also likes to talk about her nurse friend who sometimes works in Birmingham and has "all these Asian families coming in ALL the time"

I work with and teach people who are not English and the narrow mindedness of my mother drives me insane.

Mizu, I feel your pain. My cousin is married to an Indian lady and they have a DS who is 3. They named him a traditional indian name and my mum said when I told her what they'd named him "you'd have thought they'd have given him an English name, wouldn't you?"

When I asked why they would do that when he is half English, half Indian she couldn't answer. And this is the thing that infuriates me most about bigots. Challenge them on their views and they either give a very weak answer like "It said so in the paper" or no answer at all.

I think we should give some mums a break, most of them were born in an era when things were different and they're still trying to catch up.

My MIL believes that her nephew is gay because he used to help his mum with the laundry and cleaning when his dad left, and used to dress up in her clothes when he was little. But in most ways she's quite modern and is quick to jump to my defence when DH isn't doing his share around the house.

As long as I make sure DS understands we have different views on things, I don't see that it matters.

There's a world of difference between someone who, for example, has never had black friends so tends to believe the stereotypes (ie all black people have rythym) and those BNP candidate-types who promote hatred.

I should add, I make those last comments as a mixed-race feminist.

My mum was almost professionally open-minded, being a lesbian and a feminist. Unfortunately she died twenty years ago and instead I have a stepmum whose most-used saying is 'I'm not being funny, but...'

Mind you, it's not all the older generation. A friend of mine came round recently and on walking through the door said 'You did have a boy, didn't you?' I was mystified until I saw her frowning at the pink toy pushchair.

when 'cars' was the big movie & dd was little, i got her Mack the truck for Christmas. A work colleague saw this & said 'i thought you had a girl child' (she was pretty anti children, which was a shame, as we were teachers).
to which i replied 'i have a girl child who likes cars, and your issue is ...'

she was the teacher in charge of anti 'ism' language in the school, & who was so 'right on' that she thought mat leave should be abolished in favour of equal 'parental leave' cos giving birth couldn't be that hard and only took most women one day.

Sorry - don't have time to read the whole thread, but whoever said that avoiding the daily mail is key is SO SO RIGHT. My inlaws read it from cover to cover every day and believe everything in it, and I am convinced it is to blame for their racist/zenophobic generally small minded and lacking in compassion attitude to the world around them. I suggested they switch to the Guardian or the Indy, they refused as apparently it worked out at £70 more per year. I told them I would be DELIGHTED to pay this (or in fact 10 times this amount) if it would make them change newspaper and they declined.

It's true...my friend who remarked on DS's pink pushchair is from a family of Daily Mail fans, and even though she doesn't buy it (to my knowledge), she still comes out with pronouncements about asylum seekers taking over this country and being given free Porsches, or women who breastfeed past the newborn stage being freaky weirdos. They're like auto-rants though, as she is usually open to discussions involving actual facts.

My mum too - gays are 'against God' (apparently I don't think God is too worried by their opposition. I hear he likes a nice parade), any 'ethnics' should either 'go home' or 'live by our rules' (shudder) and single mums (of which SHE IS ONE - although, tbf, we are now grown up...) should be 'sterilised'. I am not shitting you. She reads the DM - 'for the Money section'. Yeah.
Oh - and the last wedding I went to with her? My little sister's best mate's wedding. In a Gurdwara (she's Sikh). Apparently it's okay to eat 'their' food and drink 'their' drinks, even if inside you secretly hate them all...