to secretly judge a mum who doesn't work but bought her son's 1st birthday cake at Waitrose?

[howdidthishappenthen]

Note that she's a REALLY one-up-manship yummy mummy who doesn't work because 'money is the man's responsibility - I'm the homemaker'. Then I hear her DH praising her for 'buying' a great cake for DS's 1st birthday. OK, I accept not everyone can cook. And after a few years, of with a few DCs of course we're all going to revert to shop cakes. And Waitrose cakes taste nice and lots of my own efforts are a bit dodgy. But no job, and the 1st birthday? C'mon... make an effort!

My usually chilled out lazy sil spent a whole day trying to bake cupcakes for her dd s birthday for a teatime party for 40, got so stressed that she was behind schedule, shouted at her dd that dd ran upstairs crying and refused to come out for her own party.

Waitrose is the way to go

She doesn't work? Who looks after her one year old then?

Looking after children is work. Either that or judgeypants like yourself are paying the nanny to do sweet FA!

Well..... I am making a cake for my one year old, and he will be allowed to eat it but mainly because his 8 year old sister will be upset if I don't, I like baking, I'm a SAHM at the moment, and... he is at the childminder's for the day!!!

I am a pt WOHM, I am off with my dc on a Monday. I barely have time to wipe my arse on a Monday, never mind bake a bloody cake.

The bit I really don't get is that it's particularly important to have a home-baked cake on a child's first birthday when there is no way the child would care at all (and doesn't even understand the concept of 'birthday'). It would only be for the personal satisfaction of the cake-maker, the pleasure of adults eating the cake and to avoid the judgeypants of the OP.

Some people bake cakes all the time. I guess there might be room for judging if someone like that didn't bother to bake a cake for a child's birthday IF the child actually liked having a homebaked cake rather than a shopbought one. Otherwise...meh. I love cooking, but haven't baked a cake since, er, probably since I was a teenager.