to think that the middle-classes suck the very soul out of parenting (and life in generally actually)?

[bejeezus]

Ive been on/reading a few threads- about Unconditional Parenting, Attachment Parenting, Steiner blah blah blah. 99.9% of each of these 'philosophies' is common sense, the other 0.1% is deranged and warped interpretation of what started out as a description of common sense.

I am sick of people researching and 'reading round' subjects, analyzing and LABELLING EVERY activity and aspect of growing kids. People (and animals!) have been doing it since time began.

Is it because middle-classers have all been raised by nannies/ have no parental role-models/ have poles up their asses/ lack imagination/ HAVE no intuition/ have no faith in their abilities/ need to feel superior - WHAT is it??

What is wrong with intuition, spontaneity and getting it wrong? in fact I bet my socks there is some research some-where, that says that those are essential aspects of child-rearing and if you dont embrace them whole-heartedly, your childrens teeth will fall out/ they will loose the ability to speak and be in prison by the age of 25 years and 7 months.

Why am I bothered?;

I said on a Steiner thread in parenting that 'I hate wooden toys and all they stand for'

Then I got to thinking; actually I hate what they now stand for but I DONT hate wooden toys. I love wooden toys; the smell, the feel, the memories. But we used to scavenge the tips for timber/rob neighbours fence posts then get dad/grandad/uncle to help us build go karts/benches/huts with an excess of nail string and glue. Where is the soul and creativity in parents spending a weeks/ a months wage (or even a penny) on some imported sustainably sourced wooden toy fashioned by a stranger or mass produced in a factory? It has no more educational/ developmental value than a brightly coloured plastic toy. It is not more enjoyable for the child. It is more enjoyable for the parents BECAUSE IT LOOKS NICE IN THEIR HOUSE!!

Middle class parents are like the anti-Rastamouse;

'always there to make a good thing bad'

Class War- Bring it!

I don't know if anyone has mentioned it but actually the problem is being English and therefore emotionally screwed up. My children will be educated abroad where people have normal human emotions

Did one Primary Coffee Morning. Oh the Horror.

@ohmy - very perceptive point re career replacement imo

@LeQ ah you used the Passive Offspring Oriented toilet training method then :)

Omigawd ? WTF?

Are you even speaking English?

@Diabolo its all in the three letter acronym :o

I am clearly in need of a glass of wine if it has reached the stage when MNers have to explain their 3 letter acronyms to me. (because I didn't get it )

Adios.

' LeQueen - I am in total agreement! I don't even interfere with school! Mind you dd's teacher looks about 12 and is very scary - to me! I live in fear of her red pen! . I find that if I say "if you cry about doing your sums dd, then I am putting the book in your bag and that's that." And she idolises her teacher, doesn't want red pen, and does them.

The only baby book that ever made any sense to me was The Wonder Weeks about the developmental changes that happen in the first year.

All the other books seemed to involve active effort on my part and it seemed so much easier to bumble along and see what happened. 2 years later DS is still alive, mainly unscarred, vaguely comprehensible and I don't think I can recall any major disasters.

I do have a faint recollection of thinking "wooden toys good, plastic tat bad". But then I met the Fisherprice jumperoo and my life changed forever.

On the downside, I did put more thought than was healthy into the relative psychological benefits of various rear-facing prams, purchased one of said prams at exorbitant cost, and then discovered that I was pram-incompetent and took up "babywearing" [shudder] and finished up selling the pram on ebay.

I think that I have subconscious aspirations to be a textbook parent, but I lack the motivation to actually see it through.

That sounds very cruel when I think of it, but Belgian schools are strict, and dd doesn't like doing her homework - even though she can do the work relatively easily.

Oh, I did do baby-led weaning but I called it "not doing purees". I have a bit of a thing against fancy names for normal stuff.

Babywearing = "not having a pram"
Baby led weaning = "not doing purees"
Attachment parenting = "making reasonable attempts to keep child alive"

lol kfp!

LeQueen Wed 15-Jun-11 20:16:10
I feel it's always best to avoid much in the way of active effort...parenting is hard enough without all that ]hmm]

Agreed. My general feeling is that most things will probably happen whether or not I actually do anything about it - after all, how many NT adults are still not sleeping through the night, wearing nappies and unable to count to 10?

On that basis, any effort I do put in is actually a massive bonus and I should be applauded for it.

See even 7 years ago, I never heard of BLW. Weaning at 4 months on baby rice seemed to be the way to go! Dd ate everything she was given then. We went abroad on holiday and she sat there in a restaurant chewing on a breadstick/carrot/bit of baguette. Aged 2 she went to a Belgian creche and was fed "forrin food". and she still eats all sorts at school.

At home though, she is DEAD fussy! Maybe it is my cooking?

Portofino - I could go on.

Unconditional parenting = "desperately coming up with a poncy name for being nice to your children"
Unfooding = "Not doing purees: Part 2 - The revenge"
Cloth nappying = "getting sucked in by cute, fluffy pants before realising just how disgusting washing poo really is]

Guilty of the last one.

Definitly NOT just an English thing. In New York that type of over researched parents armed with theories and organic snack proliferate.

Actually, the preoccupations OP describe originate with UPPER class bohemians from the middle of last century onwards, and seem to have filtered down to the middle class.

Agree that the "benign neglect" camp can be unbearably smug. They practice a sort of " macho " style of parenting, where letting your kids walk to school alone at 6 and living in a filthy house because you can't be arsed to clean are just signs of their really cool laid back-ness.

However most of us do not fall into that any one category totally.

Eg: I was pro CBeebies, pro plastic Tat, very anti sweets, in the middle about co sleeping until ds was two and then very anti co-sleeping, pro eating proper meals at the table, pro having a very clean house, anti classes for babies, pro natural birth and midwives, anti Steiner bollocks.

That is the case for most people. We all have our pet peeves and prejudices.

I do remember raiding skips for wood to make bogeys though! (Go Karts I beleive they are also called)

Gosh OP! Your original post is hugely discriminatory. Can you imagine saying that about a whole race of people? (racism). Why is it OK to say that about a 'class' of people?
And, yes, my preferred name of YummyMummy was already taken. Better string me up!

LeQueen - when you say "nothing", do you literally mean nothing?
We have potty training looming and I can see it being a bloody nightmare as DS as taken to screaming "poo-poo" and "weeeeeee" at me and there is never anything in his sodding pants. I even stopped the car to check recently as he was so insistent. "Mumma. Poo-poo. Poo-Poo. POOOOO-POOOOO!"

Ha. I knew I had missed one.

Co-sleeping - "not being arsed to get up at night"

God, is THAT what baby-led weaning is?? Not doing purees? What about mashing stuff up? Is that supposed to be bad or good?
Who is against baby rice? It's fab!
I didn't even KNOW about any of this when weaning, Thank God! I just mashed up some banana and what not, got a spoon and shovelled it into happy open mouthed baby!

I am not not smug. I feel fortunate if anything, I can claim no credit for potty training. The creche leader said "right, they all need to be dry for September, bring extra clothes". It worked perfectly. Dd was dry at night a year later - when we came back from holiday and we had no nappies left.