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!

"how clever of your working class brian to notice it!"

Who the fuck is working class Brian and what has he got to do with this??

For fear of repeating .. well..everybody, it's got nothing to do with class and the parents you describe are not just one great lump of smuggery.

Yes there is the smuggery set over in Starbucks bathing in self admiration.

There is also the ones who want to do better than the so called role models they had.

The ones who had no role models at all.

The ones who for one reason and another are crippled with self doubt and have little belief in their parenting skills.

I would count myself as middle class;both dh and I have a degree and professional qualification,we read the broadsheets and own our own home.I was not raised by a Nanny and neither was my dh ,we do not go on swanky holidays or own swanky cars

I am incensed with how perjorative this term has become,what is wrong with being middle class ,I work hard as does my dh ,we pay our taxes,donate to charity ,encourage our children to work hard at school,keep to the rules ,and always try to respect others .We are aspirational for our children;I do drum into them the inportance of society as a concept and that there is no such thing as a free lunch etc , as do all my "middle class"friends but to listen to people and the press it would seem that it now better to be a criminal than to be "middle class "

we do not steal school places ,steal university places,steal homes in nice places,steal jobs we work damm hard to get them and now we pay a huge amount in taxes as well and have to explain to our children that even though they have slogged their guts out at school and not gone out partying etc they will still lose out to someone who has because it so happens that they had the misfortune to have "middle class" parents etc etc

Rant over

OP, please could you clarify - are you upper class, working class or underclass? Just for context, please.

I tell you - I would have been a nervous wreck reading all the dos / do nots on here. With the benefit of hindsight - I did it ALL wrong. FF, dummies, plastic tat, chocolate, TV, early weaning, own room from about 6 weeks, ft nursery from 5 months old.

It is quite amazing to me that we managed to bring up a happy, healthy 7 yo who is top of her class, confident and outgoing, with lots of friends. And I never spent a minute fretting about any of it

I guess there is still plenty of time for it all to go wrong.......

greencolorpack I was in the museum of childhood recently and they have everything you can think of! Sticklebricks, fuzzy felt, a whole tribe of barbies, everything.

"it would seem that it [is] now better to be a criminal than be "middle-class."

How utterley ridiculous

Also OP is clearly silly as vast majority of people in the UK self-define as middle class and yet clearly the vast majority of people in the UK are not as described in OP.

Yes certain parents are annoying, silly, pretentious, paranoid, whatever. Hardly big news is it.

I think EricNorth's right, it's not the practices themselves that are annoying so much as the fact that they are given irritating names like 'baby wearing' whereas I just carried my DD in a sling for a while because it was convenient and she seemed to like it and I never felt the need to call it anything.

Lol at 'show off parenting' - that's what annoys me and unfortunately it does tend to be a certain type of middle class mum that likes to brag about her little darling's reading level and fondness for houmous. To me it shows a lack of confidence in your own choices, as though they are only valid if they impress other people. The fact that nobody is that interested seems to go straight over some people's heads.

I'm not sure this is an exclusively middle class thing and in many cases I think it's well meant if rather annoying and misguided.

I feel quite sorry for people who read every book going and question every decision they make. Bringing up children is tough enough without wondering and worrying about every little thing. When I hear loud parenting, or constant comparisons I just think "poor him/her" and try to say something nice about their little one as that's obviously what they're looking for. I don't think it's necessarily a class thing, although I do think it is more common among the "middle class," I think it's an insecurity thing. Babies/children are pretty scary if you're not used to them and if you haven't seen many children grow up then it's hard to have a sense of perspective. I was lucky in that I was surrounded by children all my life (I have approximately 60 cousins, all younger than I) so I've seen it all - terrible illnesses, horrible tantrums, not eating, allergies etc and I know for the most part it passes or gets better and it's not the end of the world. However I can see that for someone who hasn't had that experience it can be terrifying and their only recourse might be to go to a book and try to get all the answers when really the only answer is perseverance and time.

I read an interesting book called "The Blank Slate" which talks about our ideas on child development and how they shape our attitudes. Most parents nowadays believe that they can mould their children into almost anything and the commercial world plays on that belief by selling parents things that improve their children's brains, coordination everything. In fact the evidence shows that difference in parenting (barring severe abuse or neglect) have an absolutely tiny influence on the final outcome for children. People forget that you're basically raising an adult. Teaching them to count at 2 is really not going to make any difference because unless they have SN they're definitely going to be able to count when they're old enough for it to actually matter.

And for the record mrswoodentop, working-class kids are also capable of slogging their guts out as well, and often do. Hard work is not limited to the middle-classes you know.

Absolutely agree with you OP, can't stand the witless obsession with 'labelling' every aspect of everything.

I also fail to understand the labelling that people seem to apply to themselves in terms of 'class'? How does that work, exactly? Bonkers!

Posted too soon.

If you can't see further than what irritates you on the surface just let it pass you by, maybe?

and I have never read a parenting book all the way through. A child is not a Ford Cortina. They don't require a Haynes Manual.

Not MC - just theory-obsessed. Anyone who feels they aren't doing it properly if they haven't read a book about it. I have a friend who never buys anything for the house without reading a Which report first Similar principle.

Ooops - when I read the thread title I was going to tell the OP to fuck off, and I forgot, after getting distracted by the rest of the thread. I'm middle class. Take your sweeping generalisations and shove them wherever defiantly working people shove these things.

I have to the conclusion that the best way to bring up kids is to smile a lot, grit your teeth, stick your fingers in your ears and go 'Lalalalalala!' a lot. And hope for the best. Worked so far. I think.... A bit worried about the cat mind you.

Blame the net. It gives labels that sound pretentious to stuff parents have been doing for decades.

People on this thread who deffo fall into the category described by the OP:
lecce
livinginazoo
swanker
eightiesChick
pagwatch
turkeyBurgerThing
hassled
letherebecake
mrsewoodentop

Weeeellllll...I am an arriviste into a world so MC it is almost a caricature of itself and I do observe some of the things the op mentions.

There is a tendency to over anxiety that can be joyless. And parenting is big business, whereas where I grew up parenting is just something people do.

Some MC values and mores I think are excellent and I wholeheartedly adopt them...others I jsut think are 'thanks but no thanks.'

What about MEEE?

mdowdall you think that the people you have listed suck the very soul out of life itself?

Don't you think that's a little strong?

I agree about parenting being big business wordfactory. I can't believe people pay sixty six pounds for a course of "baby sensory" which basically involves waving things at a totally uninterested baby. Mad.

Sixty-six pounds is a bargain. After all, you simply cannot put a price on developing your baby's brain into that of a genius

PMSL at mdowdall !!!

The OP's post definitely rings bells for me. I live near a predominantly middle class city with a reputation for and history of liberalism. It's a city with more than its fair share of wooden toy shops, organic whatever shops and Waitroses. I see the type of parent spoken of with remarkable regularity... the sling-wearing, organic cotton clad mother b/f the near 3 year old whilst reading to the babe in arms in the library (yes, I did get that the right way round) before going to the upstairs cafe to loudly inform Olivia that "We don't eat crisps darling, do we? No, put that Fruit Shoot down. Now how about some carrot sticks?".

These are, as jeckadeck says, the symbols of their middle-classness, the neon sign which says "I'm one of you" to other middle class parents, the identifying traits which attract like moths to a lightbulb acceptance into the "right" playground cliques when their child starts school.

Of course not all middle class parents are like that. I just see more than my fair share of them. :)

Apart from the sweeping attribution of the listed faults to "the middle classes" (how many middle classes are there btw? How do you distinguish between them?), I have a lot of sympathy with the OP. "Sucking the soul out" is very apt. Produced from the deadly combination of low parental self-confidence and the vulture swoop of commerce and media, always keen to make a new philosophy or accessory out of common sense.

The class thing is odd. People who like to call themselves working class in order to have a dig at tendencies they imagine to be middle class ought to stop and think harder about what it is, in their mind, that makes them working class. What do you mean by these class terms?