hysterical parenting - AIBU?

[cathf]

I might be a voice in the wilderness here but is anyone else amazed at the level of overreaction and drama involved in parenting in 2016?
I only joined Mumsnet a few weeks ago and I have been astonished by some of the posts on here. I sincerely hope that this is not a snapshot of real life or we are all doomed.
It looks to me as if mothers - and I am sorry, it is almost exclusively mothers - seem to need to constantly define themselves by 'protecting' their children against perceived dangers as if it somehow proves they are good mothers. What did these women do before they had children?
In no particular order in the last few days, we have had a mum who was blocking all contact with her PIL because they did not show as much interest in their grandchild as SHE thought they should, someone suggesting the police should be called because an elderly woman helped a mum diffuse a stand-off with a toddler and yet another thread about locking the family away from the world until the baby is x weeks old.
What happened to living peacefully as best we can? Instead a routine trip to the shops, toddler's birthday or birth of a new baby is turned into a dramatic stand-off when there's really no need.
I am quite prepared to accept I am a minority of one on this - my children are aged 23, 12 and 9 so I guess I just parented in different times!

Glad I am not alone.
It just all seems so ... tiring.
Incidentally, I note with interest that I have been accused of misogyny twice on this thread - does that mean I am not allowed to point out anything that suggest women may be anything but perfect?
I stand corrected.

Sorry, bolding fail

The word 'hysterical' is misogynistic.

""Also, locking mother and baby away from the world for weeks on end is traditional in many cultures: ""

But they'd have the Grandmothers, or other female relatives, heavily involved.

I never knew the idea that you/DP/& baby, was now a seperate unit and other family relationships now didn't matter, until I came on MN.

In RL, everyone I know had their Mum/Sister, as well as their DP, as a Birth Partner and many on here don't aknowledge that it's Social Conditioning that dictates these things. When I had mine, Men didn't generally go into the delivery room.

I think that people (or Mothers), not managing things, has always been around, if someone didn't help out, then those children were just neglected, or the anxiety past on.

MN, like FB, just gives you a glimpse into others people's Worlds.

Less than one page of replied before the disablist bashing starts.

And if anyone would read what i posted, i didnt ask anyone not to use meltdown , i just asked that you think about why it bothers people and not pull the face at them.

But yes, groundhog day...

Yawn.

The "parents of today" rant.

It gets churned out on every thread where a parent of a mother isn't pretty much apologising for doing everything exactly as her own mother or her parents in law or her sister in law or her grandmother's cousin's step sister wish her to.

Other cliches you might like to try out are:

"Its not your baby you know" (you can only say this to the child's mother - it is the grandmother's/ aunt's /grandmother's cousin's step sister's baby so you mustn't say it to them)

and

"All mothers these days think they are the first person ever to have a baby".

Some mothers are over protective and hysterical and always have been.

Some extended family are inconsiderate and interfering or utterly self centred or treat the mother as an incubator or an utter clueless fool or both.

Most people are not at any extreme.

People who are struggling with situations or personalities they find difficult write disproportionately more OPs than people with reasonable extended families who are coping and not in any kind of tricky situation therefore MN OPs tend to me more likely to be a bit more extreme than average daily life.

Which generation you are born into does not dictate whether not you are "right" or "reasonable" or win at parenting.

That should say "it gets churned out on every thread where a parent (yes, you are right, usually a mother) isn't apologising ...

It is a constant source of amusement though. Not a lot of things on here reflect RL and I like the humourous posts. There are a few posters with a brilliant sense of humour and some who are very wise worra and MrsdeVere being two of them
Hope you ladies don't mind me mentioning you.
In general I just ignore the hysterical posts and move on

I thought this was going to be a goady thread, but actually I agree.

Mumsnetters are the most irrationally risk averse parents on the planet. I could never conceive of the potential disaster scenarios I see cited on here.

For example, when I go out with my two children I load them into the car and then go back to the house to collect the baby bag, buggy and endless paraphernalia. I physically can't do it in one trip. But if I started a thread about it I'd be ripped to shreds.

See also: supervising kids in the bath until puberty in case they drown. Never leaving a child of any age unattended while eating in case they choke to death.

The word 'hysterical' is misogynistic

Not in its present day usage

IMO the "problem with MN" :o is that number of thickos who think that what "everyone I know" does/ thinks is the definition of normal, and everyone else is either weird or exists only in virtual reality.

It astounds me how many people refuse to accept or be aware of the fact that most people live in a bubble of people fairly similar to themselves and that half the people they walk past on the street but don't know, or even people they know casually but not well enough to have ever discussed the topic in question, might surprise them by thinking or doing the opposite.

I have never to my knowledge met anyone who had anyone but their child's father as birth partner unless their child's father was not in the picture or couldn't get back in time from working in a different country. The people II know and the people other people know are not less real or normal than one another...

Or to sum up Schwabischeweihnachtskanne, it's a funny old world.

Well that's us told then innit

Thanks for showing us the error of our ways, Cath

Any other gaffes that we are making, from your viewpoint of being ever so new to MN?

Not in its present day usage

Do you ever hear 'hysterical' used to describe men? No. You don't. oh but I do ALL the
No. You don't.

The use of the word meltdown doesn't bother me. It is irritating when people who describe their 2 year old as having meltdowns think a severely autistic 12 year olds meltdowns are the same thing and start giving advice and opinions about it.

Do you ever hear 'hysterical' used to describe men? No. You don't. oh but I do ALL the
No. You don't.

Not so sure about that

(I used the noun but the adjective gives a similar result)

60s not sure what you're trying to prove there? There's a difference between talking about Brexit hysteria, as a collective noun, rather than an adjective to describe women only (and ALWAYS in a derogatory way).

I still want to know what Tread means wrt Professionally Offended please.

im the opposite to what you say in your op.. it my child is throwing a tantrum and someone can step in and it stops all good. i dont care just want it to stop. need to get on with my day.

when my baby was born i was not bothered who came or when. although partners adult daughter did walk in as i had just pushed baby out and i was all on show .

i might have felt diffferent with my 1st child and when i was younger.

Schwabischeweihnachtskanne

I know there have always been over-protective parents and - dare I say it - hysterical parents (I would and have used the word to describe a man, by the way)
Thinking about it, it is probably social media in all its forms as well as the internet which have caused it to be so mainstream and validated.
I have one friend from my toddler days who seems to thrive on Facebook drama ('Thank you Tesco for ruining my daughter's birthday' etc) and is constantly claiming to be the 'world's worst mother' because of some trivial incident. Of course, she is then deluged with responses along the lines of 'You are the world's best mother', which is of course what she wanted all along.
Then there are all the posts about how blessed she is feeling and how she 'loves every minute' of being a mum. Every minute? Really?
Of course, without the internet, none of this guff would be possible as most of it would go unsaid.
So I suppose with no-one to feed off the drama, there would be no drama.
So an elderly woman helping a mum with a difficult toddler would not morph into a toddler being snatched by a potential paedophile ring in the space of a couple of hours.
So no, the attitude isn't necessarily a new thing, but the validation is.
Can we agree on that?

Ah thank you!

Sadly you see, PO is sometimes used as shorthand for people who object to disablism, racism, ageism. Mighty relieved you're not.

Do take a look at our This Is My Child Campaign and consider the challenges many parents of children with disabilities or who have disabilities themselves face on a daily basis. We really think these parents have enough to deal with without having to defend themselves on here.