If I say Mumsnet attracts a certain type of person?

[poptothetop]

Let me start of by saying that I've been on quite a few other forums and the opinion/views of them are a lot different/ diverse.

Things most MN members seem to agree on:

Ear piercing views

Schooling views

Baby showers (haven't actually come across a MNetter who hasn't labelled them grabby).

If I were to mention these subjects elsewhere, the comments would be a lot more diverse and lenient.

So, AIBU to say Mumsnet attracts a certain type of person (overall)?

Whether that's because of social class or personality, I can't decide. It's interesting to see what you all think

It's not that posh. It uses mum in the wbesite name rather than mummy which makes some of us cringe but it's a bit posher than the other sides so we can just about slum it here. I don't know anyone who says hun - that's either American or very lower middle class surely?

However there are lots of different people here and it's nice to be able to interact for all kinds of people.

Mumsnet is obviously doing something right as it has a fairly large critical mass of posters.

Speaking as a mum of 20 years plus, I have noticed that attitudes towards parenting have changed so much from when I had my first, in the mid-nineties til my sister had her youngest dd 3 years ago. I think that Mn does indeed reflect this change. When I had my first Ds, most of my pregnancy and parenting advice came from my own mother, as I was the first of my friends to have a baby and the tinterweb was itself just a baby. Nowadays, parenting, as everything in our society is a construct of our society and our society is guided by the internet. Parents today, young parents especially seem to be running around like headless chickens trying to prove what fantastic parents they are, as everyone's lives are an open book in social networking terms. There seems to be so much justification of one's own ability to parent, by showing the world every aspect of one's life. In addition to this, the boundaries have changed. 20 years ago, if you made a mistake with your child, it was presumed to be just that a mistake. Nowadays, folk tend more towards presuming that there are more nefarious reasons behind Jonny having had a couple of biscuits for breakfast for example. People appear to have lost the ability to mind their own business with regards to other people's parenting and allow themselves to get concerned about other people's children, when they should have enough to do watching their own. I could go on and on and on, as this is a subject that I genuinely feel strongly about. I am actually considering using this subject for my dissertation.

Girl, you would cringe less if it was called 'mummysnet'?!

'Hun' sounds incredibly bad to my ear. My one friend who uses it religiously is a Heat/Daily Mail type.

It's Netmums that grinds me, I cannot stand all the lovely dovey, uneducated nonsense

I used to be on there all the time but got totally fed up with both the intrusive advertising, and the pervading culture of "hun" and stupidity.

It also very much annoyed me that if someone posted a thread on NM titled "down to my last 50p and have to make 5 meals" they'd get endless posts about lentils and pasta, but if someone dared to say that they weren't on the breadline, they were either lying, fiddling their tax or delusional.

Birds I totally agree with you. I am not from the typical MN demograph in the sense that I married very young and had 5 children before I was late 20's. I am late 30's now and probably the same age that a lot of MN's are having their first children and I do occasionally have a at some of the things people are fretting over.

For what it's worth the time I spent lovingly pureeing organic sweet potato and courgette was most likely a waste of time. Mine now love supermarket value pot noodles and view fish fingers/turkey twizzlers as a treat.

Mumsnet is exactly like the opinions i encounter everyday. I live in a very MC area and i grew up in an even more MC area (if that's even possible). When i go to toddler groups and see the snacks the kids are fed i always smile inwardly (and am envious as my kids just eat cake and biscuits).

What always makes me shocked is the name threads where someone says 'i have never met a Ptolomy or Xavier' and i think where the hell do you live? there are 5 of each in DSs class

I haven't got a clue what class I am either. Why does it matter, as I said we are all people.

Mrs Koala where do you live? MC area here and I've never heard of those, bar on here!

I live near T. Wells and i grew up in Chiswick (there aren't really 5 of each i was joking, but there are equivalents and a have met 2 Ptolomys and 3 Xaviers, a Cesarion, and many others. Sebastion is the most frequent name i know of)

The moon cup!

Now never hear of this in RL or even see in a shop only on mumsnet do people shove a cup up their twat and wash it free of blood and put it back in.

Truly baffling.

A cesarion! Wtaf.

I don't know about Netmums but on Mumsnet, it's amazing how a thread can suddenly turn into a geography, science, maths or history discussion like that and get very detailed.

And there are some very good arguments presented for and against things like the Monarchy, religion in schools, leave and remain etc. There is high quality debate on here. It does make MN a good place to be.

You're obviously far more attuned to all this stuff when you're a mother of very small children. I feel to a certain extent pretty isolated from all the mummy-angst now, I've swapped the school gates for the dog park which has its own perils.

Calamityjam
I agree with everything you say.
I have 3 children (23, 12 and 9) and the difference in parenting between dc1 and dc3 is marked. I have said this a few times you n here.
You can talk to me gir you dissertation!

I've never met a Ptolemy or a Xavier, but mooncups / washable towels are probably the norm amongst the women I hang out with (as you might guess, baby names tend more to the nature inclined )

The conversation at the pre-school gates this week have been moaning about cleaners, inability to find a suitable au pair, and selling some second homes.

There are some things that MN is massively divided on: loo brushes, parking, whether Kayden is a better name than Xanthippe, whether shopping your cousin for benefit fraud is a good or bad thing.

But it is distinctively united on: piercing babies' ears, infant circumcision, whether women who choose to BF past 6 months are weirdos, astrology, homeopathy, MLM, whether it's worthwhile to spell and punctuate correctly on social media, and whether women who go out wearing short skirts are asking for it. On those subjects you'll see hardly any diversion from the party line, far less than in society as a whole.

There was a little Ophelia at the HV clinic this morning :)

Like a pp the world I grew up in was more like NM and the world I live in now is more like MN. As someone who got bullied for being 'posh' (I'm really not) I feel more at home on MN.

I also like all the feminism.

Dilys - I know the party line on baby ear piercing & punctuation, but is extended BFing good or bad? And short skirts? (and indeed, breastfeeding in short skirts?)

MN is pretty much like a fake world to me

I so so so agree with this, people can be whatever/whoever they like on here, we never know if someone is telling the truth or not.

The merits of extended BF can be a subject of debate, but I've never ever seen anyone on MN say that it's weird to BF a one/two year old, and if they did say that they'd get slaughtered. It's a fairly widely held view out in the "real world" though. Ditto "what do women expect if they go out dressed like tarts".