To feel at times that I live on an entirely different planet to other MNers?

[RozDoyle]

I'm not criticising. This place is great. I have had some amazingly advice and support from people here and it's brilliant. But sometimes i feel like I live in a completely different world to a lot of posters here. I probably won't articulate this very well but I'm going to have a bash.

Examples:

• little boys in dresses/the whole "gender neutral" thing. Literally all the parents I know irl just dress their kids in clothes typical to their sex i.e. Boys wear "boys clothes" and girls wear "girls clothes" and nothing is ever said about it. I have never seen a little boy in a dress, for example, because they'd likely be told not to wear a dress in case they were teased. Sad, but true..

• parents who cook every single meal from scratch. Always mega healthy and nutritious, and talk about it like it's the norm. In my world, most parents work and are simply too busy to cook from scratch every night (or too tired). No one "batch cooks" at the weekend. Its just whatever they can chuck in the oven after a hard day.

• how quick people are to shout "LTB". Now I should emphasise that I am not talking about cases of violence, cheating etc. But things like, a husband not pulling his weight around the house. In my experience, most people can't, and don't want to, leave their husbands, to whom they have children, for issues such as that. It's an extreme solution and it makes me wonder if these same people would really walk out of their marriage over such trivial matters.

I'm sure I have loads more examples but I can't think of them right now. Just wondered if anyone else feels this way?

The problem is, we just live in very segregated social groups - what you are seeing is basically the coal face of class division in the UK. To my shame I don't know any mechanics or hairdressers but know literally dozens of people with 3 degrees and many, many with high-flying careers - that's what happens if you are middle class in a university town. I also cook from scratch every day, it's just what I do. I only have one toddler though and she doesn't go to bed at 7!

As for the problem neighbour issues etc, again, I think it comes down to region and class. If you live in a close-knit estate in the suburbs, then there are likely to be very different issues to if you are live in a central London victorian terrace near a tube station! Ditto school gate mums.

You're brave frogsoup

Why am I brave?! Saying we live in a class segregated society is the reality of most of our situations.

(I don't live in a central London terrace near a tube station, btw! I'm not that posh...)

I think the gender neutral clothes is something people have been doing for years; they've just gone about it quietly.

Everything grey. There are really strong opinions at extremes. It's interesting to learn more about others viewpoints and what their basing their views on. The people that post the most are those that are most passionate about the subject.

I've had the horrible school mums although the PTAers are nice. I try to cook from scratch. I use my slow cooker a lot. Sometimes my daughter wants chips and nuggets or pizza.

I'm a Northerner, I wonder sometimes how location affects what we are thinking.

I am constantly amazed by how Scottish everyone is. Especially the cheating husbands

To be honest, it just goes to show how empty some Mumsnetters lives must be, to be that bothered about how other people live their own.

It's very sad. Especially as a lot of people turn to Mumsnet for support and are met with nastiness. I've never really seen it anywhere else but here.

I just tend to think to myself that those being horrid seem to have a lot of time to spend on an internet forum, spouting their poisonous opinions on other people's lives and preaching about how perfect their own are. Are they really that perfect if they're hunched over their phone, typing frantically and angrily on Mumsnet?

Wow I don't know anyone with 3 degrees.
Agree that MN shows up class segregation.

I cook mostly from scratch but there are frozen chips in my freezer .

For the poster who said it takes fifteen minutes to chop an onion, this is why the good lord invented food processors, mini choppers and the like. one of the benefits of cooking from scratch means I get to aspire to and own all manner of gadgets I otherwise wouldn't. .

The one which always gets me though is the shocking regularity with which people are advised to go no contact with family. Mum fed the kids a bit of cake before they were a year old? Go NC. MIL bought bigger presents for one grandchild than another? Go NC. And so the list goes on. I absolutely believe that if there is serious abuse in the equation then no contact is the way to go, and you can generally go about that without having to make a thing of it. But IMO there is rarely something which is so awful that it should result in you never speaking to family again ever to the point you wouldn't attend their funeral if they died etc. Also there is IMO often a lot more to the stories of "family have been soooo nasty to me," than just a one-sided view.

In many ways, that's the beauty of MN. That it brings people from very different backgrounds together and challenges their norms.

As evidenced by the shoes off/shoes on threads, which are full of people who have only been exposed to one or the other and passionate about how 'rude' the alternative is.

In my social circle, the scratch cookery and gender neutral stuff is normal. While I'm reasonably hardcore on healthy food, I'm sometimes a bit shocked at the extremes people take it to on here.

I have fond memories of a thread where a poster gave her child unsweetened weetabix as a treat .

I agree with the OP that LTB is thrown around lightly. However, I don't think this kind of advice is necessarily acted upon. I live in hope that MNetters don't bin their perfectly nice husband for forgetting to take out the bins because a bunch of randoms on the internet tell them to.

This is why I find MN fascinating, it's like a microcosm of society. I read MN and I find out what people who are nothing like me think about things that I've never even thought to think about. It's what has kept me coming to MN for over 10 years. I rarely start threads, I don't care if a single poster knows who I am, I'm just fascinated by what people post about, the way they behave on threads, who becomes 'known' (I dislike the term 'MN royalty' -far too loaded), what they become known for, what becomes 'in' and 'out' on MN, etc.

Does it matter that I live in a council house, have an income probably a 10th of some of the posters here, drive a 20 year old car, wear the same clothes I've owned for years, have a child with SN who may never leave home, another child who most likely has SN, etc? Not one bit. There's no credit check when you sign up to MN

I'm amazed at how few people cook from scratch most days. Dinner yesterday was a stir fry. Chopping veg took max 10 minutes as things like sugar snaps, baby corn, bean sprouts don't need chopping. On the table in 20 minutes

See, I wouldn't call that "cooking from scratch". I'd call that DH making the tea. To actually cook from scratch (hate the phrase), I'd expect you to be making your own sauces or boning a chicken. Homemade soup and baking your own bread etc. i suspect there is widespread confusion on MN about this!

I agree about the class segregation. Gender neutral/multiple degrees/cooking from scratch all perfectly normal in my real life circle. Massive incomes, dizzying career success and school gate nastiness aren't.

I have fond memories of a thread where a poster gave her child unsweetened weetabix as a treat Yes I remember that Laurie or maybe I remember the person who said "Weetabix is a treat in our house". Truly mind blowing

Truly mind blowing

I no rite?

Another gem was a poster arguing that (homemade) mashed potatoes were so lacking in nutrition that 'you'd be better serving peanut M&Ms'.

And then I knew all sense and reason had gone from the world.

I remember a thread where people were spitting feathers and engaging in all manner of verbal fisticuffs because the kids were given ice cream and jelly instead of cake at a party.

Also on a thread where people were discussing whether you should rinse your dishes after washing. Full on rage.

I think it's the hanging of names and labels on things that used to be just 'done'.
Eg Gender Neutral clothing used to be clothes suitable for boys or girls; Cooking from scratch used to be making a meal; Baby wearing used to be using a sling; Baby-led weaning used to be finger foods.
Everyone used to have their own parenting style without it being labelled attachment, crunchy etc
And I am constantly amazed at the amount of narcissist husbands and MILs there are out there - yet another label!

See, I wouldn't call that "cooking from scratch". I'd call that DH making the tea. To actually cook from scratch (hate the phrase), I'd expect you to be making your own sauces or boning a chicken.

I think that most people just define it as cooking from fresh ingredients. That can be very simple or very complicated, depending.

There are some grey areas though. While using a bottled sauce is (in my eyes) not scratch cookery, what about using a jar of curry paste?

Dilemmas, dilemmas

Another thing that baffles me. The posters that come on to a support thread to play devil's advocate. Just, why?

on MN the suggestion to anyone having difficulty with work flexibility is to try to work from home

• maybe because it's easier to MN in the middle of the day if you work from home, so that's the subset of the population who are available to answer?

Definitely tricky to take your work home if you're a teacher, surgeon or bus driver.

Gadgets are all very well for chopping stuff, but then you have to wash the fuckers up, don't you?

Love I am constantly amazed by how Scottish everyone is

Also, the idea of tops with 'I hate maths, let's go shopping'

I think Mumsnet can be a bit more arsey than real life as people come on here to vent, but across the range of the different boards, a lot of different ways of living are represented.

Also, over the years, I have come across people IRL who didn't like loo brushes (in 1999! Well before Mumsnet! I was ), who have asked me to look after their children every day after school for nothing, and I was even party to an altercation in a cinema fairly recently.

I also had a very strange experience on a bus once.

cathf - spot on!

^There are some grey areas though. While using a bottled sauce is (in my eyes) not scratch cookery, what about using a jar of curry paste?

Now YABU!

It can be a bit Elevenerife with how rich/ poor/frugal people are.

Earning £200k a year or surviving on a fiver on here seems the norm.
Most people I know are doing ok to middling with a few wealthy folk thrown in not astonishingly rich or desperately poor.
I live in a fairly mixed area btw not a bubble

The vast majority of women that I know cook from scratch most days, including me. Of course everyone has lazy dinners occasionally but most women (and men!) I know do cook from scratch.

So maybe you do live in a parallel universe Op. is the weather better there because if it is I'm moving