The Mumsnet ideal

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You have to: Have big house in the country
Work, both of you, all the hours you can to afford this.
Drive everywhere
Get a cleaner

If you have e.g. a flat, in the town, that is not a 'proper home'
If you don't work all the hours you can, you are lazy
Ditto for driving.

And you must always make a deliberate point of saying how all your food is home-cooked and healthy

Apart from the drawer. The freezer drawer full of a selection of processed crap incase of playdate emergency. All brands of pizza nuggets chips and fish fingers should be kept in stock at all times.

You must never ever drink at all in case you have to drive your child to a&e and there are no ambulances. If you don't drive you must learn.

Adults shouldn't celebrate birthdays. Of all the MN weirdness, this is the most bizarre to me.

@DirtyDennis great! I'm in Nottinghamshire so according to MN we pretty much next door neightbours as we both live in the 'up north'. We can pop to each other's houses and marvel at how cheap everything is

Your husband works in the city and makes the 500 grand that constitutes the bare minimum anyone needs to survive on in the UK. You've seen documentaries about people who live on 80K but they're in the north and live in caves and eat non organic babies.

"Adults shouldn't celebrate birthdays. Of all the MN weirdness, this is the most bizarre to me."

You shouldn't celebrate anything, ever. Life is a long, joyless grind to earn as much money as you can. The only savour in life is coming on Mumsnet and being horrible to other women.

Your dinner (not 'tea' - that's a drink) must involve minimal carbs and a 'huge' or 'massive' salad. if you have any extra weight or bodily imperfections, you need to 'work on' them.

Your dh - 'top of his game' in a 'very senior' role, of course - must be at least 6' and your children must be tall, skinny, sporty and 'top of their class'. Screen time must be limited to twenty minutes on alternate Sundays when the moon is in Pisces, but your children could watch, follow and understand all the Harry Potter films aged 4. After reading the books. Independently, of course.

Swearing is really cool! Especially the c word!

Oh, and you'll queue up to get said top-of-their-class dc into the local Ofsted-outstanding faith school with its marvellous academics and activities, but then complain vociferously about any element of religious education as stopping said dc from learning critical thinking.

You've seen documentaries about people who live on 80K but they're in the north and live in caves and eat non organic babies.

Your house smells amazing despite being a massive country pile with dogs and cats and sports gear because you just open the windows or have fresh flowers everywhere, never, ever do you have scented candles, reed diffusers or plug ins! Everyone drops dead from those!

If you're over a size 10 you're fat. But you're always 5ft,7in or above.

No one ever goes to church.

Because every single mumsnet member thinks alike.

Children wrapped in cotton wool and never left alone until the age of 18, at which point they are now expected to be fully functioning, independent, money earning adults and should receive no help

if you are more than 9 stone you are a scourge on society.

Because you 'spill over' into other people's space on public transport, apparently having no muscles or skin to contain your f**.

Saying things like 'goodness' and 'gosh' that you simply never hear people say in real life. All blilge actually, I don't think there is any such thing.

I don't fit with many of these MN ideals.

I clothes shop in M &S more often than not. I have two toilet brushes. I only change the bedsheets every couple of weeks, and the towels get several uses each before washing. My house isn't spick and span either.

Anyone over 60, or maybe even 55, is incredibly old and decrepit and needs full-time care. They have also had the best of everything as a boomer and are living in a multi- million pound house that cost them only 2/6d. It is obviously far too big for them so they should move into a shoebox forthwith and let a ‘young family’ have the house, regardless of whether YF can afford it. They also have a huge pension that they really don’t deserve. Oh, and if they don’t want to take on full-time childcare they are incredibly selfish.

Mythical Oxbridge/Russell PHD

If your mother ever still remotely tells you off then she is a a NARC and you must go NC immediately

If your DH has the audacity to speak to his mother once a month he is a MUMMIES BOY.

If the ILS remotely show any interest in you and the offspring - they are muscling in

'triggered' is the new in word

You are definitely overly invested in mumsnet if you have: 1) noticed all these things and 2) are actually bothered by it!

You should be slim, eat at least 5 a day, and 10,000 steps a day is 'only a starting point'.
You have to be an early-morning person, or else you're lazy. If your other half likes a lie in at the weekend, LTB, he's not pulling his weight.
If you're a stepparent, you have to accept you are bottom priority at all times.
Every social occasion must revolve around food.
You must never have so much as a stray thought of finding another man (or woman, as applicable) attractive. If you do, you should leave your partner as you clearly don't love them and they'd be better off without you.
If you are, or ever have been, in debt, you deserve to go to hell.
If you impose any boundaries around family, particularly in-laws, 'popping in' whenever they feel like it, you 'are being a bit mean' and 'must not like them very much'. Why should they have to 'make an appointment'?
If your opening post is long, expect sarky comments about 'your LONG post'. If your opening post is short and you provide further info later on, it's a drip feed. Your opening post must be of a positively Goldilocks level of just-rightness, in fact there's probably a specific word count you should be meeting, or else you're just wasting everyone's time.
If you mind that everyone forgets your birthday 'what are you, 6?'
If you do anything good and happen to mention it, you're a virtue signaller.
If you own anything good and happen to mention it, you're a stealth boaster.

Your bf/partner/DH is one great big walking red flag, carrying a lot of other smaller red flags.
Anyone married knows that their partner would never ever ever cheat, because.... trust.
Until they cheat.

You must never use the emergency services. Ambulances are for use by the dead only.
But you must log everything you notice from behind your twitchy curtain with the police.

You are always always being unreasonable.

If your child is bullied, it is guaranteed that they are in fact the perpetrator.
You must not believe a word your child says. Children lie.

You must only vote Remain. If not you're a xenophobic, bigoted, anti semitic dirty fat racist. You are also thick, uneducated and most likely going to suffer for the rest of your life.

If you're a single mother, you must never ever date. You must never introduce your partner to your dc, until the night before the wedding, preferably after dating him for at least 30 years.

If you're a woman who snoops on husband, you must get all your ducks in a row, snoop some more, keep everybody updated until you have gathered enough evidence and then you must clean out the joint bank account. You must take all passports, bank statements (especially his), details of your savings, investments, pensions. Then you must get your half hour free with the solicitor and take him to the cleaners.
If you are a man who snoops, refer to point 1 of this post. MASSIVE MASSIVE RED FLAG. Controlling, narc, bastard.

You must not use makeup, fake tan or dress nicely or wear high heels. Otherwise you are probably only doing it to attract men.

If SS are involved with your children there must be a MASSIVE backstory. It is worth mentioning that SS never get involved unless your kids are abused, neglected, you're an alcoholic druggie, your house is probably fit to be burnt to the ground and they have most likely tried to work with you for decades.

It is impossible that a do-gooder may have reported you for nefarious reasons, found your home in a state of disarray one day, while you were still in your pjs, with last nights 2 cans of Dutch gold on the counter waiting for to go in the recycling and made a less than glowing report about you.

If anything goes wrong, you must contact your MP. They are the solution to everything. That yours might be useless and that there's nothing to be done about the situation is immaterial. You must contact them anyway.

If you are the victim of domestic violence, you are an evil bitch who is abusing your dc. It is irrelevant that you have nowhere to go. Women's Aid will find you a place immediately. That you are financially tied to the abusive bastard doesn't matter. You are weak and evil if you do not LTB after he expressed his opinion once.

You must not consume any alcohol except wine and gin. But that is only once a year. If your husband drinks alcohol, he is an alcoholic and must go to AA.

You must have significant savings and access to credit. You must never live in social housing.

I'm sure I'll think of more.

@Nunogoncalves

The term 'virtue signalling' is all over the internet/press and has been for ages. You must be very busy.

You must be stridently feminist, cognizant of the mental load and oppose wife work.

But you must also actually do all that wife work, lest someone deem you unkind.

Being unkind is the worst possible thing to be. NB, the definition of unkind has been revised to include not pandering to toxic, demanding, entitled people, or even just being a bit too busy to go out of your way for the sake of your husband's female relatives.

(Met up with husband's family at the weekend and cheerfully informed them that unfortunately they are on HIS list for writing thank yous - so they're in for a wait!)

Your husband must have A Hobby.

I'm literally LOL, I dare not comment here! I would be banished from Mums net forever! ....