Expecting couple want people to make their meals and do their chores for them.

[Aeroflotgirl]

I read this, and I was gobsmacked, and not just any meals, specific ones requiring expensive ingredients. As If they are the first people to have babies. I think big CF comes to mind here. I know people don't have to give, but some people have a huge front.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6941101/Expecting-couple-ridiculed-Meal-Train-page-requesting-Paleo-meals-friends-chores.html

Well if nobody brings food at least they can eat the placenta.

It is one thing for friends and family to rally around and cook meals, but another to ask strangers to cook very specific faddy meals, and basically to pay their food bill just because like millions of people, they have had a baby. They are CF of the highest order, and are rude to put a cooler in the yard, to put food in so they don't have to talk to or thank those who have kindly cooked for them. They are going to raise one rude and entitled child like them.

Meal trains are similar to other silly American imports such as: gender reveal parties, baby showers, bridal showers, rehersal dinners, proms and of course the dreaded playdate.

I don’t think food trains would ever be imported here in any kind of meaningful way, partly because food is so much more expensive. Also we don’t have that relationship with neighbours or the community in many places (in fairness, the same applies to many parts of the US)

I like my neighbours to say hi to but the only way they’d know about a family hospital stay or illness or new baby is if we bumped into each other or we went round and told them. And then it would stay with them, they wouldn’t tell each other! I was 6m pregnant before I got around to telling my neighbours/ before they noticed

So this isn't in the UK then OP?

I think that’s a very interesting and pertinent point sarahj. I did laugh at your post HG good frenzy though 🤣

Meal trains are similar to other silly American imports

I remember DM signing up to local rotas to help or take stuff to new parents, ill people, the elderly when I was a child. She is in her 80s and would be astonished to think it was an imported idea.

DC have always gone to play with other DC, nothing new about that either.

In my day there was a leavers dance/disco in may schools.

Terminology may change or be imported but that doesn't make the concept "foreign" (and who cares anyway if its a good concept).

We have a meal train in our village which was so wonderful particularly after the help from MIL ended but we were still knackered. DH and I both cooked and delivered meals when it was our turn to reciprocate and it is one of the best features of our community.

Food trains are in my opinion another way in which women provide unpaid work for the benefit of the community.

Agreed - and I think it's particularly egregious in the case of a couple with a new baby as it's then women doing unpaid work on the assumption that a man couldn't possibly cook for his own wife, better for a random woman to do it. Again, different if it's a single mother or partner has disabilities, but if he's fit and healthy why on earth are random people being asked to feed him?

No this is in the US, but might come here like a lot of things. Meal trains, really, just call it cooking for others. This couple are absolutely rude and cheeky, taking advantage. I bet people think they are absolutely crackers. I don't think they will have many offers to help them. Yes it is fantastic to help people who need it, I am not saying that it isen't, but this is about this CF couple who have taken it too far.

Exactly, it is HIM who are providing the food requirements, not her so much.

If they don't want to make their own meals they can have them delivered and pay for them like everyone else. I honestly wonder if they're so anxious they won't be able to cope they're going overboard. Either way, i certainly wouldn't be rushing to help them!

People spend THOUSANDS of pounds on dress, limo, photos. It's like the stupid 'pwincess for a speshul day' wedding bollocks, but for 16-year-olds.

A few might but for the majority its posh frock event with the same kind of spend that similar parents here would spend. Most of the Americans I've worked with roll their eyes at the tabloidesque descriptions and spend much the same as families here would consider reasonable.

The May Balls on the other hand really do get spendy and nothing particularly imported about them.

I actually paid someone to do this. She came for 3 hrs a day Mon to Fri for the first 2 weeks after DS was born and after DH went back to.work. She helped with DS, held him if I wanted a nap and cooked dinner a few times a week, other days we had a takeaway. No I did not cook a meal for the first few weeks. DH did or we had a takeaway or the lady we paid did.

I wish I had thought of asking people to.do it.for free. I sort of admire their chutspah (or CFery ) - take your pick of description

Well bumbling they have some front that is for sure. That is a good idea to pay like a 'mothers help' or someone, but to expect total strangers to do that for free. Besides you are asking total strangers to cook, how to you know that they are clean, or won't poison the food.

Is it really such a massive deal to just make something easy like cheese on toast, microwave a ready meal or order a pizza for yourself?

What the hell has happened to our society that normal couples can't look after themselves when they have a baby? Will these people just starve to death if no one fulfills their requests?

I'm a Yank and have never heard of a meal train. In New York they would probably not fancy what was left in the cooler after being such CF's.

I actually paid someone to do this. She came for 3 hrs a day Mon to Fri for the first 2 weeks after DS was born and after DH went back to.work. She helped with DS, held him if I wanted a nap and cooked dinner a few times a week, other days we had a takeaway. No I did not cook a meal for the first few weeks. DH did or we had a takeaway or the lady we paid did.

Yes, and in this case there is absolutely no problem dictating what you want to eat, specifying ingredients etc and having them perform the exact tasks you want. Because you are paying them and it is a form of contractual agreement by nature of the exchange. Totally different to these CF’s.

I’ve cooked the odd dish for new parents or someone coming home after an op and not too mobile etc. I just made us a meal that was suitable and cooked a double batch. In one instance I knew one of their kids was lactose intolerant so made something suitable, prob spag bol or something, can’t recall now. They were also dishes that could be frozen in the event they already had food sorted or what not. I was more than happy to do this but if they had asked for it and then demanded I go source kale that had been pissed on by leprechauns or some such shite the friendship would have ended there and then. How people think this is normal is mind boggling.

Unbelievable with my second baby I also had a severely disabled older child to care for, hub working full time and no local support. I just got on with it and preparing mealtimes was the easiest part.

Madness asking strangers to do such things. A typical D. Mail story

Pre plan you lazy twats.