To think MN is full of really stupid advice/ideas?

[StupidAdvice]

For starters:

"Kick him out and change the locks" (you mostly can't just do this - especially not if you jointly own the property).

"You're his common law wife so you are entitled to half of everything" (no, no, no).

"You're entitled to stay in the family home if you separate" (maybe, but probably not).

"Keep all the evidence of him cheating because you'll need it when you negotiate a settlement" (no you won't, and you're wasting your time: the law doesn't care who cheated or why or when).

"Just take the kids and leave him" (it's mostly not that easy).

There's lots of brilliant advice too, obviously - but AIBU to want to bang my head on the desk when people repeatedly trot out a pile of bollocks as if it were fact?

@RobertaFirmino

'Divorce him and he'll HAVE to do 50% of the childcare' is often mentioned. He doesn't have to have the DC at all. Another favourite is 'I'm looking for a summer dress but I'm on a strict budget' and the OP is advised to try Rixo.

Yes, to both! He doesn't have to have the kids ever.

I'm on budget and I gave up asking for recs years ago, the replies were all, "I know you're on a budget but buy this £30 mascara, you won't regret it"

1. I didn't actually have £30.
2. I would regret it when I'd overspent my entire food budget for the week and was hungry.

@MiddleEasternMummy

😂😂 some of these are hilarious. I agree how ridiculous it is to take in ironing to make extra money but even more ridiculous is taking in a lodger . I mean who the hell wants a stranger in their house around their children 🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️

I have two spare rooms. There'll be no lodgers here!

It's such a weird suggestion.

If your husband has coffee with a female colleague he is actively having or planning an affair. You must start quietly “gathering evidence” ahead of the inevitable divorce proceedings.

Any woman on MN who doesn’t mind if her husband has a female friend is naive or a cool wife

I think a lot if the advice is batshit crazy. I also think AIBU has changed - it’s much tamer than it used to be and not nearly as interesting. A lot of the posts are nothing to do with being unreasonable - people who want help choosing food for a wedding or what type of hoover is best? Get to Netmums and leave this section for real AIBU’s.
I wonder now with mumsnet premium if the interesting posts go there.

@Eastie77Returns

If your husband has coffee with a female colleague he is actively having or planning an affair. You must start quietly “gathering evidence” ahead of the inevitable divorce proceedings.

Any woman on MN who doesn’t mind if her husband has a female friend is naive or a cool wife

Ducks in a row. Its not just coffee, he's definitely having an illicit affair. As single woman, I wonder how many affairs I'm having after smiling at some guy in the Tesco garage/flashing my lights at a guy thanking him for letting me into a lane/exchanging brief pleasantries at the cinema. I'm definitely boffing my neighbours, handing over his parcels is what does it for one, and I buy the other one pickles!

I’ve seen very bad and dangerous first aid advice, legal advice and opinion on the need / not need of going to a&e.

I sometimes view mn as the equivalent to standing up in a busy bus and asking for advice… would you follow the advice given?

@FrenchFancie

I’ve seen very bad and dangerous first aid advice, legal advice and opinion on the need / not need of going to a&e.

I sometimes view mn as the equivalent to standing up in a busy bus and asking for advice… would you follow the advice given?

Omg, why would you be on a bus, surely you can just learn to drive.....

@sadpapercourtesan

I always see the "MN tells people to LTB for farting in the car" thing and I just don't agree at all.

MN is such a vital resource for women in abusive or unhealthy relationships because it gives them a massive instant peer group of other women. Bad relationships can be very isolating and abusive men, having isolated you, can then work to skew your perceptions of what is normal and what is not. MN can offer a reality check and a reset of expectations where it's desperately needed. I've only ever seen a thread peppered with "LTB" posts where the OP really does need to hear it, and every time I do see it, I think "Thank goodness she posted here, and I hope she gets out".

I agree. Mumsnet might have imperfections but I think women can find good advice and a lot of support here. You just have to be a bit selective.

To be fair, there is some bat shit stuff on here. Like the poster who suggested the op gave up work (wfh) so she could spend more time entertaining the dog, because it was misbehaving on an evening.

However, there's loads of good advice too. I did ltb. Not because MN told me to, but because it helped me recognise I was being abused. And the emotion support given helped when I was leaving and left. There were definitely people who claimed leaving was an over reaction on my part. I can say, 6 years later, it definitely wasn't.

I do have to say one thing though. Some one posted the 'common law spouse are a thing' just last night on a thread about a woman who isn't married but lives with her partner in his house.

People definitely believe it's thing that's legal in every country. I have seen threads from women who friends have told them its definitely a thing in England and believed them, so thought they were protected. Their friends were not legally trained, but that's where they were getting their legal advice from.

Some of it is bonkers.

I was advised to leave my husband because he asked me to iron a duvet, apparently his request was completely unreasonable and he would most definitely abuse both me and my son 🤣

A lot of medical advise is very very dangerous, there was someone not long ago telling people a type one diabetic with low blood sugar should be given insulin as treatment. The same person after a little bit of searching claimed to be a nurse.

I was accused of having an imaginery child because we’re Sikh, the same poster then decided he was real and that being Sikh was abusive (she even made a thread about how awful it was for a child to be a Sikh on the red website).

Giving people in financial difficulties advice that will make them feel shitter, just like the school bully who loves targeting people at their weakest to make themselves feel better.

Being supportive of and advising verbal and physical assault of children, I’m always amazed when I see “slap the bitch” as a response for a child doing something wrong, being rude etc.

What??? I have literally never seen anyone saying 'slap the bitch' in reference to a child on MN! Finding it hard to believe tbh

Being supportive of and advising verbal and physical assault of children, I’m always amazed when I see “slap the bitch” as a response for a child doing something wrong, being rude etc.

This is not standard Mumsnet advice - which thread were you reading?!

18 is the legal age of adulthood. MNetters are obsessed with the 'frontal lobe doesn't mature until you're 26' factoid. Throughout history, people of 25 and younger have successfully raised families/held down jobs/functioned as adults.

Totally agree.

I don't think I have ever seen someone say 'slap the bitch' towards a child.

But I am always surprised how much sympathy is given to women who have lost their shit and smacked their child.

'They won't remember. Just don't do it again'
'Don't be so hard on youself'
'You are probably tired, stressed etc and just snapped'

Where as someone posting their husband smacked the child because he was tired and stressed would be told to ltb because if it happened once, it will happen again. And if they don't leave they are allowing their child to live with their abuser and are at risk of further abuse.

But definitely no 'slap the bitch'.

@AlDanvers

I don't think I have ever seen someone say 'slap the bitch' towards a child.

But I am always surprised how much sympathy is given to women who have lost their shit and smacked their child.

'They won't remember. Just don't do it again'
'Don't be so hard on youself'
'You are probably tired, stressed etc and just snapped'

Where as someone posting their husband smacked the child because he was tired and stressed would be told to ltb because if it happened once, it will happen again. And if they don't leave they are allowing their child to live with their abuser and are at risk of further abuse.

But definitely no 'slap the bitch'.

Agree with you @AlDanvers

I'm horrified when people condone violence towards children

@thepeopleversuswork

On LTB… it’s become a bit of a truism that people are too quick to say LTB. I disagree. I can count on one hand the times when I think the LTB judgement has been unwarranted.

By the time people get to posting about their relationships on MN they are normally royally fucked off but have been like the proverbial boiled frog and lost touch with their own instincts.

Women are conditioned throughout their lives to accommodate men, to consider their needs, to look at things through their eyes. Even now after 50 years of mainstream feminism it still takes balls to decide you have had enough, to follow through and to put yourself (and often your children) first.

We could all do with slightly lower tolerance of shit male behaviour and no one ever left a bloke purely on the basis of an overzealous LTB. If anything I think it allows women to develop the confidence to know their own minds and stand up for themselves.

More LTB, not less.

I came to say something similar. It helps us collectively look again at our relationships. Why did we hook up with him in the first place? Was he always this way? Why would I allow myself to be attracted to this? In what way would he have to realistically change for me to stay? And what do I have to change(for example, no longer putting his laundry in the laundry basket for him). Some of us feel like we've (women have) been collectively trained to be subservient. I see ltb as a reminder for us (women) to collectively break a bit more free from being perceived as being accommodating all the time.

@MiddleEasternMummy

😂😂 some of these are hilarious. I agree how ridiculous it is to take in ironing to make extra money but even more ridiculous is taking in a lodger . I mean who the hell wants a stranger in their house around their children 🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️

My parents took in lodgers in the early 90s when interest rates skyrocketed and they couldn’t afford the mortgage. They were lovely, it was great, and meant our family home didn’t get repossessed. Granted you need a big enough house to be able to do it so isn’t relevant to most circumstances, but it’s not completely without precedent.

@LemonDrizzles

Exactly. Also LTB often isn't meant literally: its shorthand for "you know you shouldn't be tolerating this, stop overcomplicating this for yourself and just take control". Sometimes that means actually leave, sometimes it just means having boundaries and sticking to them.

Most posters are sensible enough to know the difference.

YANBU OP this place is full of shit legal, insurance and consumer advice too.

On the "trust your gut" point: this is an interesting one.

Sometimes this is good advice: ie in a scenario where an OP is being bullied by a partner and is unsure of why she disagrees so strongly with him. It's definitely true that you shouldn't ignore a strong instinct that someone is taking the piss.

But there's a thin line between "listening to your gut" and "indulging your paranoia". Sometimes people's minds run away with themselves and they fixate on the worst case scenario in a way which is completely wrong and unhealthy. Listening to your gut is fine but acting on your gut without evidence is just not sensible.

@pictish

Claiming that 18 is a ‘grown adult’. Is it fuck.

I'm 44 and not sure about adulting still , so how an 18 year old is meant to cope is beyond me

@Zilla1

I think you might have stepped into the territory, OP. The first key point for many legal/matrimonial issues is jurisdiction. In the UK, your points would be valid but not in all jurisdictions where posters may live.

Ouch. But yes, that is a fair point.

It's the bollocks legal "advice" that winds me up particularly - but, yes, I am entirely Anglocentric in my assumptions, and will try to be less so.

If the (English) legal advice is largely pants, I can only imagine that the medical and employment-related advice is pretty similar.

Thanks to the vipers who have reminded me about the other entertainingly shit advice on here (and also that there is lots of good advice - some of which I have found helpful over the past 20 years).

"Trusting your gut" is on a par, for me, with that crap about "trust your spidey senses" (whatever they are). No: just be rational.

There's also the other shit advice based on people fancying themselves as Mystic Meg and making predictions based on nothing at all other than what they want to be the case...

I'm 44 and not sure about adulting still , so how an 18 year old is meant to cope is beyond me

Well that's kind of the point. We don't hit 26 and - Bing! - our frontal lobes are matured and that's adulthood achieved. We learn throughout our lives; our brains are incredibly plastic and continue to develop. A 44 year old is more cognitively mature than a 26 year old, who is more mature than an 18 year old. That doesn't mean that an 18 year old is not an adult.

Throughout history, adults under 26 have been the mainstay of much of society. They have raised families - a woman who had her first baby over 25 was considered an elderly primigravida, right into the late 20th century. They won WW2. Most great art was created by people under 30.

It is infantilising and disempowering to tell young adults they are not fully adult.

I always thought the advice to unmarried couples is pretty good on here. I've never seen anything about 'common law wife'

Agree with pp saying that some of the advice on go/don't go to A&E is batshit. In both directions - really serious symptoms being told to go to GP instead and chronic problems being told to go straight to A&E.

The really germphobic threads in Housekeeping where people bleach their entire house 3 times a day and wash their towels after a single use are a bit