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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Am I being unreasonable in hating these articles by journalists who are just showing off their families?

233 replies

ipanemagirl · 01/02/2008 12:53

articles like this just make me want to chunder. Does her family really want to be paraded about like this? Isn't it just a bit weird?

Sorry but there seem to be all these 30 something 40 something women journalists who can't do anything except write dull lightweight pieces of family journalistic bragging.
Yuck.

OP posts:
motherinferior · 01/02/2008 14:02

Oh, and I went to Oxford and I live in London. Since you ask.

motherinferior · 01/02/2008 14:03

And I have been known to write about my children, admittedly mainly about them as babies. I was commissioned to do so. I wrote a rather lovely piece about when my toddler met her newborn sister, which was really quite good.

alittleone2 · 01/02/2008 14:03

Message withdrawn

MrsMattie · 01/02/2008 14:03

Poor Giles and Barney.

UnquietDad · 01/02/2008 14:05

You don['t get journos in the redtops taking their families on knitting days, do you?

MrsMattie · 01/02/2008 14:05

Poor Giles and Barney.

scampadoodle · 01/02/2008 14:05

Motherinferior - I can't help but notice that there have been a few anti-journo threads today. I don't blame you for being

Tamum · 01/02/2008 14:06

I wouldn't have registered this as being about her family as such, to be honest. That's because I am so obsessed by knitting though. I would actually prefer to read about people's families than pieces like India Knight's, which are masquerading as opinion pieces but which are based entirely on justifying her own life (I'm divorced therefore children of divorced parents are all unaffected, I didn't send my children so nursery therefore all children who went to nursery are irrevocably damaged, I had my cfirst children early therefore older mothers are A Bad Thing and so on).

lennygrrl · 01/02/2008 14:07

Message withdrawn

Tamum · 01/02/2008 14:07

Oh, and MI's piece about her toddler meeting her sister was utterly fab

foxinsocks · 01/02/2008 14:10

Everyone thinks they can be a journalist! Easiest job in the world according to most!

Original poster
ipanemagirl · 01/02/2008 14:12

Scampa - I'm a massive reader of newspapers. I read papers all the time! I adore good writing! I love funny clever intersting writing.

BUT

I do think there's a kind of 'perfect family porn' that is all about aspirational lifestyles that a lot of people cannot attain for countless reasons. Consequently these 'family' pieces are really no different to someone in Hello magazine showing off their trillion dollar home!

Of course there are worse things. But sojme of these journalists are capable of far better work and I wish they were commissioned to write it!

OP posts:
MrsMattie · 01/02/2008 14:14

Oh come, come now. You writes your piece, you takes the criticism! (You defend it if you feel that passionately about it). You call your kids Giles and Barney and rope your husband into a knitting circle feature - you fecking well pay the price.

(I was a journalist for some years, donchaknow...)

Original poster
ipanemagirl · 01/02/2008 14:15

hear hear

OP posts:
CatIsSleepy · 01/02/2008 14:16

MrsM you just made me LOL

motherinferior · 01/02/2008 14:20

Yes, but you aren't just criticising SD. It was the sadly customary 'oh, all journalists are evil scum who loll around on silk pillows occasionally writing drivel with no childcare issues'.

And while I'm not defending some of what gets written (albeit faintly jealous of being paid to write it) if you're commissioned, you damn well write it.

Spockster · 01/02/2008 14:21

I had come to believe that Living with Teenagers is a partly made-up, lots of exaggerating-type piece; now I think it might be true again and I am depressed. Can a fairly intelligent journo-type woman really be that ineffectual as a mother? I was really looking forward to having teenagers; now I am just scared.

UniversallyChallenged · 01/02/2008 14:22

Thought the kids were Joe and Barney, but cabt be bothere to read it again to check

Dont get me started on the Sunday supps - that achingly boring Mrs Freebie and dont we all know it Normandie "you've got to keep your standards up girls when you've a millionaire husband, a mansion and a nanny" Keith

CaptainCod · 01/02/2008 14:23

I HATE HATE HATE THE ROSIE MILLAR DNAD HER HUSBAND ARCTICLES

Original poster
ipanemagirl · 01/02/2008 14:26

Motherinferior - that's a defence for writing absolutely anything at all.

The writer does have some choice.

Bragging is horrid imo whether in the Grauniad or Hello.

What you say is true but I don't think journalists should be particularly proud of it or get all hoity about it either!

OP posts:
UnquietDad · 01/02/2008 14:27

Cod - do tell more about Rosie. Does she moan about not being able to afford her five houses?

Tamum · 01/02/2008 14:27

Oh god yes, me too Cod. So bloody smug and tedious.

motherinferior · 01/02/2008 14:28

Ah, but we are unprincipled scum, you see. We just take the devil's shilling to fund our plutocratic metro-lifestyles

Original poster
ipanemagirl · 01/02/2008 14:28

Oh Lord don't start me on La Millard. There is no escape from the horror of that record-breaking self-regard!

OP posts:
Moomin · 01/02/2008 14:29

That shite on the last page of the ST Style is proper getting on my norks at the moment. Not MRs Mills - the DadRules nonsense which really is the weakest most boring prattle imaginable. He dresses up in what I imagine he thinks is stylish, quirky, metrosexual garb for those stupid photos. I really could quite happily slap his face all the live-long day and not get at all tired.