Irks me to see mums boasting about "childfree" nights out & "kid free weekends away"

[Bridgetjoneski]

I just find it very distasteful! I have one or two mum friends on insta & know them in real life. But at least every fortnight they have insta posts up about "kid free" night out with dh or "kid free weekend away". They are quite wealthy & both work full time, I just find it very unsavoury. Tag a dinner your hubby but no need to state the kids absense.
Is this a rising trend or just limited to the pair I know? The latest status tagging the latest dinner out was "not a child in sight"...

If I post #offwork do I hate my job? What about #timetogohome while on holiday? Did I hate my holiday?

Ooh boy. OP is back again today being a part time mom (she was a full time mom before her kids went to school) to have enough childfree time on her hands to devote another day to what irks her. It's time we users of distasteful and abrasive language, who are participating in some world conspiracy driven by hastags get back to our childfree work! For the record, I don't use social media, but the ridiculousness of this prompted me to respond.

#lovegirlsnightsout OMG that must mean the person hates their DH, hates nights out with him and is making a dig at him, otherwise why be posting about having a great time when he's not there?

I excitedly posted #movingout when I got my own place. I must hate my parents too.

I can’t imagine living my life as rigidly as OP. It must be difficult to go through life lacking the ability to empathise and being unable to consider the viewpoint of others.

You aren't right

But surely that says more about you if that's what your social media shows you? I've literally never seen anything like this. It might be useful to dig into why this is really bothering you 🤨

This post just shows that you have no idea what life is like for so many women, working and juggling kids, cooking, house jobs.

If you had a busy life like most women (and I don't mean busy because you have swimming, brunch, yoga and dropping something off for the PTA) you would rejoice in a couple of hours without any responsibility. Most of your life is without responsibility so you just don't know what it feels like.

Another shining example of supporting the sisterhood on MN. Maybe one day you can dig deep and find some compassion for other women who aren't as perfect as you.

Apart from working, we never get a minute away from the children

I am broken, my marriage is suffering and we are just exhausted

I would love a weekend away from them

Hubby and I went away for the first over night on our own at the weekend for the first time since our daughter was born; she's 3 years 9 months!
It was incredible to find the time to reconnect and I feel very important in a marriage.

No more ridiculous than the statement “all mums are full time mums.” You can’t be a “full time mum” unless it is possible to be a part time mum, ffs.

You are protesting a little too much here. It sounds as if you don’t like your children and are a little jealous.

The thing about emphasising you are having a night free of the kids is, it is just proof you are incapable of having a night free from the kids, because your first thought is that it is a night without your kids… meaning you probably also spent half the night talking about said kids.

Of course all mums are full-time mums. I don’t stop worrying about my kids when I’m at work - in fact, when I’m at work I’m doing it for the direct benefit of my children. At any moment my kids schools could call me and I’d have to leave and go get my kids.

It is the distinction of stay at home parents that they are somehow “full time mums” that is the point of contention, as if it’s somehow making them a more active parent than a working mum. Unless stay at home parents of school aged children are really just unemployed during the day, and then both the working parents and SAHP’s are part time in the evening?

Also, no stay at home dad would refer to himself as a “full time dad” - nor would any dad who works full-time be referred to as a “part time parent”

To put it more simply for the hard of thinking - are you only a mum/dad when your kids are actually present with you?

It IS good to be child free sometimes though!

Kids can be really challenging.

why should parents have to pretend otherwise?

Parenting is exhausting, mentally draining, hard work at the best of times, let alone adding behaviour/sen issues plus work/elderly parent pressure.
This doesn't mean people hate their kids. My DC know I enjoy time to myself to enjoy my hobbies, they're not bothered at all, if anything it teaches them independence and that I have an identity beyond mum duties.

My childminder used to love a child free day off, the DC and I wasn't offended by this comment, I just thought 'I don't bloody blame you'

DC also love parent free activities, I'm not traumatised that they may hate me.

Of course children aren't the enemy, don't be ridiculous.

It's light hearted humour that some parents can relate to because parenting isn't always easy. That's it.

assuming they haven’t locked their kids in a cupboard under the stairs and they are well cared for by grandparents etc I wouldn’t see any need to concern myself with how other people spend their time

Families are now very diverse and not necessarily a smug 2:4 set up like yourself, which is what the primark campaign is getting at.
It doesn't mean children are disposable, quite the opposite.

What irks me is the attitude of "why have kids if you don't want to spend time with them"
People have lots of reasons really.
Some may even have had kids by accident or ended up with responsibility for a child they didn't especially want....but are still fantastic parents. So that question is really offensive.
Others may have kids because their partner really did, or biological clock ticking.

But it's irrelevant....I love pizza. I don't want it every meal.
I have my favourite joggers, but it's nice to dress up every so often.
Just because you wanted something and got ut doesn't mean you have to love spending every minute with it.
And that's without considering that kids are humans and can be incredibly rude and annoying and demanding, and ruin ALL other relationships and eliminate any time for yourself.

Do you really think your adult children would be traumatised by seeing these posts though? As I said, I don’t post stuff on social media like this, so my kids will never see it. But I know for certain that we have such a loving, close and secure relationship that if they saw that I written something like this online many years ago, they would just laugh. As my daughter has already told me.

Is your relationship with your kids so fragile that this stuff would damage it? Because that’s an issue then.

You are ignoring my questions. My adult daughter has said she would not be bothered by this kind of hashtag. I imagine many grown-up children are the same. Do you think you’re speaking for all kids?

@Bridgetjoneski who do you think you are trying to police the language that people use? I mean seriously, you are just arrogant and entitled. Get a life.

That poster has a strange belief that modern parents hate their children - proven by not wanting to be with them all the time. They crop up on threads about e.g 'AIBU to use childcare on a day I'm not working?' to make sniffy comments and bizarre sweeping judgements about parents being desperate to be away from their children as much as possible, society hating children "but then I actually like my children and wanted them" sort of thing.

Mum-shaming basically.

I see mum as a description of status rather than defined by the ‘job’. Once a woman has a child she is a mum. Even if something happened to the child (God forbid) or the child was estranged. I just don’t see the definition of mum and dad as related to the number of hours contact. Full-time and part-time are unnecessary descriptors.