Why do so many posters hate mothers/children

[Sundayschool]

Inspired a bit by the current thread on SMP!

Why does Mumsnet, predominately/historically a forum for parents, attract so many posters who seem to hate children and mothers? It surprises me how fast posters are to tear down any women who want better conditions for themselves or their children or indeed anything to make life a bit easier (parent/child spaces, better SMP).

Why do such people choose to post on this site in particular? Surely if you really feel so strongly this is the last place you would think to come and post?

No need to wonder. There are a lot of threads on here that have absolutely nothing to do with children. And there is a board here, too, now. Like I said, children aren't the centre of everyone's universe. It's allowed.

@MidnightPatrol I'd support full paid leave for 6 months, capped at 2 or 3 dc. And not taken one straight after the other as I do believe that employers are entitled to have the staff member do the job they've been paid for.
If parents feel this is too young to leave a baby in childcare, I'd support a second 6 months being available to the father. I think we have to do something about mothers always being the default parent and the impact this has on women's employability.

I dont hate children or mothers.
I just dont like children or mothers that are none stop talk about their kids.
Parking spaces i coudent care less about it.

CNBC here. I don’t hate mothers or children, but do hate thoughtless generalisations about childfree/childless people.

6 months is not sufficient for those that breastfeed and women should not be forced to stop breastfeeding early to placate their employer.

Biology dictates that women are the default parent in the 1st year. This is not something that we should be trying to fight or solve, but rather something that we should look to support.

Is it sanctimoniously harping, or offering a different perspective? Do you feel similar about posters who comment on threads where someone is complaining about managing on £100,000 a year to say, 'well, I manage on half that?'
Many people on this site are doing the same thing, but have different perspectives based on finances, family situations, etc. Is it really only helpful to hear an echo chamber?

Is it really of no use, if you are struggling to manage, to hear that others did and do manage with less? Isn't it reassuring to know that there's people worse off than you who still made it work, so it may be possible that you can, too?

@RomeoRivers a woman doesn't need to be at home on full pay for a year to breastfeed. She can express milk. It's not the employer's or state's responsibility to cover the costs of women's personal choices.

Why would any employer hire a woman of child bearing age if they were going to get landed with financially supporting them while they had as many babies as they wanted and sat at home breastfeeding them for a year at a time? Businesses have a right to the services of the people they have hired to do a job - not pay them to be at home while also sucking up the cost of cover staff.

Expressing is not easy or practical for a lot of people.

Perhaps the solution is that the government should pay for maternity cover, so that employers are not out of pocket because humanity depends on ‘women’s personal choices’. Not sure how you managed to miss the fact that a man is also involved in that choice….

A lot of people like their own children not others

@ttcat37 well done for hitting Mumsnet bingo. It's been,oooh 3 weeks since the last accusation of 'wHy ARe yoU on MUMSNET iF yoU dONT haVe Kids?'

Because it's just a name based on where it started. The boards are full of useful advice and amusing chat about things that don't need someone to have procreated to get involved in. I don't get involved in the ones that discuss weaning, soft play, sleep training or shitty nappies. I assume you don't get involved in anything other than the ones about weaning, soft play, sleep training or shitty nappies as you are a MUM.

I find that there is often a bit of an attitude of “I suffered so they should to” in all areas of life. The thread about SMP attracted lots of “back in my day we went back to work at 6 weeks” comments etc, when surely we should all be hoping for progress and for better as time goes on rather than being bitter that our experience was different. It’s not always a competition of who struggled the most.

And for reference there are 100 threads in Active. I counted 9 that were specifically about parenting or pregnancy.

The rest of them include a huge range of topics from legal advice for a rental contract, interior design, a name for a cat, plant identification, help with employment issues, relationship advice, the name of a drink from the 1990s, general philosophical ponderings and a snake that lives in a basement.

I think that people don’t realise how good maternity benefits are in the U.K. The posters talking about ‘in my day’? That’s still the way of things in the US.

We have statutory maternity pay (and most employers offer additional benefits on top of that) and the option to take up to 12 months leave. The OP on the other thread was complaining about 75% of her usual wage for 6 months and then statutory maternity pay.

I’m full aware of the infertility board thanks, as I couldn’t conceive easily. Hence my post referring to ‘child free’ as a term used as having no children by choice.

Yes but the advertisement and competitions, reviews does fall heavily on the parent side at least. I have been on here a very long time and only initially did so as I had a pregnancy issue. People have always disagreed on here but it was mostly a parental website so it was a bit of a safe space if you had DC and mostly women. Things change and evolve of course but I think it is a sad time indeed when a place named MN has people actively wanting a hard fought for woman’s right - maternity leave to be degraded!

in the wider world women’s rights appear to be going backwards and the knocking of Mums specifically is a manifestation of that IMO.

I had full pay for 9 months in the 00s so IMO there is no dramatic change and I think it being lauded as, “you don’t know how lucky you are, in my day…” are contributing to the justified demise of women’s rights, which is a huge problem in the current world we live in anyway!

that should read lauded as some amazing perk by people who couple that sentence with, “you don’t know how lucky you are”..

FFS. The arrogance of this attitude that only parents of young children are “actively” parenting is breathtaking. Hopefully when your kids are older you’ll
gain some insight and look back and cringe. I can assure you that supporting my older teens and young adults, some neurodiverse, as they go to uni and start figuring out where to go from there is some of the hardest parenting I’ve done.

And WTF does questioning my (and others like me, and child free people) motivation to be on this site mean?? Are you implying we’re only here to criticise you? Because that’s arrogant, self-absorbed and nasty. The whole fucking world does not revolve around “young mums” 🤮

@RomeoRivers it's largely irrelevant that the man is involved in the choice to have a baby, since he's not the one wanting a year off work, paid for by the employer. But I have said that men should be taking the second 6 months off, in order to even up fairness between the sexes when it comes to employer risk in hiring people who are likely to have children.

Again though, it's not the employer or the state's job to facilitate easy breastfeeding. If a woman wants to stay home past 6 months it's not unreasonable to expect her and the child's father to finance it.
I don't think the employer should have to keep the job open past 6 months post birth either tbh - employers hire people to go to work , their personal life choices are their own business and not the employers responsibility.

I do wonder if these posts are genuine. Is anybody really that lacking in imagination?

Sorry, haven't RTFT.

There has always been an element that doesn't support mothers - those who struggle with babies are often told they're weak or asked what they thought they signed up for, for example. Often by the "I had five children under three and loved every minute, how could you possibly be struggling with your single newborn who wakes every hour" crowd.

However, I have noticed some really awful attitudes to maternity leave in particular since the childfree board was created. I was an advocate for that board before it was set up but unfortunately I don't think it's been a positive thing for MN as a whole.

Occasionally I've seen children referred to in derogatory terms, called names or posters using quite toxic language. I suppose social media does facilitate this kind of vomiting out of frustrations, but I think it's quite rare on MN regarding children. Simple differences of opinion, politely expressed, are probably what most come here for anyway, so as to hear other points of view and discuss.

You're right, it’s a completely spurious question as to why anybody without kids would go to a parenting website called MUMSnet and then launch a tirade about awful people are about the fact you ‘child free’ (the implication in ‘child free’ is that you chose not to have children, and the people being awful is entirely hypothetical)
Perhaps all the vegetarians should converge on a Butchery forum and then complain that people talk about eating meat all the time

All of this goes against basic biology though, surely as a society we should be working with it, not against it?

It seems mad to me that after having spent 9 months growing a human, you think women only need 6 months to recover from pregnancy and childbirth, whilst still being the baby’s primary care giver and source of nutrition.

As someone in the very top tax paying bracket, better maternity benefits is something I would wholeheartedly support over other things.