What do you wish people would stop romanticizing, because you’ve lived the reality of it?

[HazelMaker]

The 1990s

Oh God - I can relate to this SO SO much!!

Why on earth can parents not have more common sense??!

Lol me too its not helped by the way its potrayed on tv labour starts ,two pushes and the baby is out if only!

I was a teenager in the 1990s. I loved it then, and I romanticise it now.

So I’ve lived the reality of it 😂

Time does indeed fly. Our "little one" will be about 12 now. They returned to their foster carer who was going to continue until 18. The FC were lovely people, and so that was good.

Life moves forward. A good friend said "don't waste the life you have thinking about the life you wanted", and we stick to that.

The high energy bills, the ph testing, the lack of time to it in it. I love a hot tub, just not owning one.
And it's rude to tell people they're doing something wrong on a thread about their actual experience.

That doesn’t mean friendship groups are ‘romanticised’ though. They are incredibly valuable and enjoyed by most I’d say. If someone can’t ‘juggle’ the time (and I was a single parent with a full time job who lived over 100 miles from most of my long standing friends so I get the logistics) I still maintain that’s a shame and they may regret it at some point. Like if a marriage fails, for eg.

Rude! That’s too funny! Sad for you to have had a hot tub and not used it properly. Mine has been a life enhancer for me since 2017. Getting in it now 😀

What does this actually mean in practice though?

I see posts on here all the time where people rail against women wanting to “have it all”. What are you actually saying? That women should be restricted to either having a career or having children? You realise that’s a physical impossibility for millions of us?

This phrase is such a knee jerk cliche. People read it a few decades ago in Cosmopolitan and then brandish it on Mumsnet as some sort of “gotcha”, but if you take it through to its logical conclusion it basically says women should not work and have children. No thanks, I will keep my job and keep my kid out of poverty.

Going to fucking Holland!

(A poem that is supposed to help you feel better about life with a disabled child. )

I read it that men should step up - they seem to “have it all” quite easily.

French grey.

Looks perfect in Provence, a soft, subtle, tasteful shade that is gentle on the eye in the glare of the sun. Lovely.
Terrible in Britain where the sky is overcast and the same colour of grey for the majority. Drab and grey outside...and now inside to match. And what's more...the carpet, sofa and fitted kitchen are all grey too. So is the bedroom and the hall.

I'm being facetious tbh. I didn't paint my house grey so I didn't live it. There are lots of grey corner sofas on FB marketplace and Gumtree now though.

Ah, see, I think of the early 00's as a time where genuinely new and inventive things became available - ceramic hair straightners, smart phones, WFH. Everyone I knew was buying a flat at 23 for <100k with a 95% mortgage, and furnishing it from Ikea for a few hundred. Flying Easyjet for cheap holidays. It felt like life was good, and everything would get better forever. Until the bubble burst, obviously. But it seemed good at the time.

And better music too.

Yes indeed.

But from bitter experience usually when people tut on here about women “having it all” it’s based on a vague, non specific distrust of working mums. Usually delivered by someone who has the option not to work or to work part time and rails against women “farming out” their children.

As you rightly point out no one ever accuses men of wanting to “have it all”. It’s only women who are required to choose between financial agency and children.

Why? I love being french and being a parisian.
i m not romantising it though. We re great people and fun, but yes we can be rude as very blunt. But every communities have their flaws. We re on the receiving end of good jokes though so you should love it.

life in paris can be very competitive and exhausting. Always have to sound and look smart, and very intellectual. We re quite judgemental too especially in the way you dress although this is changing. My mum for instance is a lot more tolerant of her grand daughters wearing leggings and hoodies outside of sport 🤣

Yes. I had an awful time at university. My partner never went and really regrets it. I can't make him understand how shit it is for lots of people.

A ‘nice quiet little job in a library’. Maybe in a nice quiet little village only.

DDs ex (bit of a tool)was "envious" when I had hallucinations from morphine! Would like a free one Errr no!

Absolutely. Spent decades of my life looking after large gardens at our family homes. We’re retiring to a lovely, top floor flat with beautiful views and a large terrace. Can’t wait to swan about in my Margot style kaftan under my big sun hat, picking the occasional dead leaf or flower from one of the pots. 😁

I disagree because men's definition of 'it all' is pretty short

This made me smile because I always thought I’d like to live in Hampstead, in the unlikely event I ever move back to London. Good to have a bit of cold water dropped on that.

Yeah, I guess for me it was a bit of a fuck up decade! Lol

And being a woman.

Disagree

Being poor effects the way you think/live for life. Having money after being poor doesn't change that fear/thinking in some cases. And it's generational in some cases. My dad (and mum) never recovered from his upbringing,(absolute poverty) I won't from mine even though we had more money than dad did growing up, (still had periods of lack of spare money, and rare to have day to day luxuries such as heating and the food was shit and rationed, second hand clothes from male cousins and dad would rarely spend anything he didn't have to when he did have some money) the fear and the attitudes have been passed on. I am passing them onto the kids. I learned to save and not spend as life was in and out of work redundancies, single parenthood relying on the whims of an abusive man, and illnesses and disabilities and insecurity. I've got enough money now but it sure as hell doesn't feel like it!