to find the Guardian article "The Dummy Mummy Decade" offensive?

[PenguinProject]

See here. Then again, perhaps I should be polishing my bugaboo rather than reading the Guardian...

Yes, but boring people go on and on about house prices and mortgage rates don't they.... so being boring isn't really anything to do with being a parent... it is just about...

Being Boring.

Polly obviously didn't dip into any of the bumsex or illicit vices threads that keep MN on its toes, did she?

(shame)

I found it vitriolic and rather cruel. Agree with all who said you dont have to be a parent to be boring (anyone else sat through monologues on the office politics in other peoples offices - surely the dullest topic on the planet).

As for coming onto a PARENTING website that is even obviously called Mumsnet and then making snidey comments about the topics therein - that is just bonkers. Like me going onto a site for say, engineers, and sneering about how dull they are when they discuss engineering type things.

Had always been an Observer faithful but am now switching to the Sunday Times (flounce).

Hi anniemac - we appear to agree on this subject too

I went looking for a picture of Polly Vernon after the biltong in jeans comment.

< snort > spot on...

By the way, the other thing I find very irritating is this whole idea of not having children because 'it's not the best moral choice' and / or is 'not good for the planet'. Usually it's the people who don't want children who make this argument, I cannot for the life of me imagine someone who passionately wants to have children who would say 'oh hang on I won't have them after all; not good for the planet'.

As for the whole 'it's more ethical to adopt' thing... yeah, whatever. They should do a bit of research into the whole adoption process & how easy (NOT) it is, before throwing out this kind of banality.

Oh. And by the way. How does whizzing off to New York for a weekend shopping extravaganza, or flying to Yemen measure up on the 'good for the planet' scales?

Oh just googled Polly - 'Admit it. You hate me because I am thin'

Having read this article which witters on about being thin and how it was an accident I am a firm opposer of this women as a journalist. I do not think it is repsonsible writing. I am shocked these are found in such a paper - all they need os some stupid photo sotryboard mock ups along side.

Is this what a so called broadsheet considers what women really want to read about?

Women bashing seems to be fashionable in the media at the moment; if you are a mother who works you are a selfish bitch and if you stay at home to bring up your children you are erm... a selfish bitch and boring too!

However if you spend your disposable income on bags and shoes and hang about in bars you are interesting! And a feminist! Hurrah!

I think I might flounce to the Sunday Times too as The Observer seems to have lost all touch with reality.

Apart from the fact that this woman is a crap journo and all round twunt - this made me ROFL. There is a link to an article "20 other reasons not to have a baby" Reason number 13 is

96% of women say they are "less pleased" with their vaginas a year after giving birth than before !!!!!! - how pleased were they with them before???

Ah the poor lass, seemingly wants children. Only those without can mock the lucky ones with children....

aye orangina...

(i love it when people dont 'get' m.net)

(i am over the freakin moon about my vagina!)

Have re-read her article, and am getting even more annoyed with it...[should get out more].

'Mainly, though, I might as well be honest and say that, right now (I am 39), my refusal to have children is also connected to the sense of horror and fear that I feel when I encounter a certain kind of mother.'

Sure you're not having kids because of other mothers... coz that's a really believable reason isn't it.

And as for slagging off websites like MN, the reason I'm often on mumsnet is because it is the one place I can vent all my baby related chat with others who are in the same boat so I don't have to bore my friends and family with it. Duh!

"I don't see films!" she says, with a resigned smile. (Translation: I can't trust myself not to fall asleep in front of a film and therefore waste my precious night off when we have a babysitter.)

I am still very pleased with my vagina. I told it so the other day.

i am very disappointed in my vagina and if it doesn't shape up soon i will be sending it to bed with no dinner, so there

I just cant believe the Rachel Cooke article made it past the editor and into print to be honest. It's utterly unsophisticated, poorly researched, large parts of it make very little sense and just comes across as an aggressive hysterical rant at all women with kids (oh apart from her own friends of course, who all just so happen to have kids who are unusually witty, clever etc etc...funny that).

Its one thing to be deliberately provocative but its quite another to end up alienating a large part of your readership as I believe this article does. I started it with a very open mind but bizarrely it felt a bit like a personal attack (for no other reason that I am a woman in my mid 30's with kids) and I felt no other option but to go on the defensive after I read it. So annoying as I previously thought Rachel Cooke quite a good journo, but this was beyond poor.

It seems like such a missed opportunity as its an interesting area and I'm sure there are some good points to be made. There's a lot to say that could have been said in such a more interesting, measured way.

Oh Bradsmissus, check out the Office for National Statistics vagina satisfaction survey (though not via google). I'm MORI polled once a year. I think they use the cervical smear database.

yeah imagine,she is not having children for fear of turning into one of those kinds of mothers....mmmnnn?...trust your instincts polly

as if... as if if if such a huge group of women become homogenous...uniformly boring simply by bearing children!

hides thread.

and my vagina's not happy with this article either..not happy at all..

Now I am feeling even more inadequate. My vagina can't read

That is a good point wizzska re 'my refusal to have kids' i am assuming shes had opportunity with someone - tis a poor rationale - she obviously doesnt gain a greta insight into her friends who do have kids as she woud at least acknoledge somewhere how fulfiling it can be. If she is so darned informed and clever maybe she should giv e it a try ans see if she cn avoid becoming dummy mummy then reconnect the rest of us with our vaginas.

Mine is fine and strong - more so than her pair of balls it seems

I don't think critising the way Polly Vernon looks or saying that 'no-one would want to breed with them' or making sweeping statements about the nature of journalists is really needed, here. We can surely say we disagree with their articles without getting bitchy about it?

Personally, I think she and Rachel have a point ( although Rachel is the better writer). Both pieces are deliberately provocative - but only in the same way that those 'I used to be a high-flier and now I'm a mum and I pity women who don't have children' pieces are. And god knows, there are a lot more of them than the other way round.

I think an interesting point was made further up - that maybe the age/status of women having children now has changed the way they approach the role - and perhaps that is reflected in how they talk about it to other people.

this article annoyed me the first time i read it, and offended me the second time.

what an incredibly selfish woman.

just as well she isnt having kids, she'd prob go off on a world tour leaving the poor child with a nanny for 6 months.

and i DO have plenty of conversations about things other than my children, but having kids is such a mind altering, life changing thing that it does take over alot of your life, particulary in the first year.

and i also read alot of the news threads and other bits on here that show plenty of mums out there are articulate, and intelligent and witty. i have learnt alot on these threads about current affairs.

so you COULD say MN is making me LESS dumb not more...

I don't think Bugaboos were around when I had dd. So what are her issues? We can have a choice in buggies nowaday? Shock horror. There's a lot more choice in life from when she was a child. It doesn't mean that life then was right or life now is wrong.

methinks the lady doth protest too much - before I had my daughter or even fell pg, I kept away from child-related things much as you'd avoid someone with a contagious disease as there was.... nil interest. I didn't hate children or mothers but I had other things to talk about than to criticise a section of society. I's a pity this 'journalist' can't say the same thing.