To think that this Times article about selfish mothers is vile

[mumbot]

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/janice_turner/article6916343.ece

A bitter and one sided view of motherhood. Do you agree?

I don't think so! I post on many that never get a whole page, and dwindle out. Regardless of how many replies she got-many of them are extremely passionate-one way or the other.The article itself got many comments and we have absolutely no idea where else it is being discussed. Mumsnet isn't the only discussion board.

Look how many posts Liz Jones' articles prompt. It is no reflection on their quality.

If this article had been written by a man, I think there would have been nothing but contempt for him here. As it was written in the "as a mother" style, and by an MNer no less, she has been able to get away with it.

ImSoNotTelling, I agree with every word of what you say.

I'm guessing if the author hadn't felt the need to test the waters of opinion by posting here first, people might not be so keen to pick the article apart.

I wonder if one looked back at other MN posts and articles by the same woman, whether there might be some correlation?

I can't see what the fuss is about. Seems a reasonable article to me and I totally agree with thesecondcoming.

Oh I see. Just seen the other thread. Where author has come on and said "well I may have written that, but i didn't mean that, I meant quite the opposite" and everyone has said "oh gosh well done you".

I still think it was a horrible article.

Brilliant comments from WilfSell...

very surprised by the resounding thumbs up this rather reactionary article is getting

reactionary doesn't mean bad.

v. def a middle class bubble being writen about but i think she acknowledges that in the article.

I think that the 'entitlement' aspect has proved a refreshing twist on the V. old MN standing arguments about this topic.

Of course if one wanted to break it down they could use phrases like 'sweeping statements', but Journos do that. Sweeping social commentary based on experience is hardly a revelation.

P&T spaces at the back of the car park say I.

but....

great stuff that one doesn't have to fuck about holding a baby and trying to collapse pram on public buses anymore...Yay!

I think its a prime example of what a society of children haters we've become.

The fact its written by another mother who ought to be sympathetic to the vitriol and contempt pointed towards young children by the public at large for DARING to disrupt their day by simply existing absolutely disgusts me.

I felt the same as some of the others on several occasions.. that my children are an offence by simply being in the same space as other people and that we ought to lock them up until they're 21 so as not to upset everyone else.... and that as a mum, i ought to be ashamed of myself for having the audacity to take them out into public.

I agree.

back in th'olden days, i used to tell ds1 to go sit, give one baby to the bus driver and one to the old lady ( there is always an old lady) sat at the front og the bus, whilst i put down my twin pram and hauled the tank like object onto the luggage rack of bus, whilst tenatively holding my shopping and retreaving one baby from the driver and hoping that said old lady would hold other baby for duration of the journey ( which they were usually happy to do)

It's great that parents don't have to do that anymore i think.

And allowing parents to assume a sense of entitlement is making our society more child-friendly. Child-friendliness is allowing children to go anywhere without disapproval providing they behave reasonably. Taking them to proper restaurants not kiddy-ghettoes but also expecting them to behave accordingly (not like plaster saints but not running about and throwing food!). It is about people being glad to see children and not being afraid to speak to them or stroke their hair or smile at them without mum reacting badly. It is about people not being afraid to tell them off if they misbehave or to help them if they are lost or afraid.

If you want kids to be central to society (as they should be) it has to come by parents not treating them as their own personal possessions but part of a wider community.

No-one has a 'right' to special treatment. But if everyone behaved reasonably and gently with each other there is no need for it. A sense of entitlement is one of the most divisive things you can have - if you are entitled to kindness and consideration people don't offer it because it's the right thing to do, they offer it because they have to.

surely it's doing the opposite. if you see people demanding special treatment and acting like they're the first people to ever have a baby it doesn't make you think "lets be nice to them/i'm glad they're in this restaurant" it makes you think FFS can we not go somewhere which is adults only

OrmIrian for mayoress!

I don't see any entitlement here. I see it all as pretty hard. When DD was tiny I caught the bus and needed to fold the pushchair. Drivers are behind glass screens round here and no-one to hold baby. So baby goes on floor. Pretty dangerous and unpleasant but there you go. People accelerating their cars at DD as soon as the lights turn amber because she walks more slowly than adults. People tutting at her when she stumbles or trips. People smacking her around the head with their bags as she's walking too slowly.

I wouldn't mind a bit of bleeding entitlement, like the entitlement to be able to walk down the road with my children without people being openly hostile.

The people who responded to the article said to leave children at home. Why do people take children to the shops? they asked. Children go at the wrong speed for modern life and people do not like them. They hold people up and chatter to their mums and suddenly stop when they're walking and they don't move fast enough and people get very angry about it.

The attitude is exemplified by this article, which is talking about all mothers, not some.

"the decades will dissolve until you too are struggling across a supermarket car park, barged aside by pious pram-pushers, and wondering how it came to be that caring for your own progeny comes with a free pass not to give a damn about anyone else."

Well thanks a fucking bunch.

Mebbe's I need to get meself a column in the Grauniad Times too?

I think the newspaper article made the wrong conclusions. Problem is not parenthood being over-entitled; problem is Old People being Treated like Dirt.

No need to bash down mothers. But do need to reclaim respect and consideration for the elderly and frail (and often isolated and usually disabled as a result of their old age). Our society exalts beauty and youth in general at their expense.

God that sounded a bit ranty.

Thing is I go out of my way to not let DCs impinge on others but with things like how fast they walk, or they are in a pushchair and that is wider than a person, i don't see what the alternatives are. I am doing my best and basically spend all outings apologising to all and sundry, and this is a sense of entitlement?

horrible article.

As I always ask on these threads, where on earth do you live that people are going around hitting your children's heads with bags and refusing to hold your baby on a bus? I have never had these experiences in any town, city or village.

I live in north london. Some people are lovely, some are horrible. Most just don't "get" small children and so are irritated by them.

The people who accelerate their cars at children also do it at old people BTW, they are not discriminating in that respect.

I am the sort of person who encourages old ladies to pat my babies, if that helps for classification purposes

YANBU IMHO
I wish I hadn't actually read the article to find out MHO though.

For some reason the article made me look up the definition of propaganda on wikipedia

"Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda."

I think it fits on selective and loaded messages and the desired result the Times is aiming for would be to roll back the advances in child friendly policy/attitudes maybe?

Agree with ISNT - we have just moved to London and having just moved from a very child-friendly capital city, I'd say London isn't that child-friendly. I'm not sure why, but I do get the general impression that children in general should definitely not be heard and preferably not seen either. I say in general though, because there have been some lovely strangers here who have not given me that impression

The only person I ever knew who would write snotty little notes like the one JT's parents recieved was mentally ill, and was not a mother, or even a woman. I wonder if they had seen the culprit, how different her article might have been.

"Since when did people with mental health issues feel so entitled? They accost people leaving my supermarket, they don't seem to give a damn about anyone else. They get £XXX in benefits, so they don't need to earn a living like I have had to by working hard on my writing. For all their gains, do those with mental illnesses ever express gratitude or grace? It is outrageous when modern life had never been such a doddle."

Nobody knows who the note writer really was. But there is no excuse for using the bad behaviour of individuals to attack an entire group. Especially if they are more vulnerable for some reason. Though it is a technique which has clearly worked, and it is also working for the BNP.