In thinking this is the smuggest article I have ever had the misfortune to read

[mrsshackleton]

"We are so bloody marvellous and everyone else is wrong"

I've never read such a load of judgemental codswallop

Branded Winnie the Poo equipment - OMG!!

what a strange article

i know... omg call social services !

I'm not sure I want to read it. The title got me angry enough. Had 4 in my 20s

Whats the actual point of the article?

Bet his wife is so glad there is a photo there identifying her

...and that their daughter is prob a little shit...

lol i had ds at 18, dd at 26 and will have ds at 27.... i seem to follow pretty closely with his parenting

YANBU
Everyone parents differently, no matter what age they are. I had my first when I was 24, however, I was very relaxed and laid back about everything. My neighbour, on the other hand, was nearly 40 when she had hers, and is a control freak who freely admits to anyone (including her ds) that she wished she'd got a dog instead!

What's so unpleasant is that the winnie the poo and "everyone loves chocolate" comment are quite clearly not about age but about class

Poor girl surrounded by all the snooty, late 30-something, Cath-Kidston-clad, organic mothers. My bf had her first at 20 and says all the NCT mums were vile to her, assuming she was a chav

Does he really think that women in their forties are calm and serene? He hasn't been on mumsnet then.

That article is a big pile of shite. Women can be good mothers, because they're good people, their age is largely irrelevant.

Quick! Call social services! I'm 29 and have 3 under 5, I must be a terrible mother

Actually I'm alright, as we don't have any branded Winne the Poo[h] equipment.

What a tosser.

He is a twat. He has a sample size of 2. His mum (20s, not great) and his wife (40s, and of course amazing as a mother).

Way to over-generalise!

And I hope his mum is not alive to read that.

The link isn't working on my laptop. Could someone summarise the article for me?

Andrew Billen, for example, is a smug twat

Oh well. If you were a distinctly older mum, like me, you'd get sick & tired of being called selfish, irresponsible etc by the "have your babies before your first grey hair" brigade.

I don't agree with most of what the article said but it was nice, just for once, not to be labelled as a parental failure when I've hardly got started.

Maybe the article was just trying to redress the balance.

"Gosh darling, you'll never guess what I saw in Costa. This young girl had Winnie the Pooh cutlery. Can you believe it!!!"

This man is so very very lucky that the Times will pay him good money for this claptrap!

What a twat.

I can't even bring myself to say whats on my mind after reading it.

Andrew Billen, just because you were an incapable tosser in your twenties doesn't mean everyone else is or was. I won't comment on how you were supposed to improve with age according to your theories..

I can read it now. YANBU

It's just one long, dreary justification for having children later in life.

You could write a justification for having a child at any age. It's meaningless, really.

bit of a contradiction when he argues younger women want careers and older mothers will take 3 years out to care for children, then mentions his childminder!

I'm starting to be of the belief that men just shouldn't be allowed to write about fatherhood or babies at all, ever. Not out of any sort of principle but just because the entire gender seems incapable of doing it without sounding like a smug twat.

I had my oldest 2 when I was quite young, and my younger 2 when I was relatively old. I'm the same person - maybe more patient second time round, but with a lot less energy. So swings and roundabouts.

Kathy- but who is it that makes those judgements? It's the media not young mums, so slagging off young mums does not address the balance in any way.