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!!

God, I had three DCs by 24, and I have a Winnie The Pooh highchair and sleeping bag.

I also think the last anecdote about the hot chocolate is made up!

Godddddd. What is it with sumg Dads writing columns in the Times?

The 'we potty trained at 7 months, co-sleep (but I really hate it), and are sling devotees' article from yesterday already had me wound up - this one is the icing on the cake.

Look mate - you're either a patient person or your note. Adding a decade to your age isn't going to change that. And I say this as a 34-yo first time Mum (36 now, expecting DC2).

And as for this 'redressing the balance' nonsense - why redress any balance? Why not just let everyone get on with doing what they're doing, free from judgement of any kind? [/hopeless idealist]

I also wonder what his own mother thinks of this article?

Eek - you're either a patient person or you're not, that should be!

Hmm, well he is protesting a mite too much isn't he?

Sounds like he is trying to convince himself more than anything...wonder what he is really afraid of.

Anyone who comes up with stuff like that is afraid of something. It just reeks out of the smugness.

i'm 26 with a 1, 3 and 5 year old so i think i'll have to submit a for this one

Mrsshackleton, totally agree with you!! Read this and felt ill.
Can't he just get on with it? So tiresome this "we're better at this than everyone else" brigade. He'll regret that photo.
This is the worst yet. Makes you want to go back to the fifties, when men weren't so bloody evangelical about it all. Gah!

I think the following should happen

i) Nigel's DW should come on here to defend him

ii) NIgel himself should sign in to do some sucking up

iii) Sucking up will embarassingly fail as he leaks all his bad feelings over everyone

iv) He starts getting angry and jackals start circling for the kill

v) he realises he is about to be slaughtered and starts smarming

vi) he is slaughtered anyway.

REmind me, didn't something similar happen to a children's book writer who came in for a smarming session and didn't like it when he was told the truth.

I enjoyed that.

Please come and visit us Nigey....

Women no need to panic at 35 about IVF - really that's not what my consultant told me, the chances reduce dramatically of a healthy baby once you hit 35.
I had a child at 24 and one at 34 and physically and emotionally it was a lot harder as I got older.

Oh,my jaw dropped when I read this yesterday. Made me want to buy head to toe Winnie the Pooh everything just to spite him.

Oh, hang on, Winnie the Pooh is quite classy, cause it's books and stuff, innit?

Make that head to toe Peppa Pig.

so smug it made my teeth ache

no Jill, make that Fifi and the Flowertots!

everyone does love chocolate.

DD has a winnie the poo bedset and curtains (because i could get enough curtain material cheaply from ebay) - i am quite pleased with it as i stitched it all myself suitably unisex too.

though in a way, a man that says 'my wife is great' can't be all bad, it's just a shame he has to say 'my mum was crap' too.

that's basically all i got from this article -

i think he also needs not to ignore that fertility does decline with age, and he is fortunate that hasn't resulted in him having no family at all.

I was 30 when I had my first child, so I think I can safely say that I am an excellent parent

< smug >

Enough of the Daddy journalists detailing stuff that... happens to everyone. Come to that enough of the Mummy ones too. Smug gits.

But I am detecting a bit of the Smug Fertile Forties around. I know someone who had her first baby at 43 and is now pregnant again (with no IVF)and she was droning on about how she was so glad she had been having fun and building her career in her 30s, and how she made exactly the right decision, and how there is no one in her baby group who had a child before the age of 40. She was making me (who had dcs in my 30s) feel like a reckless teenage mother.

'if Abby, the elder girl, does not finish, or start, her dinner, we find it hard to care.'

Oh Mr Billen, I really feel you could have used an exclamation mark on this sentence to emphasise how very radical your parenting methods are!

If only I, and millions of other parents had thought to do this too but, alas, not being 40 we are not nearly chilled out enough to push the boundaries of parenting in this way.

What a nauseatingly self-congratulatory, smug and patronising article.

Well done Mr Billen.

God, his poor mother, doing her best for him, the best she knew how, and he turns around and savages her like that. Immature, not very nice, smug -- I hope his children appreciate how very wonderful he and his wife are as they grow older.

Its ok all, he states his mother is dead I think. Makes a reference to being a 'slow speaker' then wishes she were alive to hear him on the radio.
Personally I feel gratified for her that she isnt around to read that.

Made me quite upset, so reading all the MNetters comments reminded me that all mums who care and try are fab regardless of age!

I agree with posters who say he has a mighty big chip on his shoulder. Good thing the Times pays him for his therapy...pity we have to read it.

What a smug twat.
I had my first at 23...now have 5 at 30, i'm not selfish and incapable.

Nice way to put all young mums in the same box

"The calmness that befalls many in their forties....." is either utter exhaustion or Valium. And I speak from experience.

Odd article.

I knew exactly what this thread was about before I clicked on it!!

I totally agree. Smug, arrogant drivel.

I cannot believe he didn't ask anyone to read it through before he sent it to print. Anyone with an ounce of sense would have told him what a prat it made him look.

Twunt.

arse

and I thought the bloke in the times yesterday was super smug.

I'm glad my mum had me when she was 21 cos she is a really young granny. I on the other hand am a bit of an old gimmer mum .

I have so much In the Night Garden stuff at the moment- the house is packed to the rafters with it.

All started because I bought a book in the airport called 'Ponk Ponk' with a squeaky bit on the front and found - over a few days use - that it was the Tantrum Antidote to beat all tantrums. Weirdly, since buying the ITNG bath mat (yes, bath mat) he will now get into the bath without crying. I kid you not. He's only 6 months old and has watched ONE episode of ITNG EVER but the characters seem to do something for him.

How very lower class of him and how very lower class of 32 year old me. My child's future is ruined. And I stuck a finger into Wagamama's fruit juice and put it in his mouth yesterday to avoid a screaming fit before

Sigh. What's the betting his wife has spent oodles on beaba cutlery or some such equally branded frippery?