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!!

i thought it was going to be a good article - saying some of the positive sides to being an older mother - if it had been cut in half then it might have been, but the criticism of an individual mother was just so unneeded - I presume the young mum will read it? just charmless.

Come on, Winnie the poo is horrid. Everyone knows that. But Ive never thought of it as a mark of a young parent... why would anyone?

I didn't say ALL...

You are all being as judgemental as he is, calling him a twat, simply because he's making some attempt to defend the over 40's who become mothers. If the story were reversed, I'd bet loads of money none of you would be calling him smug!

It's not a competition though is it? I think it is more about personality than age. Just because you make it to 30 doesn't suddenly make you a responsible person, however becoming a parent (usually) makes you responsible.

I was 1st pregnant at 19, am currently pg with DC4 at 34. I have become more confident as a parent because i have more experience of being a parent not because I am older and more 'chilled'

That article is so full of bullshit.
WTF children are wasted on young mothers!!!!

I was in my early 20's when I had my DD and mid 20's when I was pregnant with DS and now late 20's conceived DC3 and they sure as hell are not wasted.
My parents were both 17 when they had me they are truly loving caring parents who can't do enough for me who spent loads of time with me as a child and as an adult.
I wonder if this journalist children will regard him as highly as I do my wonderful young parents? It's a bit soon for him to be so smug.

"A clever woman, she could not quite believe she had such a stupid little boy, slow to speak, slow at maths, useless at languages. Had she been a dozen years older, I believe she would have been no less astonished but much less worried."

So because his mother was crap he's blamed it on her age rather than her personality?

"Like youth itself, motherhood is wasted on the young, whose attention is often directed elsewhere."
Oh piss of you sanctimonious wanker.

MNHQ please please please ask him for a web chat.

Well I had mine at a very average age, not old or young.. I work, give them no attention for 10 hours of 5 days of the week and dote on them for the rest of the time.

They are the best kids in the world and I am the best mum, so there. Up your bum The Times.

And I hate winnie the poo..

But that's the thing...he's talking from his experience...I don't even get that he's saying all women...I think he's just telling one side of the story....

It might have been Disney WTP? Or maybe poor old Pooh is passe, whether Disney or E.H. Shepherd. It was apparently horribly matchy anyway, as the gear she brought to the meet-up matched the decor of her baby's room. And the misguided young mother dipped her finger in her hot chocolate and then put it into her baby's mouth (no doubt chortlng silently at the horror registering on the faces of the other mums..)

I am an older mum and found the article to be horrendous and ageist. Just awful.

Very very strange - I really do think that his wife will be horrified - I wonder if he will want his children to practise what they preach and wait until his child is in her forties to have a child - and wait to be 92 to be a grand dad...

I also wonder if he helps out at home - I think not because if he did he would realise that age does not have sod all to do with being a great parent...

Its the subttext Eve - glaringly obvious IMO.

Whats wrong with a finger of hot chocolate???

But Eve, he slagged off his own mother's parenting and blamed it on her being an infant of 27 when she had him. It's ludicrous.

I love how his main thrust at the start of that article is that it's better for women to have children in their 40s because by then they've realised that a career isn't everything. So does he like his women in the home where they belong then?

What a prize arse. The only people likely to nod in sage agreement with this article are the more chauvenistic partners of older mums; this thread proves that women realise the answer to unfair attacks on their personal choices isn't to make unfair attacks on the personal choices of other people. If only the mass media would finally cotton on, and stop perpetuating this myth that everyone has to conform to the same lifestlye.

(Disclaimer: I'm 23 and pregnant with DC number 2, so I don't shine particularly brightly in his eyes. Nor does it help that I'm unemployed - look at me, 'common' and young, the twin insults to his parenting style. Still, at least I can spell Winnie the Pooh. Or was he being 'witty'?)

He is a man deeply scarred by his mother not taking him as seriously as his obvious talents deserved and not smelling of pipe smoke, tucking him in and reading Winnie the Pooh to him.

He cant even see that he's contradicting himself, at the top of the article he's scathing about the young mum who had her 3 close together so she could get back to work further down the article he mentions his daughter goes to a childminder!

Quote -

The younger women I knew as a single man in my forties were not stupid, but nor were most of them ready, in their careers, in their maturity or in their social lives, to sacrifice themselves on the altar of the next generation. They did not look like baby mothers to me.

Well all I can say in response is

Vomit Vomit Spew Spew and Poo on you Andrew Billen..

Here is to all the women of the world who do not look like baby mothers, I salute you.

I love how cool he tries to sound, claiming not to care if his child eats or not, but then gets his knickers in a twist over Winnie the Pooh. It's just a different type of pointless worrying.

I don't understand why Winnie the Pooh is so bad. I just read the book and it was charming. Not really familiar with the Disney version though - is it different?

Frankly I think the young lady at the end of the article sounds very sweet and I'd love to have some hot chocolate with her Because everybody does love chocolate!

What a pile of maggotty tripe.

I mean, the ignorant fuckwit can't even get Winnie the Pooh right. Obviously has never read the lovely original books to his daughters...

Being a good mum is less about age and more about values.

What's a baby mother, and how does one look like one? Is it just because they weren't covered in sick?

I am an older mum and he is a smug twat.

But I have to say it bothers the pedant in me that the Times doesn't know it is Winnie the Pooh

Poo = excreta, shit, doo-doo, crap etc etc

Pooh = the small furry bear beloved of Christopher Robin.

X-post with Sidge.

Oh joy joy I am so glad that everyone else thinks this article was a smug pile of bilge-I read it with my sister and had to ask her to read the last para and explain to me what the young mother had done that was so wrong, thinking maybe I had missed something about Winnie the Pooh in the news or something! We both thought how utterly utterly horrendous it must have been for this poor young mum to be surrounded by these patronising, vile snob bitches all snotting about her parenting/taste.
Then we had a laugh imagining the conversation when snotty older mum got home and relayed the HORRORS of the hot choc and Pooh gear to her equally horrified husband.
UGH!
Snobs!
Long live matching Pooh babygear!!!!!
And hot chocolate- everyone loves chocolate (except hoity toity older mums)

Well I had ds at 21 then dd1 at 37 and dd2 at 38 and had/have got no patience with any of them. Despite this they are smashing kids. Oh yeah and I well had all the winnie the poo clobber for ds's bedroom despite being "by no means wealthy".

Smug twat of timesville is probably the type to announce to the costa drinking mummies of nappy valley the teeth itching phrase of "we're pregnant!"

A load of drivel IMO.

I feel sorry for his wife she won't be able to show her face at the Wandsworth 1 O'clock club or go for a coffee at the Clapham bandstand all the other mothers will now know she's married to a simpleton.