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!!

winne pooh is an intellectual. A great philosopher.

Urrghh. 'Twas a day for really irritating male journalists - there was a particularly sumg article in the Guardian magazine too.

I like Winnie the Pooh.

The Times is getting just like the DM these days

Vile article - but so many of the so-called 'non-gutter' press' articles about parenting ARE vile - as though they are the only people who have ever been clever enough to work out how to reproduce 'successfully' and now need to show off to the entire world that they did so.

And totally agree that many of these articles are a way of slagging off working mothers. Erm - maybe the young mother WANTED to work and wasn't satisfied with being married to a twat and staying at home all day with children who they 'find it hard to care' whether they eat or not!

Wonders if the pic of him would look better with added Eeyore ears?

I find his trvialisation of fertility treatment frighteningy naive.

" A friend in her late thirties who discovered she was going into premature menopause, is now carrying a baby, yet the saga is, frankly, only banner news in her family. No triumph, no tragedy, as they say on Radio 4, just science bending to consumer pressure."

Because if you're middle class enough, rich enough and smug enough then infertility is no biggie

I like Winnie the Pooh too. And Andrew Billen is like Owl. Pompous

Well it was beaten for crapness by the A-Z of Working Mothers in the DM today. Otherwise

his DD will rebel and be PG by 18. and in a Winnie the Pooh covered council flat obviously. and the baby will sup hot chocolate all the live long day.

I thought the young mums were the lazy bums who stayed at home anyway (like me )

also lol at the younger women he used to eye up who weren't the mothering type. Yeah, cos otherwise there would have been no obstacle to his getting with them - except he's a minger and they'd prob have run a mile

I wonder if this chap really thought this is what his journalistic career would lead to.

You can imagine him a a spotty youngster dreaming of being some war correspondent, reporting the ills of the world.

Fast forward a couple of years he is living in chintzy tea towel land and writing dozy articles for a Saturday supplement. Not going to win the Pulitzer for this crud, are you mate?

Whoops, maligned the poor old Guardian. It was Matt Rudd in the Sunday Times Style section.

Still, it's the sort of thing that the Grauniad would publish...

These bloody journalists banging on about child rearing always seem to think that they're the first people ever to have done it. So self-congratulatory.

Fuck...ing...hell

I mean Winnie the Pooh branded items! In Wndsworth! Imagine!

There was another one in the Sunday Times about how he co-slept,breastfed, and used a sling instead of one of those dreadful pushchair thingies and the kids are marvellous and it must be bacause they are such great parents.

Just fuck the fuck off, smug male journalists.

Maybe the original copy said 'Winnie the Pooh' but the subs hated the smug bollocks so much they changed it to 'poo' to make whatshisface look stupid?

I havn't clicked on the link and I know which article you are refering to - I started to read it this morning in the times.. and it struck me it was twaddle to fill the page I gave up and went onto something more depressing about pain and everyone suffering by DC

Mothers in their 40's are much better than those in their 20's, more than a bit of a generalisation!

As for Whinnie the pooh, OMG, poor child, ring social services quick!!

What a tit, cant believe this article was actually published.

Winnie the Poo might be horrid, but Winnie the Pooh is brilliant. They were the first books I ever had read to me, and I also had them on audiotape. They coloured my perception of what childhood should be (like that discussed recently on the Huck Finn thread only without the racism and brutality). How I wanted to go to the 100 Acre Wood! All the different shapes the Heffalump took!

I know it was sold to Disney but come on, folks! It's quintessentially English. Have some pride!

I'm warming to the idea that mothers in their forties are infinitely superior to other mothers. Does this apply to all mothers in their forties, d'you think, or just to those who gave birth in their forties?

Weeeell I am 41 and I am fab! I worked all day, picked up dd (6) from afterschool club, let her go to the funfair (bastardly) just set up down the road from school...paid 5 euros for a go on the bungee trampoline then bought her a big cone of chips frites with mayonnaise all over them. Spoilt I tell you!

Porto - you have just confessed to having a child in your thirties. You cannot possibly be fab. You are a mere one decade away from Winnie the Pooh character equipment.

God help me then, being a teenage mother as I was. I am even an even worse scumbag than the 20s mother.

DD had a Tots TV babygrow as well. I was true scum of the earth. I didn't feed my baby chocolate, oh no. I gave her fags.

Seems like a pack of shit to me. Why is it that newspapers, people I meet day to day, and many folks on MN seem to want to believe that however they live their life, other people ought to do the same as them? Imagine if they all had their wishes come true? Imagine if everyone was exactly like you? What a terribly dull world we'd live in.

I know a lady who had her first child at forty and she's a fucken twat. That's a survey of one and means absolutely nothing. So I won't go write an article in the Times about how all older mums are making a terrible error.

I lived in a lovely world where I just got on with my business, my job, my way of life, with hardly a comment from anyone. Then we had a kid and all of a sudden we're bombarded with conflicting nonsense, arguments and "expert opinion" from all quarters as the world seems to want to tell people day in, day out how to bring up their children, at what age to conceive, that they should/should not feed them meat/eggs/milk/sweets/nuts/unpasturised cheese, at what age they should be learning to read/swim/watch TV/get their ears pierced.... I could go on.

My neighbours are bringing their kids up quite differently from how we're doing it. All the kids seem to be doing ok. Even the ones born to those pesky "young mothers".

wow, how can they hold their heads up wandering around their neighbourhood after putting their names and faces to that smug snobby article?

The irony of this article is that the main idea behind it is that as older parents he and his wife are so much wiser than younger parents, with his own mother exemplifying the mistakes that younger parents make. Yet, really wise parents IMHO are the ones who know that they don't know everything and that the majority of parents muddle along doing their best for their children but making lots of mistakes along the way. It is also a tad rash to make bold claims for your parenting when you have two young children and are still a very inexperienced parent.