Irish mn'ers, how much can you relate to UK mumsnetters?

[Anotherdayanotherdollar]

I read a lot of different threads on here, and recently I have come across so many issues/practices that I think just don't happen in Ireland. Now, I could be completely off the mark here, obviously there's local/cultural differences everywhere!

I don't know any parents who attend childrens birthday parties with their children (unless family etc),

I'm not aware of any dads who work "compressed hours" to care for their children. Although I know a lot of parents who work opposite shifts I suppose.

Funerals and the culture and practices surrounding death are all very different.

I don't have an abundance of parks/softplay/childrens activities nearby. If I did I'm sure they'd be too expensive to just pop in after school etc. 2 within 40 mins drive of me are €8-10 per hr.

Most children just go to their local school (baptism barrier dependent)

New mums here all seem to be inundated with visitors in hospital after their babies are born. I've never come across a new mum who isn't having visitors for the first week/fortnight etc so that they can bond.

Just a few examples there. So, are these typical observations of Irish people? Or just where I live/work? I know that local amenities are dependent on funding etc but it just seems that despite our close proximity to the UK there are big differences in day to day life.
I hope that all comes across ok. I'm just curious really.

I think you may be a little bit wound up by this thread Naught.....

Having lights on a bike is law here and you can get fined too.

I'm in my 50's and people in Ireland have been getting fined for not having lights on their bikes since I was a child and have been named and shamed in the local newspapers, even to this day drink drivers are also named and shamed in the local newspapers.

The local newspapers have pages of court reports every week with all the cases that have been on the previous week.

Irish TV has also shown UK programmes such as Road Wars and similar which featured a lot of drink driving arrests.

I can't imagine that those who collect used receipts for their own gain are in the majority...

Nno ophilia unlike you im calm and given reasoned arguement you on the other habd are unhappy at being proven wrong

Still harping on Naught.......

What like you did about how fangerous irish roads were ophilia

It's Ophelia.
💚

i think Ophelia just misses Ireland and is trying his/her best to put Ireland down to make him/herself feel better for having left.

Well, we still have a house there, so who knows?
Perhaps if the drivers learn how to mind their manners on the roads, we'll consider retiring there!!
I'll keep you informed Jasper

Ophelia are you by any chance a Healy Rae or connected to them?

Second cousins twice removed 😉

I haven't rtft but I'm English and have lived in Ireland for 15 years.

I would say the leaving is much more stressful than a levels. I think it's the fact it's the same exam for everyone in the whole country, having to do subjects you don't like and the points system. But it's better to have a broader mix of subjects I think and also transition year is great - they should bring that in in England so teenagers get to experience lots of different things and hopefully have a better idea of what they want to do.

There is less choice of non traditional courses here, less apprenticeships, distance learning, btecs and more rigid trading for professions such as teaching eg no in school training.

I think people driving on their provisional license is dying out.

Funerals are very different. Not better or worse, I think it's just what you are used to. I find Irish funerals and visiting graves too much, like there's too much emphasis on death and not enough privacy, it's a bit overwhelming for me. But my dh finds English funerals too cold I think. It's definitely a cultural difference. The time delay is not cultural though, it's usually because of a back log in the crem in the uk. English people would usually prefer a shorter gap I think.

I live in Dublin (north) and there's very little difference in schools, it is competitive to get into, baptism barrier is a problem for many, or having visitors (only one visitor allowed to maternity hospitals half the time because of winter vomiting bug - I think having more than one person at the birth is unusual, in Dublin anyway, no one has their mum - only their dp) or going to soft play (there are lots of parks and soft play etc and everyone goes).

Also families are still larger here, I have three kids and am expecting, very odd in England but I'm happy it's very normal in Ireland. People can be very judgmental of larger families in England.

I would also agree with people who said less blended families here and slower moving relationships.

GP waiting times much less here due to having to pay.

Bar people are much quicker and able to do more than one order at the same time in Ireland.

Communions are a big difference, unless you're catholic in England you don't have them as they're not part of Church of England.

I came from a small town in England and now live in Dublin, so there was more everyone knowing everyone's business etc for me in England!

Bar staff in ireland are amazing. But they can work anywhere in the world, it’s good training.

On the bar thing, Irish call a "half" a "glass".

They never bring their empty glasses back to the bar, that's never done.

I totally agree, the speed with which barmen/women in a busy pub can remember a big order of drinks is something else.

I’ve read another thread about how horrible teaching is in the U.K. and how much pressure teachers are under to reach targets of some sort ( is it exam results?). Teaching in Ireland, while of course very difficult dealing with children and prepping for classes is considered a very good job and attracts the best people. Although they do complain, very few ever leave and most are very happy compared to other careers.

I agree to an extent about different attitudes to frugality, keyboard. My parents (working-class and Irish, had barely left their own country before) were a bit taken aback when comfortably-off middle-class English cousins met them at Heathrow and pulled in to a carpark on a long drive with a flask of tea and a packet of biscuits, saying that service station prices were too expensive. (Whereas my parents would have bankrupted themselves with hospitality if the shoe was on the other foot.)

I do think that there is an ingrained Irish horror of tightness/stinginess that I see less of in England where frugality is often seen positively. One of the things I always liked in England is that it’s entirely normal to have a very modest wedding with small numbers and a buffet in a pub or a self-catered reception in a village hall, whereas that’s still a bit unusual in Ireland.

It’s probably down to a kind of cultural confidence — I remember telling my mother about decorating a tiny church with wildflowers in jamjars for a friend’s wedding in Oxfordshire — it was early summer and it looked wonderful — and she clearly thought it was really sad and must have looked makeshift and embarrassing.

I think the dislike of frugality comes from a cultural history of largely imposed poverty - when everyone has nothing, windfalls tend to be shared rather than hoarded. It's that old idea in subsistence societies of the best place to store extra food being a neighbour's stomach. Couple that with the importance Gaelic society placed on hospitality and treating guests well (anyone remember the Gráinne Mhaol story at Howth Castle?) and you have the modern Irish cultural norm of reciprocal generosity.

Feeding visitors cake with their tea; asking (even unexpected) visitors to stay for dinner; putting up random friends of friends and cousins for a few days whenever you're living abroad; giving large amounts of money as wedding presents... To be generous when you can is respectable and people will be generous to you in their turn. To be stingy, though - that's a big no-no and not a respectable way to behave.

But that's enough socio-historical analysis so early in the morning

Thanks for that! I’d never heard an explanation before. But it’s so true that an Irish person would nearly bankrupt themselves before being seen as mean. A mean person really stands out in Irish society.

Slanetylor the problem with sweeping generalisations is they are easily disproven. On my DP's side of the family there is an Aunt and Uncle who are well known for their meanness, to the point of charging for every cup of tea served at a Wake they hosted to the deceased's estate.
In the same vein, another member of DP's family wanted to be cremated, unusual in Monaghan, and there was a two week wait for the crem, in Dublin. There was then another two days before the remains could be collected for the Mass.
It's odd that people can come on MM and make statements about "the English", "the Irish" or "the Scots" and people nod sagely. Truth is, all these people have far more in common, and it's quite easy to find someone in, say, Ireland, who behaves the same as someone in England.

I agree, Ifailed.
My English in-laws are very generous . My Irish family are too ,all for one sib, who 'wouldn't spend Christmas' and arrives at dinners and parties 'with one arm as long as the other' quotes courtesy of my DM.

Great post Mar Dhea.

Cultural norms aren't mathematical theorems to be disproven by exception. They are simply descriptors of what kind of behaviour gets approval or disapproval in a given society. Not everyone in that society will follow those norms to the same extent.

Of course generous people exist everywhere and stingy people exist in Ireland. But Irish culture rewards (and to some extent expects) generosity moreso than other cultures.

One culture that doesn't particularly reward generosity is that of Home Counties England (some individuals there are very generous of course, but it's not a reciprocal dynamic). And that's fine: generosity is seen as an individual decision rather than a social obligation. To flip it around, order and systematicity is culturally rewarded/expected there moreso than in Ireland (queuing at bus stops, etc.; historically, a rigid class system). There are of course disorganised people there and Irish people who queue in an orderly manner, but the cultures differ in how strongly they (dis)approve of these behaviours.

I'm intrigued by the concept that there is a single culture in the Home Counties of England, and that it measurably doesn't particularly reward generosity. Sounds more like unconfirmed bias; there's not even an agreed definition of what the Home Counties are.

I know!
Well, in my area of the 'Home Counties' we are (mostly ) very generous and a great community.
We set up a rota , recently, to take meals around to a family in our neighbourhood whose child is receiving cancer treatment in London . We always looked after each other's children (when they were younger) , had a pick up from school arrangement, hold neighbourhood BBQs and parties....pop in on our elderly neighbours (especially the recently bereaved) etc...