The tiger that came to tea

[Mango1982]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9920825/Tiger-Came-Tea-lead-rape-harassment-campaigner-claims.html

This kind of nonsense is why I am not a feminist and it really hurts your cause it’s exactly in the same vain as company’s saying pregnant people

It’s bat shit

Some feminists were saying it promotes sexist stereotypes

Iam a stay at home mother their is nothing wrong with that and I do get the feeling that feminists hate the traditional family set up and I don’t understand why
I am not being made to stay at home if anything I felt pressure to work in the past witch ended up being harmful to my mental health and my family

Why shouldn’t girls be able to feel ok with wanting to be a stay at home and raise their children if that’s something they think they would like to do

I doubt that the author thought of such deep themes when she wrote it. She wrote a story for children to enjoy and she that she had fun writing.

I have no idea why they are making a fuss over one person’s determination to find darker subtext to something that others enjoy. It’s one person’s opinion and it says more about them personally finding things that are just not there, than the author herself. To me it’s a well loved children’s book. I don’t give two hoots what someone I’ve never heard of thinks. Why should I? Just like wasps If we don’t give these people attention then they will eventually go away. The trouble is they keep getting the attention!

@KimikosNightmare I don't understand why your so angry tbh.

And I agree with @imjustsoworried it really isn't that deep and its been hyped up.

@Lowhum

I’d like to hear their analysis of The Crocodile Under the Bed then!

@KimikosNightmare

When asked where they would go for tea if there was no food in the house the best suggestion I got was 'go to your nan's then you won't have to pay

Really? That was the best suggestion? Go to another woman's house and expect her to cook for them?

OK, best as in it amused me and reflected that child's life, not as a pattern for living. The other children had plenty of ideas. My point was that they are not empty vessels, with a few open questions 4 and 5 year old can have their own ideas and I'm not going to criticise one for wanting to go to his nan's for tea.

Well we must've completely missed the point in our house - kids story books were always an opening to a chat about the themes. Tiger is a nice intro to metaphors and children grasp this easily. They're always looking for alternative meanings in things. Was it comment on immigration? A metaphor for the relentlessness of looking after a family? What else could it be? And so on, including talks about gender roles. My kids loved these conversations and have grown up into young women who love books. Don't get me wrong, we weren't super worthy but kids like to talk about stories and good quality books like this open lots of conversations!

My single mother always "read" it that the tiger eat the dad so the mum and little girl didn't have to put up with a know it all twat (or words to that effect). I didn't realise that didn't happen until my kids watch the c4 film of it.

Just read about this before coming on mumsnet.
This is crazy. It's one of my favourite children's books and on my bookshelf, along with; The Faraway Tree. I mean, if any book were going to be picked apart, it would be the Faraway Tree.
It was written in times when this was how things were. 🤷‍♀️

My dcs loved this book. At 3 or 4 years old we certainly weren’t talking about themes . How soul-destroying.

I love this book because my life looked exactly like the little girl’s. I had the exact dress and tights! Sadly a tiger never came to tea, and if it had done my mother would have screamed blue murder. The joy of the story is everything is so calm and accepted and ends with a jolly trip out for sausage and chips. What’s not to like?

@Imnobody4 I'd be interested if you have any suggestions on books for 2 year olds plus with positive representation and messages.
As it is me and DH change the pronouns of half the characters because they are always all boys.

Secondly, I recommend looking at the tiger that came for a pint by Shaun lock for all those mums that have been subjected to tiger a zillion times.

Yes, it's mummy's beer in our house as that's much more realistic.

I always thought Tiger was a fascinating book. I first heard it in teacher training (not British) and was that this was a popular UK children's book. Still, I read it to my dc and I continue to read it in school - as a pp said the discussion afterwards is always great fun!

I think it's problematic, mostly because the parent lets the threat into the house, then watches politely as it steals everything, even the tap water. No sense of protecting the child. I can't immediately think of another book quite like it, where the parents just ignore the threat and let it stalk around the house, and the solution is going to a cafe for tea.

I think it's super interesting and leads to great thoughts from the children.

As for the traditional dynamic... I'm not clear on the OP's complaint. Most mums who stay at home do so only while the dc are young - it's not a career choice. Most women work until they have dc, then again either PT or FT after the dc are a bit older, often with PT work even while the dc are very young.

SAHM definitely never comes up as a career goal in ks2. I have never had a single Y6 say that's what they want to be, even though it's likely to be a phase in the lives of many girls.

I doubt that the author thought of such deep themes when she wrote it. She wrote a story for children to enjoy and she that she had fun writing.

Judith Kerr always laughed at other people's interpretations of the story - that it was about fleeing from the Nazis, or that the mum was an alcoholic who had drunk all the beer - and said it was simply a story about a tiger coming to tea that she initially wrote for her young daughter after they'd been to the zoo and seen the tigers.

It's a lovely story. It's a fantasy. It's funny. It has a child's logic to it - why shouldn't a tiger come to tea and drink all the water in the taps?

It's old-fashioned because it was written in 1968. The dad doesn't look like modern dads. But one of the things you learn from reading is that life is different for people at different times and in different cultures. (My first introduction to the American civil war came through Little Women.) Books are not instruction manuals for how life is supposed to be - they're a window into what life is, or was, like for other people.

It's just clout-seeking from Adamson.

it's undeniable that most children's books perpetuate the stereotype of mums at home providing food and childcare while dads are put in the world working and earning, and generally doing all the other human activities apart from cooking and caring

And yet, strangely, despite having been read these books and had a wife who fulfilled these stereotypes, caring and cooking are not high on the list when men decide they feel like a woman.

My dc adored this book and I read it so often that I can still recite it from memory.

It provoked so many questions and discussions including whether it was possible to drain all the water from the tap, why our groceries were delivered by van instead of bicycle, and how their food choices differed from ours.

I have found reading older children’s literature very helpful in stimulating discussions about cultural attitudes, historical change, power relations,etc. Reading about situations different from our own is thought provoking and how a sense of perspective and relativity is developed.

Currently I’m watching Bewitched with my tweens. It’s absolutely rife with problematic attitudes, but it’s much easier to see them clearly when the contrast to modern day is so stark. Real life is more nuanced.

It does worry me when people seem to shy away from debate and discussion, and want to ban or cancel things that don’t fit their agenda. Learning to question what you read is what protects us from propaganda and brainwashing. Limiting what we allow to be read does the opposite.

Books are not instruction manuals for how life is supposed to be - they're a window into what life is, or was, like for other people.
Thank you. As far as I'm concerned, the primary purpose of fiction is to tell a story.
We also loved Mog in our house.

I consider myself a radical feminist. I'm currently a stay at home mum as have two babies under 2. I'm half heartedly looking for a job. I think bringing up children is very important work and feminists should talk about measures to support stay at home parents and to help them back into work after a career break. Measures such as topping up pensions and half decent pay. I consider these feminist issues. Oh, I love the tiger who came to tea. Ridiculous to say it's anti-woman or any such nonsense. In fact, I often buy food and cook it for my family as this does not go against my radical feminist principles!!!!!!

You seem to be confusing an individual with a whole movement. Do you like it when SAHM are generalised as lazy just because a few lazy ones might exist? Same thing.

Meanwhile feminism has given you the right to work, vote, hold a bank account, not be raped by your husband, not be sacked from a job because you got pregnant, maternity leave, abortion rights, etc, but as you’re not keen on feminism, I’m sure you don’t make use of any of those things?

Honestly @DottyHarmer - it wasn't an English lesson - I'm not completely clueless, but I'm an adult, not a three year old so can think in terms of themes - it doesn't mean I'd present it that way to my kids . My kids liked exploring ideas and reading always led to lots of conversation about the book - might've been "I've got those tights" or it could've been "why does the mummy do all of the work in their house?"
I don't think there's much that helps to open discussion with your children better than a book and that holds right up to adulthood.
It doesn't matter if the author intended the discussion or not - it's more that it presents an opportunity.

Didn't mean to @ you DottyHarmer - I'm just inept on the app!!

Why is nobody more concerned about the fact that the tiger drinks all the water out of the tap? What kind of nonsense is that?!

I thought this was going to be a metaphor for men in women's spaces.

@HotPenguin

It's ok to disagree with one particular feminist and still be a feminist yourself.

Indeed. Believe it or not, there are feminists who think that it's OK for other women to have opinions. Fancy that!

Still can't get over what a rude selfish house guest the tiger is 🤣

@Mango1982

TheCountessofFitzdotterel

It’s not old fashioned ay 🧐loads of women stay at home to look after their children either for the first 5 years or till secondary

Also those deriding the daily Mail just remember they are the ones currently standing up for women’s sex based rights it’s symptomatic of the woke times we live in you judge what’s being said by who’s saying it father than if it’s true thought many of the women on here would of learned by now about the false guardian/vs daily Mail narrative

Exactly this. It's also in The Times if that makes it more acceptable. She said "We need to recognise these aren't just stories. We know that gender stereotypes are harmful and they reinforce gender inequality, and that gender inequality is the cause of violence against women and girls". So in a not-that-roundabout way, kids seeing a SAHM and a working dad who takes his family out for dinner is LICHERALLY causing violence. I'm laughing, but it is insane.

@FabulousIAm

Why is nobody more concerned about the fact that the tiger drinks all the water out of the tap? What kind of nonsense is that?!

But that's what cats do... I'm sure tigers would if they had really big cats at the zoo.