A pretender for the Burchill crown?

[monkeytrousers]

nice of her to put so much effort into it..

[Caligula]

Mine didn't get printed. Love 'em all though!

Interesting that not one agreed with her. I guess that must mirror the proportion of opinions received?

[Tortington]

ha ha haaah haah ah haaa haa "Carol Sarler's article showed all the insight of a Daily Mail exposé on social workers. "

ha haaa haa haaa ha thats soooo funny! like it

[monkeytrousers]

here

[Caligula]

Link please!!!!

[Tortington]

not me i dont buy papers. and am to lazy to be bothered!

[monkeytrousers]

There's a few letters about this in todays mag. Is anyone owning up?

[Tortington]

depends on where you stand on the other one - is that the newstatesman one emkana?

you see i felt much like many of you do about this one - i felt that that article failed by omission

[emkana]

Just as an inside - what is going in the journalistic world when this article here appears in the Guardian, whereas the far more reasonable one from the other thread appeared in the Daily Mail?

[monkeytrousers]

Oh-er!

[Tortington]

i have the pants to prove it

[monkeytrousers]

Oh, you say you enjoyed it but where is the evidence to back you up. Eh??

[Tortington]

i enjoyed this debate

can we have another one?

[Tortington]

she doesnt tar all sahms with the same brush - she used "posh spice" as her marker

she put a sentance in about historical context. she is clearly taking about a certain type of person with money.

and i dont despise anyone for having it

there is no lumping everyone in the same boat here - its clearly a trishaesq attack on poncey rich people

[monkeytrousers]

They're only good for nose picking anyhow!

I don't have the hands for them either..

[Caligula]

One day I will have acrylic tips. And I will be able to type with them. And drive with them. And keep them on for longer than 48 hours.

One day.

[TwoIfBySea]

As I said on the other journo-attacking-SAHMs thread I am happy being a SAHM despite the fact this seems to offend these women.

Perhaps I should offer myself up to Carol Sarler and her ilk to put me in the stocks and start throwing veggies at me, just to make their own sad little lives that little bit better. Well, you know what they say about bullies, attack the weaker to feel better about themselves.

Sorry, I just found the article extremely hurtful and am getting a little peeved with having to defend my choice. DH isn't well off, I don't own a 4x4 and would walk to school with dst if it wasn't 7 miles away, and I don't and never will have acrylic tips. Jeez!

[Blu]

Hatstand - I agree. And I was so exasperated by the insultingly complacent level of her assumptions that i just couldn't be bothered to read it with much attention.
Agree with M'trousers about the irritating 'post-modern irony', too.

The Silly Sunday story that had me swearing to never read the Observer again (except when they have the food supplement) was the leading item in the Review section - 'There can be frew more traumatising events in a family than the death of a pet' trumpeted the opening credits - before a 3 page article about the death of a goldfish, ffs. And no, the phonecall to the child-development speciallist SIL on the 2nd page didn't transform it into a 'serious' article, either.

Ooops: excuse my rant!

[monkeytrousers]

But that's the masculine model, isn't it Caligula? Even as the workplace becomes more feminised, the working day still confounds any hope of a work/life balance.

[hatstand]

BK - (and custy and Blu) yes, she is talking about a small unrepresentative part of the population but at no point does she make that clear. She repeatedly tars all sahms with being exactly the same. you couldn't do that and get away with it about virtually any other group than mothers. And, as a Guardian fan I find that really unsettling and sinister. Caligula "I'd rather read a more interesting analysis of, for example, why metropolitan childless journalists feel the need to slag off a minority of unimportant mothers." nice line!!! Aloha - I was at university with her

[Caligula]

God I definitely would. Personal trainer as well. Bugger volunteering and the PTA.

I've just thought of something else, more nebulous about being a SAHM. One of the things about not having a job around which nearly all your waking hours and brainspace is organised, is that you have the leisure to concentrate on other stuff. I know that when I worked full-time, I was so involved in my jobs, that my head was full of them. I would arrive home in the evening absolutely exhausted, physically and more importantly mentally. There was no way I wanted to think about anything other than vegging out in front of Ab Fab or Big Brother or whatever. I simply didn't have the mental energy to think about my relationship, home, child, or anything else. Whereas now that I work from home only part time, I can actually spare some brain-space for my kids. So that if they have difficulties at school, nursery or wherever, I'll have the brainspace and energy to confront them. Whereas when I was working f/t in London, I just couldn't. Even when I knew my relationship was going down the pan and all was not well with xp's parenting of my DS, I just couldn't face confronting it.

And I think that's one of the very difficult to measure benefits of having more of your own time. I know that's probably a bit of a controversial thing to say and I'll probably immediately get 20 posts from f/t WOHM's sayign they're quite capable of dealing with home as well, thank you very much, but I must stress this isn't a criticism of anyone who works ft - horses for courses. It's just one of the benefits I've noticed for me, of working pt and from home - I'm just not as physically and mentally attuned to my paid employment, so have more antennae for other stuff going on around me than when I was in that position. And the benefits of that are so difficult to measure or quantify, because you don't know what your or your kid's lives would be like if that wasn't the case (or in fact if it would make any difference).

But I can't see someone like Carol Sarler even beginning to apprehend that there might be something in that.

[monkeytrousers]

And you shouldn't have to be vilified because of it Bossykate.

It's not a good article I think we can all agree on that. I do see something a bit more sinister in the language and especially the tone. All the inverted comma's..it's that post-modern irony beast again, isn't it?

[Tortington]

but i wouldnt say i was a Sahm

[Tortington]

me too!

[bossykate]

agree with custy and blu.

she's talking about a small and unrepresentative section of the population.

tbh, if i had the chance to have lots of beauty treatments and swan around in a flash car while my children were at school (it would be a sporty merc convertible for choice, not a 4x4) - i'd jump at it!

[Blu]

I will read this article again and see whether I change my view in the light of everything people have said here - but my first impression on skim-reading this at the w/e was exactly as Custy describes it...but possibly I am under the influence of bile having spent the week in the natural holiday habitat of the 4x4 nail polisher .

And I thought - if she IS talking about the comfortable middle-class (which I thought she was, and lazy for it) - that she made a couple of good points.

Could be envy. I have never had my nails done, not ever!