Daisy Waugh - thanks but no thanks for all your parenting advice

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Now read Daisy Waugh's pieces in ST magazine last week and Daily Mail and Guardian this week.

Each one to promote her new book.

She has pissed me off so much with her assertion that all new "mummies" (her word, not mine, she seems incapable of using "mothers") change beyond recognition from their pre-baby selves and become obsessed with reading levels and nappy quality. She even DARES in her Guardian piece to end with "what happened to mummy feminism?" I'd have thought a massive first step in promoting feminism would be to NOT write a book slagging off your fellow mothers in such sweeping, generalised "media construct" terms.

The ST piece was a particularly patronising and derivative piece along the lines of "I'm such a laid back guilt free parent, and here's how you can be too". Why does she assume the need for such advice.

Rant over.

Disclaimer: I haven't read her book and I won't be doing so.

I met her husband once at a party & said I'd read & enjoyed her books. He treated me with disdain & I haven't bought one since (they've lost 10 years of potential income from me).

I can't bear the woman.

The fact that she uses 'mummies' when communicating to other adults makes me think she's a twat.

Who?

Oh think she's just chosen a controversial angle to take on it all, more coverage/sales that way!

I think Salbertina probably has it, by saying she's simply chosen a controversial (if very tired) standpoint to take, in order to write a book. But it still hugely fucks me off that publishers commission this kind of drivel, newspapers advertise it and the author is allowed to put her shitty categorisation of women under the subject "feminism".

It's so boring when people intent on writing a self-help type of book come across as if they're the only person in the world to accurately describe a phenomenon. Like 'mummies' in this case. It's reductionist in a rather meaningless way - being human is much more interesting, and complex, than stereotypes.

And it's actually rather anti-feminist, to bundle all women together into an amorphous blob based on one woman's school gate experiences. Meh.

But most importantly, IS ONE OF HER CHILDREN CALLED PANDA??

I have to say, I read the Guardian piece and thought that maybe she just needed some new friends. I certainly didn't recognise the women that I know in her description. And come to that, the men I know who have children are just as likely as the women to talk about their dc.

I have felt more politically engaged since I became a mother, particularly WRT feminism. Pre DCs if asked if I was a feminist I would have squirmed a bit and said "well, yeeess..." Basically I naively considered sexual equality to have been achieved.

Hell is motherhood a wake up call to that notion.

YY to being more political once you have dc - same for me WRT environmental stuff, before it was more theoretical, now I have dd it feels really personal.

Motherhood is like many other things in life in that your approach to it is what determines if it diminishes you or empowers you. I am much further down this road then most of you, my DCs are now older, and I can say honestly that being a mother has made me into a bigger, better, stronger person than I could ever have imagined I would be. I read the Times article today and just felt rather sorry for her, she struck me as rather pathetic and trying too hard to impress. Meh!

Haven't read her article, don't intend to. But YY to being stronger, bigger and better than you could have thought possible.

Agreeing with you all - I'm starting a degree in Politics this autumn because I've become very, very interested in and vocal about the subject since having 13 month old DD. Babies don't fry your brain; they're more like a firework up your bum.

Takver, I had EXACTLY the same thought: "you need some new friends then love, because that doesn't sound like the mums I know".