bully; if you?re jewish or muslim in the arctic circle, how do you keep ramadan or the sabbath, particularly at the tricky ends of the year?; did anybody watch monday?s ?silent witness? ? can you tell me what happened?
Although baby websites abound like headlice in a playground, most are worthy affairs in which mothers exchange weaning tips and post cutesy pictures of their infants. Mumsnet, on the other hand, occupies an altogether darker corner of the internet. ?Two things distinguish us from other parenting sites,? suggests Justine Roberts, one of the site?s co-founders. ?First, as our name suggests, we are not so much about children, as about the mums themselves. The second is our savage sense of humour.?
Nothing illustrates this better than the site?s recent showdown with the parenting expert Gina Ford. Although every baby site debates Ford?s controversial methods, Mumsnet?s uniquely raucous tone seems to have touched a particular nerve. After the posting ford straps babies to rockets and fires them into southern lebanon, her lawyers threatened to close the site permanently. It was subsequently agreed to ban all mentions of Ford. Within minutes of the veto being announced, a thread started entitled a thread with no title about nobody and nothing by no one. ?Well, all I can say is that I have nothing to say on this subject,? declared its author. ?Nada,? offered another. ?Niente,? a third.
Ruth March from north London, who has a son of 16 months and a second child on the way, is a typical Mumsnetter. ?In the early days of my son?s life I was really floundering and I didn?t know where to turn. The baby books all made me feel hopelessly inadequate, the other women in my antenatal group were so competitive they made me feel even worse, and my mum was hundreds of miles away ? and couldn?t remember anything about having babies anyway.? Desperately surfing for advice on colic, she stumbled across Mumsnet. ?It was a lifeline, full of other women who were having just as bad a time,? says March, who is 40. ?They didn?t have that much concrete advice, but knowing I was not alone immediately made it so much easier.?
From then on, March was hooked. ?I would sit holding my son to the breast with one hand, while the other was using the mouse to click on various threads. Mumsnetters were so smart and witty. It sounds corny but it made me really proud to be a mother. I thought, ?I may have lost my old life but if I can be part of this gang, then it?s worth it.?? As March regained her interest in the outer world, she continued to stick with Mumsnet. ?I virtually never use it for parenting advice now, though. I prefer to check out the ?Telly Addicts? or ?Environment? section, to see if any other mothers are watching How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? and to discover I?m not the only mother outraged by the way supermarkets dole out plastic bags.?
Roberts, 38, set up Mumsnet in 2000 with two members of her antenatal class: Carrie Longton, 38, a television producer; and Rachel Foster, 37, a radio producer. ?The idea was for it to be like a Which? for mums, compiling our members? opinions on a list of baby products into a definitive review. The forum bit just happened to be attached,? Roberts recalls. But rapidly the chat element all but took over. Today it accounts for 80 per cent of the site?s traffic, attracting up to 10,000 posts per day.
For sociologists, Mumsnet gives a fascinating insight into the life of the British middle-class mummy. A recent census of 2,000 users showed that nearly two-thirds of Mumsnetters were in their thirties, with 13 per cent aged over 40. Three-quarters have a child under two, nearly half have a child under six and most have just one or two children. More than two-thirds were educated to degree level or beyond. Forty-two per cent had a household income of more than £50,000; 21 per cent worked full-time, 34 per cent worked parttime, 32 per cent were stay-at-home mothers. Postings reveal women who are (or were) lawyers, teachers, geneticists and City honchos.
Which means that, at any moment, members of the site will be engaging in heated debate about the issues de nos jours. 4 x 4s all driven by morons, one thread begins. is late motherhood as bad a problem as teenage mums? reads another. State versus independent schools is a perennial topic. There?s an outraged posting about how a Suzuki violin group will not allow children accompanied by nannies, alongside pleas for advice about the quality of Boden ?Sassy? jeans (?Cringing as I write this,? the writer says). One of the most impassioned spats, which lasted for months, was entitled should you feed your child grapes while going round the supermarket? (No, it?s stealing, said one side, while the other told them to ?get real?.) No wonder that, when David Cameron became Tory leader, one of his first moves was to conduct a live webchat on the site, where he was grilled on everything from breast-feeding rates to special-needs provisions.
For the voyeurs among us, there is a relationships page, where at any time a dozen soap operas are bubbling away: not proud of it but i have been unfaithful; well, it?s finally happened, he?s left and i feel like sh?; i think my mum is depressed how do i bring up the subject? One mother posted that she had just taken an overdose. Other Mumsnetters worked out who she was and called an ambulance, which arrived just in time. They had her daughter picked up from school, then raised £2,000 to pay for childcare when the mother returned home. Mothers who have to flee domestic
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