I found this article quite interesting as well and would have put the link on here if it hadn't been there.
The funny thing is that I don't think all this is very new. It's just that it's so fashionable to write about mums, children, family life etc. constantly nowadays.
My mum still certainly made sure I didn't have too many sweets therefore 'limited my sugar intake'.
She sew dressing-up costumes for me herself (which I can't do and won't do for my children).
She also learned something about nutrition - which was more basic 30 years ago but when she read that tinned food hardly contained any vitamins [at that time it wasn't that obvious apparently] she avoided it and cooked more fresh food. And not just mums, I remember my dad asking me if I had at least had one piece of fresh fruit every day (and bananas didn't 'count').
And btw. my MIL is probably one of the first mums who started worrying about organic food - even though they lived in the middle of a city they bought it directly from a farm more than 25 yrs ago I think and she still buys organic food only and with a critical eye scans my fridge asking meaccusingly why I don't buy organic butter for example, at least for the children (not so important for me, she thinks)! Not many of today's mums would go that far.)
My mum went into panic when she was out with me when I was a baby/toddler for an important appointment and I fell asleep in the pram as I was supposed to have lunch but then couldn't at the usual time.
It's hard to believe nowadays but sounds far more neurotic than buying Annab. K. weaning books (just overheard two new mums in the supermarket talking about that - would have loved to offer them my copy which I hardly used, lol...).
She never even went out of the house without make-up.
As for extra-curricular activities, my mum sent me to music and swimming classes from age 5, went to sth called 'mother-toddler-gymnastics' when I was v. young, made sure I learned an instrument (not at 2 though, I was 7 when I started and looking back found that too late!) and as I was completely un-sporty she made sure I went to a sports club once a week. She read to me, made sure I did my homework every day (state primary in Germany at a time where private schools where almost unheard of in Germany and the very few that existed were for the very thick who needed everything hammered into their brains, at least that was the perception(things are changing now and more children go private, don't have the numbers but suspect it's still less than in the UK) and particularly when I was at primary school she invented lots of extra exercises (spelling and maths mainly, the latter was surprisingly similar to Kumon maths, only that she just made it up) to make sure I made it into grammar school which I did (though a far higher percentage of pupils in Germany attends the equivalent of grammar schools, so maybe it's not quite the same).
Thing is she was originally from a working class background but I would probably describe my parents as lower middle class although the class system is not that obvious and set in stone in Germany and you can move up through education (unlike here).
Nearly the same applies for my MIL - their cihldren did get lots of homework help and extra tuition, only was it done by their parents, not tutors, but it was done, also they played instruments, did sports, maybe a bit later than is fashionable now but they did. She still makes a huge fuss about how important it is that I read to my children and more importantly, talk about the books, don't plonk them in front of a DVD but watch it with them (which I normally can't stand and rather surf the net in the meantime -does this count as a 'slummy mummy' moment?).
Sometimes I think in a way they fussed even more over the children and I get the guilty feeling instilled not by other mums at the school gates or the media but by my parents & in-laws.
The only difference is, nobody wrote any articles about mums like them or invented catchy names for the different mummy categories. But they existed! So sometimes it annoys me a bit that today's mums are portrayed as being overly competetive, nutrition-conscious, fussy, busy etc.
Has anyone read the book? Is it worth reading?
Just read the Cloudhoppers comment, I have at least one ds who definitely isn't Oxford material due to SEN and we do have a Gaggia coffee maker (the coffee is neither fairtrade nor organic but italian, and I do not smoke though). So what is this going to tell me? Utterly confused now.