Guardian Family: Confessions of a Full Time Mother

[morningpaper]

Confessions of a Full Time Mother

"Kirsty Gunn is not working on her next novel. She is not a columnist for the London Review of Books. She has chosen instead to disappear from the professional world and embrace a domestic life just as rich and interesting and inspiring ... "

PAH! She's opted out of the professional world - well except for this article and the book she has just written about her "year as a full time mum" - full time that is, except for the 30 hours a week that her children are at school in which I presume she fannies about writing drivel like this.

At first I thought it was an ironic joke, but sadly not. Perhaps she is friends with that woman who survived the concentration-camp conditions of Fulham after that breeze blew her wooden grapes off the sideboard...

Anyone sent this thread to the commissioning editor of the Guardian family section yet?
Can we collect votes for marthamoo and morningpaper to write an article for next week's copy?

I remember Rachel Cusk on R4 while I was in hospital before and after ds arrived. I had a radio in my room and had to switch it off before I started shouting at it and frightening the midwives. God, she was so selfpitying and melodramatic. Sheesh.

that article read like a fantasy
very little substance
unworthy of the Guardian
Stupid old bag! Hope her precious dd's grow up and write what she was REALLY like!!

tm, it's how I feel. If I want to come out of the office and see them for little bits I can. If the fighting is bad I'll either leave the nanny to sort it out or if I think I can useful intervene or they're both upset (not that they fight a lot) I can comfort one and she has the other. Also they know I'm in here so if they find a lovely butterfly in the garden or whatever they can bring it in to me but I haven't had to stand out there for an hour in drizzle catching the ball from one of them as the nanny did today. It's perfect.

Yes, there's the home intrusion downside. It's a huge issue. You're weighing up that against the free time. But if you've 5 children it's hardly ever really your home anyway by the time you add in their friends and the sheer presence of teenagers, hormones etc. even if they're genetically connected to you. But I never had any living in for that reason.

This morning I felt interrupted every few minutes. There are lots of things they think only I can do and not their nanny or the older ones but the ability to retreat guilt free with the paper and open the post in your own time knowing someone is there looking after the children and it's not a spouse you're putting upon either is very helpful.

Rachel Cusk described motherhood as many women find it. I buy her book for everyone I know who is having a baby. Perhaps many stay at home mothers just don't identify with the sheer hardness of that process, the total taking over of your life, no time hardly to eat and sleep that a baby means. May be it's people like me and her who find it so hard and others who are happily at home with babies don't but I wouldn't doubt her feelings as I recognised them in myself and I sat there reading it thinking thank God I went back to work to retain my sanity.

Xenia, you're misreading my post; or perhaps I didn't word it very clearly. I found early motherhood a total fecking nightmare. What I object to in Cusk is her particularly precious prose style; and her claims to generalise, from her particular situation, that all motherhood was like hers.

Okay, I wasn't reading very carefully.
Her style is okay, better than the woman this thread is about. I read her book Arlington Park I think it was last year which was a bit dull - about some stay at home mothers who were fed up and all of course putting their husbands' careers first etc all very sexist stuff and very suburban. It must be hard to make reasonable sums writing novels like that even to pay for your childcare unless you end up like JK Rowling which most people don't.

I really, really, really find it difficult to understand why anyone, man or woman, would have, 1, 2, 3, 5 or 10 children if they are going to find it impossible to deal with looking after a child 24/7.

I delayed having a child until I was 36, because my sister had chldren way before me and I KNEW how all consuming having a child is. I didn't have the time and was unwilling to make the commitment until I had decided I was completley ready for it.

You don't have to read books to realise that, most people know someone, a friend or a relative who has kids and unless everyone lies to them they should at least have some idea of how difficult it is to look after a baby/toddler.

you're still at it then? yawn.

i didnt mean YOU yr!

yr, loads of people do. It's not hard to undestand. Children are hard work and why not share the load? It's much easier and for the record I have much more enjoyed my Sunday reading and working and even posting on here and seeing the children may be 2 hours, may be it added up to more than that, than had I been with the children all day. Perfect. I'm lucky I like my choices and I'm sure yr is lucky she likes hers. I expect we don't understand each other. I can't understand any parent wanting to be with children 24/7! Far to dull and far too much like hard work.

Fair enough Xenia. People are different and they make different choices which is what makes the world go round I guess

I didn't expect to not be able to deal with ds1 though. It wasn't until after we had ds2 that his disability was diagnosed and it wasn't really until I was pregnant with ds3 that the severity of his condition became apparent, and also we began to need help. I never envisaged having help, but when pregnant with ds3 realised we were all going to be housebound if I didn't get help in. Once that was sorted (took a year of wrangling with social services- who in end were very generous) and I started using it, I found that it did make life easier and more enjoyable for everyone, including (especially) the children.

I don't really see why sharing the load is so bad. I probably wouldn't have got help in if we hadnt have had ds1 (woudln't have been able to afford it for starters) but I'm not sure there's anything bad about having help in, whatever the circumstances.

jimjams - I understand your experience, I didn't love my life when ds was a non-sleeping baby, i found it incredibly hard and lonely. Things get better and better as he gets older. Nothing wrong with getting help. I wish I had parents or in-laws who could spend time with ds.

I'm shuddering. I think the people who called the writing "sixth-form" are on the money.

The passage beginning "I wonder now if I ever will" is so badly written that I want to take a blue pencil to it and scrub the whole damn lot. WHERE WAS HER FECKING EDITOR??

"Did I write that cheque for the gas last week? What kind of mortgage do we have? I don't seem interested any more in hanging on to facts like these."
Oh, you poor dear. Good job hubby managed to hang on to his brain, then.

What a dickhead "Will A" sounds too.

And the POEM, dear God - a pile of wank which she must have tried, and failed, to get published in some arty magazine.

("This is my desire, my burn" I first read as "this is my desire, my BUM"!)

I swear it was written by a government minister as a warning to what will happen to your brain if you become a SAHM. Part of their insidious propaganda campaign.

i think Kirsty Gunn is a wonderful writer.

unquite, "this is my bum".....lol

May be it's her bum burning with desire ??

Quite, get them off their arses, sitting at home those lazy cows, only thing they are good at is giving birth, scrounging benefits, eating home made carrot cake, how VERY DARE you ?????

xenia, what attracted you to this site?

surely if you only want to be with your kids for not more than 2 hours a day, then a "mums" net would be dull and boring for you?

xenia, just picking up on this point of yours - you say "yes, there's the home intrusion downside. It's a huge issue. You're weighing up that against the free time. But if you've 5 children it's hardly ever really your home anyway by the time you add in their friends and the sheer presence of teenagers, hormones etc. even if they're genetically connected to you."

I see weekends as a time to pull up the drawbridge, so to speak. We do socialisie and have friends over, but not all weekend and always make time to spend alone together, IYSWIM. It's not that we even do a lot 'as a family'. But we do spend time at home each doing our own thing, with no one else. I would feel very stressed if my home was an open house all weekend especailly as I spend monday to friday rubbing shoulders with people at work.

I guess, as we have no extended family, I have never expereinced the delights (or otherwise)had a grandparent or sibling dropping by at weekends. That definitely has a downside, but I have grown used to dh ds1 and ds2 being my main source of company at weekends and now wouldn't have it any other way.

When my sons are teenages, I know things might change - I expect their friends to drop in. But I would not be encouraging groups of them to see my home as a place to hang out.

This has always been a different sort of house, more a public bizarre at times than a home - we'd have piano pupils and their parents and sibilings arriving all Saturday to be taught by my ex in one room and waiting in another, me working in another, 5 children and friends elsewhere. Having a nanny around too for half the day wasn't a burden at all. Teenagers can also sometimes be quite difficult and the more they are diluted by others the better sometimes like diluting a strong drink.

tigermoth - I would defo. encourage ds friends to use my home to hang out when they are teenagers and most certainly after school when they are younger.

I rather they did this than lurk around street corners or the local Mac's. I want my home to be a welcoming place for ds and his friends. That way I will have some control over his choice of friends too

I think I'd come down on the side of encouraging DC's teenage friends to hang out at my place too, tbh, though I can see that sometimes it would get a bit exhausting and you might wish the place was your own.

But blink, and they're suddenly twenty and they've left home, so it's probably worth putting up with in order to strengthen bonds, have some involvement/ knowledge of their lives/ friends / influences etc. This came up on another thread, there is so much social apartheid between generations in our culture, I can only see it as a good thing if teenagers are using each other's homes to hang out, despite the downsides.

I love the idea that my kids will have their friends over, and hope it happens. I think teenagers are fab. Very very happy when my stepdaughter (15) brings friends over. They are so nice. Not remotely demanding like two and five year olds, just good fun and watch Strictly Come Dancing/X-Factor/Big Brother with you and sometimes laugh at your jokes, which is hugely flattering. I've even arranged to meet sdd in the Kings Road when she's with friends to buy them all a hot chocolate and cake in starbucks, I like them so much. I think a good reason to have lots of children is to have a houseful of semi-independent people about.

IT's my burn