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...

I agree Caligula. I think it helps teenagers going through stressful, hormone filled lives to know they can always come home with their friends. I used to have friends sleep over all the time at that age and my parents encouraged it. Also saved my parents loads of phone bills as otherwise I would be on the telephone for hours with my best friend !

Yes, my son in particular, his friends from school always used to come here and stay the night. It wasn't always that easy because they'd play football outside with the floodlights on later than I wanted and they'd drink but I decided it was better they were here than at a bus station - they were under 18 then. I often didn't get enough sleep those nights but I felt it was the right thing to do and they all liked coming here too. You do sometimes feel with over night parties that the house isn't your own but I never went out because I think they need to know there's an adult around.

Ah well, on advantage of not having floodlights in the garden, eh?

350 posts! This is my opinion before I read what everybody else says. I am not sure what to make of Kirsty Gunn, however, in her defense, is it the person writing the headlines who called her a full-time mum or Kirsty Gunn herself? I get the feeling that the article is more about the 'domestic' experience, but that perhaps the lazy editor has decided to use it as part of the great SAHM/WOH debate. Clearly Kirsty Gunn is no more a 'full-time' mum that anybody else, whatever they may do during the day, but has decided (in her own head atleast) that the reason she hasn't got a better job title is that she has to fill in permission slips for school or something. What being a mother has to do with being a bit scatty and bad at paying the gas bill is anybody's guess. She also clearly mixes with some rather odd men, who presumably just had to pat their children's heads before they went to bed and never got involved in the actual childcare.

Anyway, I think you have to set this in the context of some of the other articles that have appeared recently in the Guardian family section - I think they are a bit desperate for things to fill the space.

Xenia might only spend 2 hours a day "quality" time with her kids but she is AVAILABLE a lot more than that - pretty much all the time some days. That's what's important, I think. I don't think that kids care WHO is watching them throw the ball in the drizzle (and that kind of thing makes me want to weep/drink) but knowing that Mum is there is you need her IS important. My parents were always working at home while I was left to my own devices a lot and I feel very lucky compared to my friends who had to wait until 8pm for Mummy or Daddy to come home everyday.

God it makes me so and that rich, selfsatisfied women who presumably know the Family pages editor cos they both live in the same lovely street in Portobello get paid to write utter, cloying shite like this.

I really don't want to get into the SAHM/WOHM mudslinging at all- ALL work is valuable and childcare is work- but have to ask Renaldo- re.-
'the fun thing about being a stay at home mum is having time to read a newspaper from start to finish every day, not being to tired to go to the cinema midweek, having weekends completely free of domestic tasks so dh and the kids and I can enjoy our time together...'

EH???
I really feel inadequate now.
Alright so I have only ever had 7 months at home as an SAHM and may well have gone mad in that time but nothing like the above EVER happened to me.

I've never really liked the phrase "full-time mum" anyway. It implies that my DW, who goes out to work, is a "part-time mum".

'EVERY Mother Is a Working Mother' - a bumper sticker seen often enough in the US.

Although on my old banger were 'Free Tibet', 'If you don't agree with abortion then don't have one', 'The last time we mixed religion and government people were burned at the stake' 'Feminism: the radical notion that women are people'.

I bet you never got stuck with jury duty

3 times, PPB. I never made it past the initial selection process, however.

'The last time we mixed religion and government people were burned at the stake'

I like that a lot expat - lol !

Expat, could you actually see out of the back window, with all those stickers?

Hahahaha haven't had time to read the whole thread in detail, but when I saw a pile of self-indulgent, awfully written drivel disgracing the Guardian's family section yet again I knew I could find some sense on MN. But... can we do something? Alert the editor of family to this thread? As I've said before, there are so many interesting issues I would love to read about in Family and it's great that a supplement like that exists - then they go an fill it with stuff like this, all the time. What are they on? There could be so much really funny, wise and useful stuff in there but it so rarely is - it's basically poncey navel-gazing and emotional wank. Makes me so annoyed. I might write to them today if I get a minute.

As for Will A - I think that sounded like a blatant bid for a quick extra-marital shag, which Kirsty was too up herself to notice. Really liked the line "you've got shoes on" - what a charmer.

Oh and btw on the FRONT PAGE of the main news bit of the same issue of the Guardian, did you see them trumpeting the world-shattering discovery that teenagers do stuff behind their parents' backs?

Free Tibet with every Myanmar

Its because they asked you the sticker question isn't it?

They were all on my boot and back bumper, Caligula .

I figured, since the car was a banger, I may as well tart it up some.

I did love that car, however, which I called Raven.

We parted on good terms, my best pal still has it!

Prof Kirsty Gunn can teach YOU how to write

Good grief

OMG - CREATIVE writing ? Is that what they call this tosh ?

Blimey!

yellowrose, that's a brilliant idea and one I'll use when DS1 is a teenager - a kind of teenaged safe-den, thank you.

As for the rest of the thread, I go away for a weekend and come back to find the same old same old. xenia, please learn to read. Nobody mops the floor all day. Do you stalk staff in nursing homes spouting about how dull it must be to wipe bottoms all day? We can't all have fascinating jobs, no matter how hard some might try - bully for you for having one, but luck plays as much a part as hard work and you ought to try a bit more gratitude and a lot less hubris.

should we all cut out the article, correct it in red ink and sent it in to the Guardian?

She could call it stand up comedy if she didn't take herself so seriously.

I have written to them compaining about the article and their general tendency to print this kind of guff, and linking to this thread.

Shall report back!