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...

Just generally some comments get beyond comment to potential libellousness. People just be careful...
"The woman is a charlatan"

On wriring of which I sometimes do a bit but very dull things and only if paid - the more prestigious the less likely there's much pay, I once saw a list of authors' earnings, really quite famous people and it was shockingly low, much lower than you'd expect for people with this supposed "fame".

I didn't think it was easy to get that kind of info, Xenia. Publishers keep it close to their chests and it's often puffed-up for publicity purposes. e.g. a "Six-figure advance" might be six figures for three novels over several years and before tax and agent's fee. (Most writers get nothing like six figures, and academic publishing is stingier still.)

Thanks xenia and you are right I should be more careful.

For any prowling lawyers here - charlatan means one who makes false claims and that is all I meant - she's claiming to be a full-time SAHM and that she isn't working at all, when she is, in several different capacities, doing paid work.

Oh yes that info definitely has been collected - I think the NUJ or society of authors did a survey of authors asking their yearly taxable income (which most authors can state precisely as they have to do their own tax or have an accountant do it). It was shocking - most were well under 20K including many very famous names; a good few were under 5K. I'm a non-famous, jobbing writer and my income turned out to be above average. I think literary novelists had the worst pay - unless they had had a big hit.

sl, you're right on reflection. You could probably justify it I think in the light of what was written.

snow - libel, can NOT be brought posthumously, so if in doubt, wait until they die, then call them whatever you like

There is a defence of "fair comment" in the UK. It is a bit vague, but you could say "I think so and and so is an ugly stupid cow, I can't stand her" and that would be fine ! it's a fair comment/opinion !

But "charlatan" may damage their reputation, so be careful when and how you use it.

by the way I am not a prowling lawyer, just an extinct one and libel isn't my specialist area any way !

Ta Yellowrose. I'm sure any prowling lawyers employed by the Guardian to seek out libel against the illustrious Ms Gunn would not be stopping for a chat!

snow - lol - Guardian lawyers indeed - I hope they have better things to do than lurk on MN !

Well some people's don't!

Whoever thought that triteness could be so gobsmackingly overpoweringly awful?

How DARE she drag the London Review of Books into this Prose Poem horror? I actually went & searched the LRB site just in case they might have had a collective violent fugue event and actually printed anything of hers. Luckily the site seems to be innocent. And LRB doesn't have anything of the nature of a "lead columnist" either, so get it right at least, madam.

A propos, I've got another free year's LRB subscription to give away. I am not going to offer it to KG, so anyone else? No strings. Only requirement is that you haven't subscribed before.

ANyone Parped her yet??? OOOhhh! am i the first!?

PARP!

morningpaper, it I only had two hours 'quality time' with my children on a saturday and a sunday, I could hardly take them out anywhere. I would really miss that and I think they would, too. I love taking them out on trips, often on a one to one basis. They seem to like choosing places to go with me as well. I certainly don't hover over my children all weekend, but I do sincerely enjoy their undiluted company for longer stretches of time than 2 hours. I know that if there are lots of other friends around, inevitably I will be spending less time concentrating on my sons. Sometimes this is a very good thing, but too much of it would drive me as mad as standing in the drizzle throwing a ball would drive you mad.

My sons and dh are my absolute, total favourite people in the world. So for that reason, I would hate to go to work on Monday, realising I had hardly seen them alone all weekend. My oldest son seems to like family time at home, too. Although he goes to lots of activites and has friends, he isn't mega keen on having groups of them round here or hanging around with them outside. But things may change of course.

I can see the attraction of an open house policy for teenagers, and am happy to have this within limits. I will definitely set boundaries, though - some days will be strictly 'no friends' days to give us all some space. Anyway I am boring myself now, and I'm sure everyone else, so will stop.

Xenia, btw, I think you are very right to sound a warning bell about what's said on this thread about the author - even though its a fab read.

"I never thought I wanted it, this consummate need of children that devours me, sends me rigid with boredom and rage, sometimes, flattening me with a sense of failure and despair like no other, and also lifts me up like on wings with the euphoria of soaring, wondering happiness and love."

Yup, she definitely teaches them how not to write. "lifts me up like on wings" Wow.

It doesn't devour me. After a couple of hours I find I need a break, even on holidays with them.

On open house depends on your family and set up. Me plus 5 children and really it's almost like their house. If it were me and a husband and one child very different balance of power even by numbers of people - adults out number children.

cool stuff I did as a SAHM today - went for a walk in the park and climbed the space rocket tree with DS. Took DS to football and chatted to the other mums inbetween trying to show DS how to play football (as if I know). Watched DD learn to roll over for the first time.

To be fair, over our life times, given that Xenia has had 5 children over quite a long period of time, and that I think that I will stick at 2 with a 3 year age gap, it is possible that Xenia will actually manage to spend more time jumping puddles with toddlers than I will. However, Xenia, I don't think its too difficult to understand why I am making the most of it while I have the chance.

Tigermoth, I really think you'll be onto a loser with 'no friends days' when you have teenagers! Teenagers live for their friends!

Yes, don't expect teenagers to understand reason, I know I didn't !

I read that article while surrounded by Larpers and a few Mops and nearly puking with shocking hangover - and wanted to grab the nearest rubber weapon and have at the smug silly cow. I have encountered a lot of "media people" over the years who really do not think of anyone outside their "same schools, same universities, same trust fund, same post-code" bracket is actually human. Very few households can manage on a single income, because most incomes aren't that high - and whenever anyone starts poncing on about how you can live 'economically' by cutting down to one holiday a year and shopping in Sainsburys instead of Marks & Sparks I feel like sentencing them to six months life on the minimum wage.
As for SAHPs who are at home because they can't get a job that pays more than benefit or can't get one that fits around their children's needs, they are likely to be far too busy worrying about the next gas bill than sticking their heads up their bums and analysing their poetic impulses.

Oh, and as for this 'creative writing' crap, one of the reasons publishing is in such disarray is they keep putting out all these godawful join-the-dots books by utter gumbies who've been on some such course, because the courses generally encourage the gumbies to writ very genre books, which publishers think are easy to sell. FWIW a writing course, of any kind, can make a slightly better writer out of a mediocre one but won't be any use to a completely rubbish one and might actually damage the talent of a good one by flattening his/her individual style to a sort of microwaved Lit Lite.

MP, yes that's a very interesting issue - I spread 5 children over so far 22 years and the twins are still only 8. So the children fit into the rest of a normal long adult life. Other parents wait like my brother and his wife until they are almost 40, had nearly 20 "free" years and then move to "parent" stage and make that their be all and end all for a short burst of period and probably see it as more of an enterprise, a thing, a plan, something you try to do really well etc; where as my children fitted in over the whole of my adult life really.

I noticed this when I read Valerie Grove's book years ago when she interviewed working women with long marriages and 4+ children, the Longfords, and lots of others. The big family fitted in and the children weren't central in a sense, although of course they were a huge part of that life. My last 22 years had I chosen not to have children would have been so different. I had dinner with some old friends a few weeks ago and not a single person, all about my age, had children yet. Their last 22 years was almost a completely different planet.

Fab post madamez.

well your mates better get a bloomin move on then xenia..... not many people START families when they're in mid forties do they?

Aloha and yellowrose, we shall see, I guess I don't pretend to know exactly what the next few years will hold, as ds1 is only teetering on the edge of teenagerhood at the moment. Of course, not having friends round for a day does not mean ds can't see his friends elsewhere, it just means our house is temporarily off radar. I would simply not want our house to get the reputation as the place everyone can hang out in 24/7 - while other parents enjoy the peace and quiet of their teenagerless home. Anyway, this is all so theoretical as ds won't invite his friends back at all.

He already sees a lot of teenage friends and acquaintances at weekends through drama group and cricket (mainly aged 12 - 17). Through these activities he gets invited to the odd teenage party (usually not held at someone's home) or group trip to the cimena etc. There seems to be no huge desire amongst these groups of teenages to camp out in each other's houses all the time, or if there is, ds1 is not aware of it. Since ds started secondary school 5 terms ago, he hasn't wanted to bring one schoolfriend home, or has AFAIK been invited to any of their homes. I still haven't met one parent from ds's secondary school. We don't live a huge distance away from the school, either, so I don't think that's the issue.

I have asked him plenty of times if he wants to invite any of his friends back or if there is a problem. If I dwell on it too much I start getting paranoid that there is something horribly embarassing about our house and ds is too ashamed to bring people back. But really I have been in enough houses round here to know there is nothing exceptional about ours. I know ds is sociable and has friends at school. I am really curious as to what they are like - and their parents. But ds resolutely refuses have any friend (apart from his old, primary school friends) enter our home.

sdd wants to live at her friends houses, that or the Kings Road

well, this may be what ds1 will be like in a few years time. He is still only 12. I feel his childhood ebbing away and want to make the most of the mummy years before they are gone, breathing in the smell of his soft, childish hair as we sit gazing into the dying fire, at that moment when winter afternoon meets winter dusk and the world is all ours.... yikes I am sounding like the reason this thread was started in the first place!