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...

Ah...THIS is what MN invented the rolling eye emoticon for! ....oooh, that feels better (says Aloha who looked in the mirror and did NOT see a world famous supermodel there, oddly enough)

And yes, WHY is her house a war zone? As for the pretentious wanker at the 'publishing dinner'....omg.

It is the most pretentious crap I have ever read. She just LOVES herself. Urk.

Oh, my fingers itch to slap her!

Its crapola of the worst kind

LOL I haven't dared to read the article yet but would just like to wonder if she was once a serious journalist like Kate Adie, being sent to war zone after war zone to report back from the front... er, probably not.

But I do hope Moo cuts and pastes her post and sends it in to the editor!

What's really objectionable is that someone who writes so badly should cite Rich, Mansfield and Woolf as inspiration.

I've just read it again and there's no way Will A could have made that comment, gently or otherwise, and not kept a straight face.

marthamoo needs her own column ,for sure !

my god, that has made my year..

my pelvic floor has finally given up the ghost as i am rolling round on the floor laughing at the specious, overblown, romanticised , incredulous twaddle that this woman has been paid to churn out. paid FGS !!!

sugar coated, twee and , just absolute bilge

but, i have not laughed like that since the caroline phillips thread ! thanks MP ! x

why is she being paid good money for this shite and I'm being paid £3 an hour as a childminder?

she must be killing herself laughing

Tena - of course it is good to capture the moments - I do it on my camcorder - but why write such self-congratulatory, world class crap about it in a national newspaper ?

War zone indeed, has she looked at images of Iraq recently ?

I've been back and read it. Oh goodness gracious. What a load of self-absorbed clueless bilge.

Confessions of a Full Time Mother Up Her Own Fanny

She describes accurately some aspects of stay at home motherhood. She appears to like elements of it I would detest and she appears to be satisfied, like a nun in a convent who has devoted her life to small sacrifices, the sweeping of a floor that doesn't need to be swept etc, with the minutiae of domestic life in a way many women do not.

I don't know waht her books says but it seems she is over 44 (I'm 45) and she waited until the children were at school to have the year off so it's hardly full time motherhood. It's taking the easy bit which is supposed to be some SAH parents' reward for the 5 years at home with under 5s. So she's cherry picking, taking the icing without the cake and making money from it.

But I'd never denigrate people who make money writing that that. Anyone on this thread who thinks it is so easy go and do it. Write a reposte for the Guardian. I'm sure they'd print it - her picture is the antithesis of what the Guardian usually represents.

It is easy, but I wouldn't do it because I would be sick on my keyboard.

I could do it if I had 30 hours a week to fanny about having delicious dinners with my sweet gay friends who think that having children is much the same as invading another country

How is the picture "the antithesis of what the Guardian usually represents", then?

"My husband weeps, quickly and quietly at the nursery school door when dropping off our youngest daughter. "

what an enormous wet

I'd be sending dh off for Prozac if he started doing things like that

XENIA > But I'd never denigrate people who make money writing that that.

"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."

REALLY? YOU CAN'T DENIGRATE HER WRITING THAT XENIA?

Well we may as well all put our pants on and go home then

Too right Enid

He sounds like the sort of man who would have trouble chewing his meat

lolol

Nothing wrong with men crying.

Why should I denigrate someone who successfully makes money writing? More than most people manage as they turn up day after day to earn the minimum wage.

And why did I say it wasn't typical of the Guardian? I thought the Guardian was pro not anti working mother. It's hardly a feminist piece. It's yet another bit of propaganda we see every day that a woman's place is in the home and that women find contentment in sweeping a floor or cleaning a loo, a kind of prayer contemplation excersie in simple things because they shouldn't worry their pretty little heads about things like chairing companies and running the cabinet, should they? When even the Guardian chooses to peddle that message I am packing my bag to Sweden.

Come on Xenia, you are not being serious !

YOU CAN denigrate any one writing tits, and the author of this article is not a good writer as most of us, incl. the journalists here seem to agree.

One doesn't have to be a BETTER writer to denigrate rubbish writing, that would be like saying you can't denigrate a terrorist unless you are a BETTER terrorist, right ?