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 am sure stay at home mothers secure in their choices find it's water off a duck's back surely. Working mopthers put up with 1000 times the anti working women propaganda spewed at us all the time, even this article here and we manage to cope.

The other Guardian one is more acceptable as it shows a couple fairly and in my view much more normally, dealing with childcare.

It's still a choice though - most people do choose to work longer hours in the UK than elsewhere. We've never been a nation that much liked children and lots of people choose to work longer hours to avoid the bed time hassle etc. it's by no means the case that everyone is fighting with their husbands and wives to spend more time at home with babies.

"Working mopthers put up with 1000 times the anti working women propaganda spewed at us all the time"
oh what bollocks Xenia, really. I would say (having been in both positions myself) the shit gets spread around fairly equally.

"that dumbing down to mother of children level, where the brain apparently doesn't work and your interests are as dull as ditchwater"

oh great stuff Xenia you are on a roll surely the cover of next week's Guardian supplement needs to be reserved for you without delay

oh xenia, you are indeed as reliable as the trains in italy c 1943..... and never knowingly undersold. lol at guardian critique.
as for ms gunn. words almost fail me (and that dont happen often!) that article is as crappy as a v crappy thing. respect to her for getting PAID, presumably in real money to write this utter tosh.

that is such a fantastic article, if only for the fact that it has inspired such a fabulous thread with all my favourite ladies on tiptop form.
thanks ladies

I agree.I think it's a;; spread evenly...no matter what ya do..sah,m, working out of the home one...breastfeeding Formula feeding, ...and the list is endless...basically we must accept that we can't do it right

I can live with that very easily!

teenagers here bandstand (unacceptable to doting mama of use of the word cunt today)

3andnomore, I don't understand what you mean?

oh please dont prod xenia into heaving herself aboard that knackered old hobby horse of hers.... i dont think i can face the 55th rehash of those views..... mercy.

The SAHMs only think it's denigration because they feel so inadequate. My references here were to what she said in the article - about how she liked that level of things, the dealing day to day with the mundane etc. Fine, she likes it. How anyone with a brain can like it I will never know but there we are. That doesn't mean I'm not wrong. I often am.

I must get to bed.
(Not really proper hearing problem, just presumably some sort of temporary deafness, means I can't hear children's shouting which may be a blessing. I should have been more sympathetic to the deaf man I had a date with last year. It was the not knowing before hand that was the problem, not that I'm prejudiced against the disabled. It slows up thought, I noticed it myself, today when you're having to look at faces to read words etc)

well, individual claims of time would mean I can choose what I want to do aswell as follow my rsponsibilitys and still have enough time...tbh...individual claim of time doesn even work with a sahp...if you think of it as free time...i.e time for yourself...lol

'Truly dreadful wirting' jimjams, you said it EXACTLY.

It is not writing, it is wirting. It is wirting me to read her article and my sides are wirting with laughter at this thread.

xenia. you are gobsmackingly rude.... i'm sure you think you are "forthright" but trust me.... you are rude.
i hope your hearing recovers.... but have you considered this may be psychosomatic.... you dont seem to want to "hear" anything that doesnt accord with your fixed world view??

My MIL once claimed to have seen a TV programme about people who had NO BRAIN.

They must have been SAHMs I spose.

oh yes jan, i found my life so much easier after the full lobotomy....

I do like this review of her latest book

was that stepford wifes, btw., Jan

we'll have to shout a bit louder, SHE CANT HEAR US!!!
i think your lob an offensive post and retire immediately to bed tactic is LOW

pssst Jan H, thanks

I agree, JJ. I mean, who let her out?

"The SAHMs only think it's denigration because they feel so inadequate".

Why would you say something like that Xenia? You can't possibly know for a fact, that every single SAHM on this board feels inadequate so you are obviously saying it purely and simply to insult them. Why? Do you really find it interesting to have every single thread you're ever on turn into yet another repetitive WOHM vs SAHM bunfight? (Or is it just the threads I happen to have met you on?)

I do hope you get bored with it soon, because it is really very tedious.

my confession is that I could not read past the first paragraph... my eyes started rolling back in my head and I lost the will to read on.