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...

This is SO funny!
I haven't read the article but you British (stylee) women are hilarous, I love and miss your banter in my daily life - lots of poker faces and insipidness in my neck of the woods.

what do you mean by that remark?

I know it's all been said already and I've enjoyed the response to this twaddle immensely but FFS:

"It's in the midst of this that I write now. Short stories, sometimes, little pieces, essays, amazed actually that I get anything finished at all"

I swear to god if all I had to worry about was pooing out drivel of this calibre at £15.99 a pop amid grabbing a few twigs from the garden and shoving them into a schoolbag I would be laughing all the way to the bank.

Are you lonely? Couldn't give a f*ck, mate.

For those of you lovely SAHM ladies wondering about lobotomies, can I draw your attention to the advertiser links at the bottom of the the guardain article webpage? 'Quality UK hypnosis CDs for your health'

Why does any SAH parent find it intellectual satisfying to sopend the majority of the day repeating dull tasks (assuming most people don't have cleaners and nannies). I can see how it's fun to interact with a child and I loved my babies and really enjoyed seeing them grow, develop but not for more than an hour or two a day. So you wash a floor. Someone messes it up. You wash it again. Why is that not boring? I suppose you can develop techniques for doing it well or like nuns for sometimes clean for religious or contemplative reasons you might like it from that point of view and that is in part a bit of what I think she is getting at in this article - that she finds it boring (who doesn't) but she can live with that and has got herself to like that rather limited domestic sphere.

By the way tehre is a huge lot more criticism of mothers who work, people saying you are damaging teh child's psyche etc and we just put up with it but sAHM don#t seem to have the same robustness.Can';t you laugh and she she's wrong, it's really interesting and I love it so what if she and some others have that view because most press articles like indeed this one are very pro SAHMs. Let it be water off a duck's back.

Xenia any job has dull repeditive moments, 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...

Xenia - I usually ignore your SAHM posts because I can't be arsed to answer, however, I don't think that any of us have said that we find cleaning floors 'intellectual stimulation' (unless we're writing prose on the floor and deleting as appropriate!) I suspect that several of us DO find teaching, interacting and generally being with and observing our children as they grow up very stimulating however. I do get extremely bored from time to time (as I did when in paid employment) and have every intention of returning to work when my no3 child goes to school - until that time however I shall use my slightly dusty brain to my children's advantage, avoid the need for childminders, and enjoy my less intellectual life with gusto.

That's fine. I don't know why people get bothered about my saying I can't understand why people don't find being a house wife/husband boring. I can live with people saying I have emotinoally damaged my children by returning to work full time when they were 2 weeks old. We can live and let live and be glad we live in a country where we have freedom of speech and think wow aren't we lucky we can sit here debating things. It's not something most people have around the world.

What we don't want is an England where things become so PC or we worry so much about hurting the feelings of the working or stay at home parents, the blacks, white, Muslims, or the gays or whatever that we don't debate it because it's a topic we are not allowed to talk about for fear of "hurting feelings".

"People get bothered" Xenia because you say it ad nauseam.

Hilarious thread. Especially marthamoo's spoof - "I am sacrifice" and Tinker's comment - 'It was relief'.

I love the way that MNers seem to knock many professional writers into a cocked hat.

There is no doubt something profound about being a mother, but Kirsty Gunn has completely failed to capture it. Really embarrassing. I would be dying inside if I had written something like that.

Oh, Xenia, if only you were 'debating a topic' instead of churning out all the same old tedious drivel on every thread. Your posts about SAHMs being as dull as ditchwater are beginning to sound rather ironic.

Another facile attempt at intellectualisation re. SAHM: "I am sure stay at home mothers secure in their choices find it's water off a duck's back surely"

Yes, it IS just as you say which is why SAHM's on this website and elsewhere find it so easy to deal with their responsibilities as mothers AND have a bloody good sense of humour at the same time

I meet lots of incredibly insecure people, none are SAHM's.

Message withdrawn

Message withdrawn

xenia, I know you've said many times how boring and unfulfilling you'd find it to care for your children and your home day in day out.

Why then don't you find it boring repeating this point such a lot on countless threads? I'm sure your life is a busy and interesting one - must be with all your children and your work. So what's the attraction for you of having the same old argument on mumsnet? You must have so many other nice things to do of a weekend.

I mean, lots of people here have strong views on things - vaccinations is one that springs to mind - but having discussed them at length for a while, seem to move on.

Message withdrawn

controlfreaky

Having freedom of speech and actually having something worthwile to say are very different things though.

I totally switch off when someone sounds ignorant and prejudiced (i.e lack of proper knowledge & understanding of complex issues) - not because I wish to subvert freedom of speech.

Mad ranting religious bigots FOR EXAMPLE, can rant until they fall off their podium, but I will probably leave the room very quickly before I fall off my chair with boredom

Prejudice really is incredibly dull.

The last thing web sites want is boring posts because people stop reading but we have a freedom to be boring or say silly things like the world is 6000 years old or those not born again rot in hell or women's place is in the home.

My weekend? I'm trying to work here, but I keep getting interrupted by children, big adult children actually not the youngest ones who are happily with their nanny.

One doesn't have to talk prejudiced crap about SAHM's, Latino's or Arabs or Africans with goats to be interesting though, does one ? Not even the Torygraph is THAT prejudiced or boring

The newspapers are full of prejudiced rubbish interpreting studies about damage done to children if women, never men, work on a daily basis and working mothers have to take it all, day after day after day as it there's a media plan to get women back into the home.

Anyway this woman is working and has school aged children so she's not exactly a full time housewife.

for the record, Xenia, i think that before you appeared the writer of the article was taking a pasting more because of her cringeworthy prose style than any point she was making. (in fact, her densely descriptive style of writing made it impossible for me to locate her point, so i have no idea if what you are saying about her feelings about being a SAHM are true.)

more importantly now... Spannapiana, do you care to explain your really, really, really weird Chinese takeaway line to Suzywong? i think she was looking for further clarification, and tbh so am i as i find it hard to believe someone would be so crass.