Frank Furedi article on different child-rearing approaches

[Eliza2]

In today's Times Frank Furedi says that the hatred generated by the likes of CV is in part at least "inspired by the conviction that their style of parenting calls into question your status and identity as a responsible mother."

Here's the link (hope I've done it correctly)

women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article2615136.ece

this one
off to read it now

... I don't like Frank Furedi and I didn't think this article said anything at all.

Message withdrawn

Yet another self satisfied publicity seeking fuckwit person who's completely missed the point about CV

I do find it ironic that he makes his living writing about the obsession with 'parenting', yet the only reason there is a market for his writing is because of this obsession

What pisses me off is that people think that babies' developmental mental health is a trivial and unimportant matter.

I don't know where to START dialogue with people who think that way.

I think they are idiots.

what a load of b**ls. I wouldn't march on parliament to promote my lentil weaving child centred parenting approach but i would to stop children being ABUSED by not being fed and cuddled enough

"Sadly, hostile encounters over parenting techniques are not confined to a small circle of childrearing experts."

This seems to be saying: SADLY too many people care about babies and how they are nurtured.

And yet in 'Paranoid Parenting' he goes on about how the whole community used to be involved in child-rearing and how great that was

I hate this kind of stuck-up superiority because some people actually care about other people's children.

To be fair i think it unlikely that he has really read the blogs on the issue and is conflating our anger with CV with critisms of GF, the breast v bottle issue and the weaning debate. He wants to make a point that some of us take some issues to seriously. I think we probably do after all it is not the end of the world if babies are weaned at 17 weeks rather than 26. We take the issue of the truby king method very seriously because it is actually abusive. Moreover what can we hope to learn from "experiments" such as BUB?

I agree with him when he says "One important way in which the parenting industry has promoted its dogmas is to incite mothers to gain identity through their childrearing style... Parenting has turned into a lifestyle in which women ? and, increasingly, men ? make statements about themselves via the tactics and techniques they use to bring up their infants."

I think the 'self righteous mothers;' protest about CV is a bit much - last week I eavesdropped on some of my staff - 2 women 1 man, all childless - talking in horrified tones about the poor 'CV' babies, how inhuman, how potentially damaging, how Channel-4 exploitative it all was.

'professional mothers' (?!)
I had never heard of this person, is this another one trying self publicity by latching on to the controversy?

Blu I think your first point is valid and you can see this in opertation in mumsnet with people keen to place signfiers (absense of sausage rolls) so that we can place them in some kind of parenting style. It is the mums equivalent of writing "Meat is Murder" on your school bag.

The CV issue is nothing to do with this, however and it is lazy journalism to link it up. Lots of us have got het up because it is truly wrong to treat babies in this way

Witchandchips - yes - and FF has made a career for himself as 'expert' commentator.

my computer wont load the article so it must be rubbish

Blu's right. IMO (and I've come across him a few times) FF is a talking head who thinks he is an iconoclast. Always ready with a quote whether he knows anything about the issue or not. And always seeks to look hard by saying something he thinks will grab attention. 'Look at me, I'm saying the unsayable, ooh, how cool am I?'

He's all right, really, I just wish he'd ditch the adolescent posing.

FF is an old-school Marxist, now an academic!

Message withdrawn

Thumps head on desk...
Gosh, Thanks FF -- how enlightened I now feel to be told that the only reason CV offends me is because she threatens my "self-righteous parenting identity". And here I was thinking that the woman espoused ideas tantamount to child abuse... silly me to get so confused!!

FF is behind the Institute of Ideas. You may have heard its Director, Claire Fox, who is a panellist on Radio 4's 'The Moral Maze'. The IoI grew out of the magazine 'Living Marxism'. I don't remember which part of the far left LM emodies, but I think they may be Maoists. Fox is an aggressive loud-mouth who delights in bullying Moral Maze witnesses. Her general stance is kind of in-yer-face populist anti-Labourism.

Message withdrawn

Oh god, just read this and was so incandescent with rage that I came straight here to see if there was a thread on it. Haven't read anything yet but can I first say.... a pile of patronising, sexist, hypocritical, missing-the-point shite.

Oh good, I see I am not alone Is he really too dense to see that what upsets people is seeing babies being horribly neglected, or does he have the intelligence to see that but just wants to be "contraversial"? Either way

This article really really pissed me off too . They keep spouting on about parenting differences when in fact this has pretty much united all parents.

On the brighter side there is this one in the Independent which is really much better.