The dummy mummy decade Boring, selfish, smug: How a generation of women became obsessed with motherhood

[beanieb]

Anyone else read this article in Observer woman?

"Let me give you an example. The other morning, while I was thinking about writing this piece, I logged on to one of the dozens of websites now devoted to all things baby-related. The discussion subject of the day - email us! - was the funny ways kids mispronounce words. Really."

does she mean here?

also this companion article why I don't want children

"I really don't like what parenthood does to grown-ups...Spare me. Spare me the one-track conversations. Spare me the self-righteousness, the sense of entitlement (you, with the toddler-on-wheels: astonishing news just in! You don't have pavement priority over the rest of the world!). Spare me the pretensions of martyrdom and selflessness."

made me feel a bit MEH, as someone who has been trying for a baby for several months.

beanieb don't let it get you down at all. I don't think for a second that this site is only about things baby-related

I find it a place of interest full of interesting, intelligent and funny people who have an answer for everything

and as a mother of 3 kids, I don't feel the need to be self-righteous, I CAN talk about things other than my kids but sorry I fecking well DO have pavement priority over the rest of the world

At least us one-tracked mothers don't inflict our boring conversations on the entire newspaper-reading population. Unlike some.

There's already a discussion going about this article, might be better if you merge the two somehow.

This thread has a more informative title, but this one has been going on longer

OOh am v glad I don't read the Observer. I hope all her friends with children read the article and decide never to talk to her again. Smug self righteous cow.

I do read the Observer but I never read Polly Vernon - she writes really badly and she is a "Polly Filler" in the true Private Eye meaning. I think the original "Polly" of Private Eye was Toynbee, but in this case, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, hmm, what could it be.
She also writes an awful "Cocktail Girl" column about being seen in trendy bars. Must take a load of brains for that.
A couple of years ago, PV wrote about how ill she had been, and how she dropped to about 8 stone in weight. She recognised how unhealthy this was, but she liked it so she wanted to stay at that weight.
Not one of my personal role models, and as far as I am concerned, her opinion sucks.
Good luck with the baby-trying. It is so worth it, whatever that overpaid hack says.

yes, we never had motherhood before, did we? And no-one ever enjoyed their children.

Perhaps the author has just bumped into that time of life when everyone she knows seems to be getting married/having babies/not finding her fascinating.

Perhaps the article should have been retitled 'Are you a woman? Here's another foot kicking you down and making you feel like shit. But we can get away with it because a woman wrote it. Ha ha on you, thicky women.'

Ooh - sorry about the "baby-trying" bit. That was wrongly pasted from another thread, also about PV. This dreadful, untalented hack has got me going, amongst others.

Great post, Kayharker, esp the last bit.

I didn't find her patronising or self righteous. I agree with her. I have four children and I find a lot of parents self- absorbed and introspective - not just women but men too.

Let me be frank, weaning is only interesting if you are at that stage yourself, ditto tantrums, potty training etc etc. And it stretches out way beyond toddlerhood, people are not interested in how many GCSEs your child got unless they also have a child of that age with whom to compare.

And I certainly identify with the not being able to read as much as I'd like.

Face it. We are boring fuckers. [GRIN]

Who is Rachel Cooke anyway? I've never heard of her!

Do you think she hates her own mother too, or just us?

she's a bundle of bile who hates most people other than herself.

Though I take your point Swedes, I regularly bore myself

Am I being thick because I happen to be a Mummy or did I just miss something vital? if she doesn't like children, doesn't want to have them and doesn't like parents (all of which are perfectly valid positions), why does she spend her time writing about all those things? It seems utterly bizarre. I didn't think I wanted to get married or have children until a certain point in my life but I didn't write articles and get so het up about it because, why would I? I was doing stuff I wanted to do. I imagine that the answer is because she has been told to do so for money - which is fair enough. I wonder whether she has any real friends given her strange lack of 'live and let live' - that bit about how she tests her female companions out (are they listening properly?). No they're just trying to work out a way of silently killing you before you make more cash out of spiteful rubbish; the being a dummymummy bit is just trying to lull you into a false sense of security then..wallop

She is jealous

Why else would she go to all the trouble of writing an irksomely long article about it? It went on paragraph after paragraph, I just couldn't be bothered to read it all the way through.

For someone who is so bored by us, she has an awful lot to say about us.

I've commented on another thread about this. I thought i was a horrid, mean-spirited article that amounted to nothing more than a ranty diatribe against mothers) ie,. the vast majority of women).

I find that Polly woman fucking unbearable annoying, too.

...or to put it more eloquently (!):

I've commented on another thread about this. I thought it was a horrid, mean-spirited article that amounted to nothing more than a ranty diatribe against mothers (ie. the vast majority of women).

I find that Polly woman fucking unbearable annoying, too.

Oh they are both just boring, unimaginative hacks churning out crap that some commissioning editor thought might be controversial. Honestly. Of course some people bang on about their children. Others are very boring about their holidays or their jobs. I found it f**ing irritating though.

I just found a picture of Rachel Cooke in the Observer Food Monthly. It shows her brandishing a shotgun and smirking like a smug imbecile whilst standing over a slain stag, against a backdrop of mountains and glens. Utterly ghastly I suddenly lapsed into a fantasy of showing her what a healthy size 12 novel-reading mum from the Central Belt can do, i.e. kicking her horrid skinny arse right into a peat bog. Took me right back to my roots - like something out of "Trainspotting", it was