Why does the Times think it is ok to print this horrible article about "Breeders"

[MmeLindt]

Shudder

I absolutely hate the term "Breeders".

Why do childless people think that it is ok to use terms like this? I don't go around thinking that I am superiour to them because I pushed a baby out of my fanjo. I would never refer to a childless person in such a derogatory way.

The comments are just horribly smug.

Hannah Betts - doesn't she write about make-up for a living?

FFS.

I have kids and I still manage to talk about other things. In fact I have met people several times who have then been surprised to find I am a parent. School fees and house prices mean nowt to me

What nasty bitter people.

cornsilk isn't that Hannah Poole?

I think she sounds sad and lonely and most of all, empty and bitter. And not a little stupid.

I thought it was a good article, and will be using the hints to avoid my usual opener of 'So you're single then with no children, is that becuase you couldnt find anyone to shag or are you just antisocial?'

Honestly it was boring and tedious at best- sounded like a 20 second rant and no more

I don't kow i;ve ever started a convo with any of thsoe- usually far more interesting things to talk about on the miraculous event of a kid free night

WTF?

slow news week?

This piece of writing is horrible.
I can have nights out with my single childless friends and find plenty to talk about. I wouldn't dream about telling them about my potty training woes and toddler tantrums. Thats what MN is for.

One of the respondents to the article has written how when people have children they stop being your friends. Thats simply not true in my case.

More Us and Them journalism. If it isn't parents and the child-free, then it's men and women, or public schools vs private etc etc ad godawful boring infinitum.

Whatever happened to live and let live?

Bloody stupid, shallow, unintelligent article, reminds me why I don't bother to buy papers anymore but just get the headlines off the net.

yet again I have to ask myself why it is that journalists seem to hang out with people they don't like. Surely that's about as sad as it gets? find some friends. you know, people you like, people you have something in common with, people whose conversation you enjoy...

(but I forget, that would leave you with nothing to write about....you unimaginative eejit...)

I have plenty of childless friends, and we have lots to talk about.

I hate this kind of "journalism". To think that she got paid for that drivel. I think I am going to be a journalist in my next life.

Breeders and non-breeders???!!!! What a strange way to view people.

This type of writing has been appearing a lot in mainstream media in the last few years.

It it hideous and insulting and I cannot imagine what sort of woman thinks it is acceptable to use as a term for another woman who happens to be a mother.[note it is never in reference to a father]

Whilst being a mother is not for everyone, why would anyone name a parent a 'breeder'.

If parents are to be named so, then can non-parents be safely called non-breeders?

I am so cross, as for the first time today I read a new term for an adoptive parent. Some woman in The Times referring to an adoptive mother as a social mother. WTF? is that all about?. FGS a mother is a doing word, not just giving birth. How insulting to all those adoptive parents raising children.

She used to do 'Best Betts' didn't she?

God, isn't it dull?

Well she's not going to be on anyone's wedding list next year is she? Then again, she's always been a silly vain woman so plus ca change I suppose

What a vile depressing piece of writing. And those mean bitter, little people commenting underneath..!

There seem to be some very caustic, downright nasty women columists about. What with Liz Jones as well. It seems to be 'witty' and terribly sophisticated () to spit venom about mothers. Why I wonder?

i wonder what her colleagues caitlin moran, india knight jennifer Howze etc etc$made of it. hell of a way to make yourself popular at work!

Nasty term.

First came across it about twenty years ago when reading US radical gay fanzines. One of which was basically many pages devoted to advocating random violence against "breeders". Sigh.

So for me, it has "form".

Silly female person. What's worrying is how it taps into a zeitgeist of the breakdown of feminism, which maybe was always inevitable, with different groups of women pitted against each other. Esp. the working childless and the working be-childed. Which she doesn't touch on (thank goodness - how subtle she'd be. Not) But it's a little drop in a wider culture of horrible-ness.

What a twit.

Oh dear, she clearly has ishoos doesn't she? Reading into people's questions like that. I wonder what 'sparklingly witty' questions non-breeders ask her? I really must get some tips.

Are we really suppose to think that while we are getting on with our dull, narrow lives she is out there going to galleries, restaurants, museums, political rallies every night? Or is she just at home watching her sex and the city dvds trying to crib some ideas for her next article?

What is wrong with these childless female journalists?

If their lives are so brilliant, why do they spend so much time carping about other women's life choices?

And why do newspapers eagerly encourage them to humiliate themselves so completely? The thing is I will never be able to read anything else by that journalist again (if I remember her name) without thinking that she is that neurotic wierd bint who has a hang-up about not being a mother and has deep resentments about those women who are. Who the hell wants the world to think that about them?

Hmm, dunno. It's a fairly silly bit of Polly Filler, of course, but I have encountered a few breeders in my time. It's not that people who have children automatically become boring and self-obsessed, it's the ones who can't shut up about a) their own children and b) the presumed inadequacy and unhappiness of the childfree. Breeders are generally the people who, before they became breeders, were incredibly boring about their wonderful couplehood and how awful singlehood must be and, when they were single, were boring and monomaniacal about their search for a partner. Male breeders are the ones who can't stop implying that single women must be desperate, depressed, or in need of a lot of advice about How to Not Put Men Off (honestly darling, all that feminism stuff makes you sound like a man-hater, you know what you really need is a good shag and a bloke to look after you..., your biologial clock must be ticking like mad...)

Monomanical people will always drone on about whatever is obsessing them at the time, tis true.

(I'm not really following you around the boards SGB. Honest)

One of my colleagues is about to return on a 4 day week from maternity leave. Boss is stressing about whether or not colleague will cope on return to work. She seems to be forgetting that I came back to work when DS was 8 months old and I work full time. Why? Because I don't drone on and on and on.

i didnt push.i dont have a fanjo.

i dont actually care about vacuous terms like breeder/non breeder