Live webchat with Fiona Millar, Tuesday 3rd March, 1-2pm

[RachelMumsnet]

Fiona Millar will be visiting us at Mumsnet Towers for a live webchat on Tuesday 3rd March between 1 and 2pm. Her book The Secret World of the Working Mother: Juggling Work, Kids and Sanity will be out on Thursday 5th March. Fiona is a well-known journalist, educational campaigner and mother of three. If you can't join us on Tuesday, post your questions in advance on this thread.

DaftPrick - god forbid women worked for their own living eh, or to provide for their own kids? Cherie Blair also got strung up for having the audacity to write a book about what it was like to be married to an extraordinary man, whilst also being an extraordinary woman herself. What a liberty. Women should not be allowed to learn to write, if this is how they are going to abuse the privledge. Get the all to a nunnery - one in Afganistan preferably!

I do agree with moondog to some degree.

I really don't see how we need yet another book on how to "juggle", especially when written by somebody this privileged in their circumstances. And I don't really think MN should give free promotion like this.

I would have had more respect for FM and more interest in a webchat with her if she had come on her before wanting to flog a book.

I don't really have a problem with people writing books (obviously!) such as Cherie Blair's or any other book reporting a life story. Indeed some (such as A Real Boy by Christopher and Nicola Stevens or Charlotte Moore's George and Sam have been interesting, useful and relevant to my life). I do question whether someone with a life so very different from my own (see previous post) can really tell me much about juggling though.

Had the book been about working for the Blairs or being married to AC I would have been more interested.

Did the Tanya Baron (sp) livechat get all this hassle? Genuinely asking because I didn't look at her chat thread.

She was a prime case of asleb figure appointed to head up an avowedly rigorous investigation -- into children and interactive media. And although I'm sure she has qualifications of some sort, she essentially got the job because she'd been on a reality TV show.

The whole question of 'should we be listening seriously to people other than academics' seems like a bit of a red herring on this thread. I mean, I'm confused. Is she disliked because the 'juggling' subject-matter of her book is a bit of a cliche, or because she is well-off and well connected, or because she speaks on educational matters whilst not an academic?

If it is really the latter I'm amazed. Where on earth have we got to this idea from? Is it just on the basis of Boffinmum's idea that academics aren't sufficiently listened to? There are just so many things wrong with it that it is hard to know where to start. Just one of the many things wrong with it might be the following, which could serve as a livechat question for Millar:

The trend over the last couple of decades has been for politicians to erode the independence of teachers by prescribing targets and methods. There is a fashionable obsession with precise measures, standardised assessments. Has this obsession generated a new funding stream for relevant academics under huge pressure to attract reseach money in a climate where university departments are treated almost as small businesses. Do we have a a university industry of number-crunching and jargonising in pursuit of a standardised national curriculumm and standardised methods?

Academics don't stand above the fray as an intellectual elite. They are down in the gutter with the rest of us.

I don't mean that academic research isn't very valuable. I mean that it is shaped by political trends and not a wholly detatched enterprise. It's financial dependence means it is shaped by where the money comes from. And a large part of its significance is to supply evidence to determine where govt money goes.

I worked very closely recently on a book which was a state-of-the-art survey of current academic work on child development and interactive media. It struck me very forcibly that the ideas established by the research weren't in themselves earth-shattering and that the (genuinely valuable) function of the resarch was to document, to supply precise details confirming or rejecting fairly unexceptionable insights available very widely. Such documentation has to be the prelude to the allocation of educational funding. That's what I meant earlier by saying that academic work is the consolidation of insights widely available -- in opposition to Boffinmum's apparent idea that academics somehow have an exclusive licence to preach.

No, she was lauded and rightly so. She's not just a pretty face that fronted a tv show. She's well-reknowned and respected in her field of expertise. She's stepped back from tv work so she can concentrate on that more, I believe.

I don't understand why you would object to it on the basis of it being irrelevant to your life MrsT. I wouldn't object to a webchat with someone writing a book about their experience of having an autistic child although it has no direct relevance to my own.

And as for the free publicity thing - why not? It's all over the shop. Andrew Lansley came on to promote and publicise a specific Conservative party report just last week.

Promoting the ideals of a political party for which one has been democratically elected is very different to promoting a book the sole purpose of which is to further line one's pockets. (These already being amply lined as a direct result of the inability of ones 'partner' to keep his trap shut about the goings on of a political party).

Or perhaps I am wrong.It may well be that FM will donate all proceeds to boosting standards and stamping out knife crime in ailing inner city schools.

Right.

I think that is a relevent issue MrsT. Money, seems to have a lot to do with how easy it is to "juggle" so I have many moments of WTF! when women with, certainly enough money to do it, write books to make more money for women with no money to do it on to write and read.

I guess no publisher is interested enough in 'our' stories to ask us to write it.

It is a fucking cunt though. However much I like FM, how is this part of the solutuon an not mearly part of the problem for women strugging for a work life balence and strugglng to pay the rent/morgage - gas/electric - childcare/uni fee's - skincare/shampoo/toothpaste? Is work/life balance a middle class/utopian delusion? If not, when the fuck do us equal consciousnesses (sic) get a part of the action? ...It's a tough world.

I suppose that's my question.

Ah well. You care. I don't. I'll miss it of course, because I'll be at work. In a comprehensive school. Note to MNHQ - we don't all get lunchbreaks in which to MN, which means we miss these things. Anyway.

I find them mildly diverting, and no more offensive than someone appearing on a chat show for the same purpose. If I don't want to watch - I don't.

My advice would therefore have to be hide the thread.

Actually, I'm being something of a hypocrite because I bitched madly about LisaB's book

(Do I mean her? Yummy mummy whose pearls of wisdom included the recommendation of getting one's own gym installed to make those workouts easier).

If she were having a live chat I would be hiding the thread for sure.

Anyway, FM has to be more interesting than her, right?

Oh Moondog, just how disengenous can you get? Why do you work if it is not to "line you pockets"? Fuck off with the hypocrasy please (not that hypocrisy is a bad thing sometimes, but this time - f' off!).

It's the malignant, unquestioning cynicism that turns it all into a septic fart, and blows it further into the miasma - like it needed it.

We are all capable of farting in peoples faces. Whether it is polite to do so or not, seems to be the primary questrion of this thread. I would unsubscribe to MN if I didn't have so much rubbish backed up here. This totalitarian, PC, egotistic dictatorship has really turned MN into the opposite of what I joined.

Your posts are dull Eve.
You have nothing interesting to say.

Just noticed typo - "...write books to make more money from women with no money to do it on to write and read.

Oh Mooney, you are turning me on now. Sock it to me.

and still waiting for betadad's response.

Big Boobies - I *like^ hypoctites actually. I am a massive one if you stufy my posts over the last 5 years. I have totally changed my opin ion in line with the stuff I have learned. If that's being a tue hyoctite, I embrace it. It's always better to be able to admit you were wrong, when you've leart something. That is the basis of the scientic method, isn;t it...Mooney? Of course, I'm not a politician, with the world and it's rabid hounds on my arse.

Who is to say any of us - published or unpublished - on MN are more interesting than FM? I can see why people would be pissed of with Sherb Goldsmith, or whatever her name was, but Fiona Miller? We are not talking about an heiress here. She is not a chattle; daughter, wife or the rest. She is a self made woman. Her book on 'juggling' might be a pseudo argument, but there still might be nuggets of human interest in it. I wish to fuck I could just go to uni and pay to keep the roof over my sons head - somehtings got to give - but I don't then blame people who've navigated this successfuly before me. Oh, fuck it. I just talked myself out of it! We are in a recession and I am personally are having to forsake life/academic/work plans and future children; literally children. I cannto be arse to read a book by someone who has mopre than one and also a chosen career, moan abotu how hard it is. You don;t know how fucking lucky you are.

Lets here about that work life fucking balance. I give up with the paradox of it all and trying not to be cynical.

I have to stop coming in here.

Tanya Byron is a clinical psychologist. Clinical Psychology requires a doctorate degree.

The FallenMadonna- I have no objection to her writing a book. If it was about living with AC I might read it. I am asking whether there is any point in me reading a book about 'juggling' from someone who given my life would probably fall flat. How pray do you 'juggle' when you have a severely autistic learning disabled child and are living in a city with no available out of school childcare. [And there's none coming either- not even with he new rules- because no-one will fund after care clubs at special schools (it's not inclusive- FM might have a comment about that - inclusion policies exclude children like my son more than anything else- give us specialist schemes and specialist schools please).]

My question is genuine. Is there any point in me reading this book- given that the options described are not going to be available to me (or others in my position)? Or would I be better off spending money on a nice bottle of wine and enjoying a relaxing evening?

I have no particular objection to her promoting a book btw. Although I think it is reasonable to ask whether it is relevant to our lives.

Just want to make clear. I am quite happy to read about other people's lives. I am questioning whether I can possibly be given any useful advice on 'juggling' when there's nothing to juggle with.

It is just bizarre to claim that writing books is basically a greedy and immoral way to earn a living and that anyone who publishes their experience with recent political history should 'keep their traps shut'.

I've got shelves of political autobiographies and biographies. If everyone who published their diaries or wrote biographies "kept their traps shut" it would render politicians unaccountable to the public, to history or to anyone who has a passing interest in these things.

mrsturnip: I would guess probably not. If the subject matter doesn't interest you and you don't think it would be helpful then why would you buy it? Or if you aren't sure, then you can get it out of a library for free.

Tanya Byron has a phd in drug addiction, so she is obviously naturally placed to be an expert in children and the internet.

To call yourself a clinical psychologist requires a certain amount of training in child pyschology. If your child is being assessed for say autism then chances are you will see a clinical psychologist at some stage as part of that process. I didn't ask ours whether her doctoral project was on something child related or drug addiction. It could have been either (or something else entirely).

Message withdrawn

I really don't mind anybody writing a book. I've read Jane Fonda's book FFS! It's the 'Juggling' in FM book that's getting up my nose.
MiTochondrialEve Sweetheart, I got bored after your first line of your post, it was too mixed up......... I re-read some and you've now gone around in circles.
We both need to go off now and do some thing more useful even if it's painting our nails.
It's a lovely day I'm going to switch this off and do gardening with DS & get ready for work tomorrow. I really don't juggle as I've got my lovely Mum to help me.