Webchat with Daisy Goodwin, lunchtime, Tues 23 June

[GeraldineMumsnet]

As requested and promised, Daisy has accepted our invite and is coming on next Tuesday (exact time to be confirmed, but probably around 1pm). Get there early to bag your place.

[AitchTwoOh]

so when some spotty nobboid in a skinny tee and a long cardie said 'what about babies?' she should have said 'no, i'm a parent, that would just be wrong' and let some other company come up with it. that's what i mean. it was a moral and ethical decision that she took to use tiny babies as part of an experiment, not just a wee career mistake.

[foxytocin]

so lets see if I got this right. DG thinks it is a crime to put babies in pretend high heels but thinks it fine for CV to encourage parents to ignore their instincts and to force feed babies and / or make them wait to be fed?

[AitchTwoOh]

yes, that's true. loads of people pressing 'send' at the same time because they've spotted a rather glaring hole in an argument is not a hounding, it's a response made by a number of individuals in response to the same hole.

[hunkermunker]

This is from the Silver River website:

BRINGING UP BABY
4 x 60' for Channel 4

A strict regimen of four-hourly feeds or breast-feeding on demand? Constant physical contact between mother and child or leaving baby to sleep for eight hours a day in a pram in the garden? Controlled crying or responding to his every whim? For the past 100 years, new parents have been bombarded with volumes of highly specific - and contradictory - advice on how to care for their little bundles of joy.

Bringing Up Baby takes the guiding principles of three of the last century's most popular handbooks and observes six sets of parents as they put them to the test. The series follows each expectant mum through the final stages of her pregnancy, childbirth and the first three months of the infant's life. The families have all chosen the method they want to follow. We?ll be with them every step of the way as they explore the wealth of advice on antenatal care, feeding, establishing sleeping patterns, diet and staying sane.

Will the military routine of Dr Truby King's 1913 book Feeding and Care of Baby provide the structure and respite the exhausted new parents are looking for? Will Dr Benjamin Spock's famous piece of advice from 1946: "Trust yourself: you know more than you think you do" be reassuring - or panic-inducing? Will the 'in-arms' phase recommended by Jean Liedloff's 1975 Continuum Concept produce a blissed-out baby - or an addled mum?.

Bringing Up Baby combines living-history techniques with fascinating archive footage and the personal testimonies of both parents and professionals to chart the changing fashions and attitudes of the last century, while addressing some age-old questions about how to raise our children and whether, in the end, it's not the expert, but mother who really knows best.

Series Producer
Anna Davies

Executive Producer
Daisy Goodwin / Tanya Shaw

[AitchTwoOh]

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1190714/Why-women-horrible-other.html this is about MN's response to her bfing article, foxy.

[foxytocin]

now you forced me to read that aitch. can't say i like her writing style.

did i detect a tone of simpering victim there or is that just me being a viper from the nest.

[TheCrackFox]

I'd like to ask Daisy why she writes for such a crap paper?

[AitchTwoOh]

they're great payers, crackfox. best in the industry, pretty much.

[TheCrackFox]

Oh, didn't know that. Well, to be fair, there is no point in working for nothing.

[LupusinaLlamasuit]

So. She's still coming then?



No. Let's not confirm all her prejudices. Let's be nice. But searingly clever. It's the only way.

[Heathcliffscathy]

haha! why didn't you stickie this one then eh??

[Heathcliffscathy]

Daisy, the thing is that out there in the big wide world it's still all (follow on) formula ads and anti breastfeeding.

NO ONE slates anyone that can't breastfeed. but calling people that understand that cows milk is intended for cows and human milk for humans lactivists is inappropriate. to say the least.

[LupusinaLlamasuit]

ooh, they've stickied it!

[Rhubarb]

There's a fine line with most things concerned with parenting. You do get the odd fanatasist who insists that their way is right and everyone else is wrong, but most of us do tend to keep within that line.

Shame that Daisy only sees the fanatasists.

[FluffyBunnyGoneBad]

Haaaaa, does she have someone else reading the posts for her so they can censor them before she reads them?

[theyoungvisiter]

I think with all these webchats it would be good to have a "ten best questions" to kick off with, the ten questions that we really want answered (we could vote for them off the pre-discussion threads).

Then we could discuss the rest live, but too often the really interesting points get buried under a mountain of trivia, or the interviewee just chooses to ignore the trickier ones.

[foxytocin]

good point TYV.

regrets having to take dd1 to primary visit.

[Rhubarb]

Ok, why is it, that on a huge forum such as Mumsnet, where the vast majority of threads are supportive and community-spirited, do you insist on picking out the minority and leading others to believe that this is the norm?

I can think of so many threads were Mumsnetters have to come to each others aid. There have been huge supportive threads on breastfeeding; bereavement; miscarriage; ante and post-natal depression; mental health and so on. Secret Santa is organised every year to send unsuspecting Mumsnetters gifts. Friendships have been made. I have never known such a community to offer so much to its members. Mumsnet could benefit so many more mums. Yet you choose to portray it as this vipers nest full of bitches with a chip on their shoulder. That's a far cry from the real picture, as you well know. So I'd just like to ask - why?

[Swedes]

This is a q to everyone on this thread. Has anyone on Mumsnet ever made you cry? It's happened to me on a few occasions. In real life I'm a well balanced and intelligent person, not overly prone to tears. I now completely avoid the baby-feeding threads because the intolerance shown is truly shocking.

I'd like to pat Daisy Goodwin on the back for raising this revolting and unsisterly behaviour on Mumsnet.

[smellen]

Had to smile at being labelled a "fundamentalist"

Could it be our new slogan? "Mumsnet, putting the FUN back into fundamentalists..."

[Rhubarb]

I can think of a few intolerant people yes, but the majority wouldn't.

I don't tend to go into the baby feeding threads as my kids are older than that now, but I'll have a peep in tomorrow.

[hunkermunker]

I was thinking about this the other day and I got increasingly angry.

I think the thing I object to so much about the sort of television Daisy makes is that it's very much in the "pander to the thickies" vein.

It goes something like this:

Opening credits.
Here's what we're going to talk about.
Talk about it/with examples.
Sum up what you've talked about.
Coming up after the break.

Before the break, you saw...
In this bit, we're going to talk about...
Talk about it/with examples.
Sum up what you've talked about.
Coming up after the break.

Before the break, you saw...
In this bit, we're going to talk about...
Talk about it/with examples.
Sum up what you've talked about.
Coming up after the break.

Before the break, you saw...
In this bit, we're going to talk about...
Talk about it/with examples.
Sum up what you've talked about.
Who won?

And, you know what, that's so utterly lazy and formulaic - what's challenging or groundbreaking about that? There's not even much TV required - it's all rehashed bits from the other segments, with an arch voiceover telling us who to snigger at loudest or be most appalled by or whatever.

It's slightly better on the BBC, because they don't have adverts and the narrative flows better, but there's still scads of recapping and not a great deal of substance.

And breastfeeding's just such an easy target in all this - as Sophable says, there's not many people standing up for the women who want to breastfeed, or the babies who want to be breastfed - it's all "oh, fgs, just give him a bottle" to women who are having a hard time (from health professionals, often, from friends and family, often) - seriously, Daisy, the "lactivists" aren't in the majority here - yet they're the ones you want to have a dig at, using your privileged media platform?

What is it about you that you feel so disturbed and challenged by women wanting to help other women to breastfeed?

And why can't you make a decent, well-informed programme that sheds some light on the racket that is formula promotion? Have you read Politics Of Breastfeeding? Or is it just hippy propaganda?

[smellen]

Seriously, having had a quick read of a couple of DG articles other posters have linked to, it is a shame she has chosen, for the purposes of her argument (i.e. that women are horrible to each other) to highlight the minority of unsupportive, judgemental comments that are occasionally posted on threads, BF and otherwise.

I have usually found MN to be a great support, struggled with the early months of BFing (twice), and got through it with the excellent advice and links posted herein. The solidarity, warmth and support offered to women in abusive relationships is also amazing on MN.

Perhaps print and broadcast media are a bit threatened by the rise of websites like MN - free, impartial (as opposed to advertorial stuff) information written by women for women. We're all journalists now...

[LupusinaLlamasuit]

No, no-one on MN has made me cry.

I do understand why people get upset at the feeding threads. But there is a kind of assumption that those who support BF are attacking those who choose not to. Or who end up feeling they cannot carry on, which is the most common reason for not doing. And so much stuff is read into what people write on there it is difficult to pick out what is really being said.

I have spent a lot of time on the BF threads. I rarely see people who have had to give up BF, or who have chosen not to, actually attacked or unsupported. On the other hand, I have seen people who point out research on BF, current best practice, suggestions for carrying on instead of not doing etc attacked frequently, called names such as BF gestapo, nazis, lactivists, hippies, on a regular basis.

[smellen]

Thinking about it - it's just sad that she didn't choose to put a different spin on her article: that grassroots women can and do support each other. Would have been as easy, if not easier, to find evidence of that trend on MN and other sites.

But perhaps, less appetising to an arguably misogynistic institution like the Daily Mail.