So, us rotten lot....

[scarredpierced]

How many of us actually meet Shona's little sidekicks criteria?
She states that all of us on Mumsnet are in our 30s, living in London and have a degree. How many people here meet that criteria?
How many are popping prozac depressed at the shit life we now have with kids?
Damn that woman is nasty!

Mathematically, it is impossible for everyone to start earning in the top 5% bracket unless you are Michael Gove and think that all schools should be above average

No, she simply believes that all of those individuals (doing all the jobs she relies on including the lion share of raising her children) are either lazy/unambiguous/dumb and perhaps even sub-human and therefore largely beneath her consideration.

Yes, the argument does rather miss the point that in order to be relatively wealthy, there needs to be somebody for you to be wealthier than!

Oops unAMBITIOUS (not ambiguous obvs)

mid 40s, no degree, no Prozac, no Boden, live in Midlands, work full time.

So, basically it's ok for her to be vicious in a national newspaper and 'name and shame' posters - but we're the bullies...

I think words are being put into my head. My suggestion is women be ambitious and encourage their daughters to be so. We can always find people to clean and do jobs just about anyone can do but why voluntarily put yourself into the low paid category if you don't have to?

Or are p eople suggesting on here that if their child said they wanted to be a top surgeon they would say no dear we need call centre workers - the nation needs that - don't be silly with your doctor ideas, they are morally wrong - the moral imperative is to fill the nation's need for care home workers.

Xenia, you could ask the same question of many, many people who post on Mumsnet, only in a slightly different form.

If you can afford a really good education for your children, why are you happy for them to go to a "good" state school? Poverty of ambition and imagination have to play a role in people voluntarily choosing the lesser option (I am of course only talking about people who can afford to choose).

Where would we find these lower paid people if all are encouraged to be in top jobs? We can only cope with a relatively small number of surgeons, we need a lot more nurses. I would expect people to encourage DCs in whatever they want to be- it is madness to suggest that you would curb ambitions. If a DC wants to be a surgeon you wouldn't tell them to be a nurse and vice versa. If I were to work in medicine it would be the caring side that attracted me and I would want to be a midwife or Macmillan nurse- luckily we are all different.

No one is suggesting for a second that they would not encourage their children (daughters) to achieve as much as they are able to.

What, I am saying, Xenia is that your answer to every social dilemma or injustice is 'go out and earn loads of money', and although life is undeniably easier for those with cash, that as a solution is so simplistic as to be laughable.

And to dismiss the very real problem the majority of society face by saying that try should just try harder and aim higher and earn more (even though it is a valid pint that most women sell themselves short) is to dismiss reality and devalue those majority on this planet who do not (and can NEVER earn in the too 5% income bracket.

Everyone deserves a reasonable quality of life, to not be hungry, to e warm, to be able to access health care and good education for their children and happiness, not just the very wealthy.

When i first came to mumsnet, what must be six YEARS ago now, Xenia was harping on about how she was the best parent because she left her babies at 2 weeks with a nanny to do her high power job. How women should have high power jobs and consider themselves a failure if they don't. She is still claiming to be a feminist despite quite mysoginistic views. I would like to think that i have learnt alot about women/parents and children during my time on mumsnet, as an intelligent, high acheiving woman, I would have thought Xenia would have done the same. But no it still seems she has her posts pre-typed ready to trawl out whenever she feels she can hijack a thread. Personally i would have thought she was too busy making her millions! But then maybe she's right, maybe i should have tried harder then i could have had a job that allowed me to mix a healthy level of mnetting in with my day whilst still earning enough for my very own island what she is not telling us, ladies, is that it the isle of sheppy!

I see over the 6yr you've lost objectivity but pass it off as opinion
Read your post again,the value laden words,eg the harping on,hijax thread
Your subjective pov is not a précis of posts it's hatchet job.an Ill tempered attack

You are probably right SM but I have always valued a healthy dose of subjectivity. Xenia can take it, she's ignored my snarky posts for six years anyway It is certainly not intended to be personal, anymore than it was intended to be objective. I can't write clever posts so i don't try, i just say what i feel so yes, it will be subjective. I just get sick and tired of being made to feel a failure by women like xenia because I am not the head of the very important xyz company or such like.

I do apologise though if it is construed as personal, ill mannered? Probably

Does that mean that you considered me to bo objective when i first came then?

Xenia,me you,the mn masses are all posters with opinions.and iPads.Thats all
the credibility,the gravitas,favor or scorn attributed to post/poster.you control that
No one on mn is wholly responsible for making you feel shit,you can learnt regulate,ignore,whateva

I would be surprised if I had ever written that people of either gender are a failure if they end up in a cleaning job. Apparently I inspire a lot of people.

However I would like more parents to encourage particularly their daughters to aim high.

My answer to every social dilemma is not to earn lots of money. I often write about happiness and how food and sun and being outside can help engender that state. That is unrelated to wealth. However it certainly would do this nation a lot of good if a lot of women went off and worked very hard to found their own businesses as that is what fuels prosperity for all.

I hope I would never say I was the "best parent". However it is rare the press extol the advantages to families of women working - instead we are the public whipping boy and if we return to work quickly are regarded as some kind of unnatural pariah damaging oiur babies. Instead I am able to produce cogent arguments as to how that may in fact advantage your child. If you think that is not so then people can smile away whilst continuing whatever life they have chosen which makes them happy whether that's a buddhist monk in a cell all day or cleaning at Heathrow airport or at home as a housewife or on the Tesco board of directors.

to some extent I agree with Xenia

one to one hand we want a more equal society

• better maternity cover
• flex working
• paternity leave

-better and more available pre-school childcare

• more women on boards

etc etc

WHY? so that women can get into the workplace

so, presumably we think women working is a good thing! right?

Yet in parallel we have a societal "norm" wherby its completely Ok for women to go to school, go to Uni, then give it all up when they have small children

the two views above are both commonly held, AND are very contrary

I would far prefer to live in a culture which normalises women working, the US, France and Scandinavia seems to manage it far better than us

mainly because they have better conditions in place

and I still think its VERY unfair that overwhelmingly it seems to be the woman that has to jack in her career to care for the small ones

"So, basically it's ok for her to be vicious in a national newspaper and 'name and shame' posters - but we're the bullies...

pocket, she has been mean about a largely anonmymous mass

whereas alot of MN posters were FUCKING VILE about her, I saw the posts. really nasty. I am no fan but I can why she is pissed!

Thankyou Xenia - that is, i believe, the first time, in six years tht you have responded to one of my posts directed at you :) You are a better woman than me because you made it inpersonal (i tried and failed) and I actually wholeheartedly agree with your post right there. I wish that you were right, that those opportunities were there for everyone (male or female) but they simply aren't. It isn't just to do with having afluent parents though - and i don't believe I have ever seen this in the whole debate: Some people just are not clever enough for high power/high responsibility jobs. Some people, through no thought of their own are justs not clever enough for ANY job. I know people who have had private educations and work in pretty mundane jobs and a couple of them, unemployed!!! So it isn't all about the money just mostly. I agree with Xenia that we should encourage our children to be the best that they can be, i just don't necessarily agree that this should be measured by academic or financial status. I want my children (both girls) to be happy, i am not niave enough to think that financial security doesn't play a bit part in this.

Oh look, this whole thread has veered from the OP, but well, lets face it, shona whatsitface doesn't really warrant much discussion anyway.......

of course we should all encourage or (children male and female children) to achieve their goals just it really is ok for them to aim for something they can achieve not every child has the academics in them to go that high.

"Yet in parallel we have a societal "norm" wherby its completely Ok for women to go to school, go to Uni, then give it all up when they have small children" Yes, i get this fromparistoberlin but someone has to look after the children - so either, one or other parents have to do it or childcare has to be outsourced. If we all have high powered jobs, who is going to do the childcare, there will be no childminders as that is low paid and not considered good enough.

I think that childcare should be valued more, either by parents or by other carers. That actually staying at home with the children should be valued more - what is it? 5 years before they start school? What needs to happen is that people need to be able to take career breaks and then supported to return to work afterwards. I am an example of why xenia, as things stand today, is actually 100% right - i stayed at home and now can't return to my career. Through a) things have moved on and b) lack of confidence. Maybe the government should be investing in helping parents update their skills and encouraging employers to recognise the value of someone returning fresh to the workplace. As it stands at present, the best I can hope for is part-time, sessional work. sits and waits for Xenia to say i told you so

I think graphics card is useful for computers

Thanks for sharing that thought Jessica

Absolutely - never without my graphics card

The societal norm does women a lot of damage. The ways round it are to talk about childcare before you get too involved with a man, check if he has sexist parents, see if he is happy not just with women working but doing his fair share at home and with indeed his wife out earning him. For many men and women being home with children day in day out and doing house stuff is not some wonderful nirvana but a bit boring and having work and a family tends to be the better choice.

Lucy, I cannot remember to whom I respond and to whom not, but yes the average IQ is 100 so those below are not likely to find it too easy to do work which requires a lot of brains. However plenty of people who leave school without good exam results because they did not work go on to do fine because they work harder than anyone else or find their niche. I fear there are some families which seem to think well I just want my little Daisy to be happy so let her leave school at 16 and marry early and not do much. I suspect if Daisy were born into a different family she might do a bit better. You can want your children to be happy and be ambitious for them. High expectations rub off on children - the only careers mentioned on a careers leaflet from school of my children are accountancy, law, engineering, dentistry and medicine - obviously to encourage parents to bring their children in but it also has a rub off effect, that children expect those are good things to do (as they are - they are interesting, high status and high paid). If schools and homes can do this so much the better.

The nation is utterly bust. There is no money to pay more to educate women at home to return to the workplace. I just want younger women and teenage girls to understand you can work full time and have a nice life. The reason I can work for myself and am here at home working today (I just came off a conference call) is because I had all those years of having babies whilst working full time and doing something I like. I don't feel that not being here during the day when the babies were small means their childhoods are washed out of my night. I have loads of memories of loads of breastfeeding, cuddling, bed time stories, day time games. It never felt I missed a thing except I changed a 10% of the nappies I might have done and smears perhaps a 10% of the dripped food off toddler mouths than I might have done.

I do feel you can be a SAHM and give girls expectations though technically i was a sahm I do have a medical condition that made it difficult for me to work full time although I did work before children anyway i am getting off my point
, my dd stayed on at school is in college doing an engineering course and works part time dd2 is still in school she has learning difficulties but still works hard and does her best she past all her exams by being scribed for them she wouldn't have managed the writing , I do think whether you work full time or not mothers have the ability to encourage their girls to reach their potential