Smug fruit shoot feeders - don't you ever worry about 20 years down the line?

[welliemum]

Lots of people here talk about feeding their dcs crap food as a badge of honour - it's a weird kind of street cred.

"My kinds eat junk food - so shoot me, ha ha"
[subtext: I am a laid-back cool person and people who fuss about junk food are so up their own bums it's unbelievable]

But.... there's a big worry out there about obesity, about additives in food, about the way bad eating habits often have their beginnings in childhood...... and the concerns are likely to get stronger with time.

Don't you ever worry that 20 years from now when times have moved on, one of your dcs will read your light hearted comments and actually feel a bit that you seemed so proud of feeding them crap?

Whereas what I'd hope for with mine is to be able to say, "Well, you did sometimes eat rubbish at parties and I wasn't all that happy about it, but I let you because I didn't want you to feel left out. I didn't stress about it too much because I knew you ate well the rest of the time."

[subtext: I was never a perfect parent but I did my best to find the balance between feeding you well and not being obsessional about food].

I think that only thing I ever feel smug about with regard to my kids is getting to the end of the day with three children that have been fed (reasonably well), watered, kept from trashing the house/their toys/each other and have gone to bed more or less on time. If they are clean as well and have done some homework that's a bonus . Apart from that I haven't the time, energy or inclination for smugness. My 'standards' fell with each child and each passing year.

Yes, my criteria for "smug" are similarly modest ...

But seriously, when I see people being smug - or complacent is probably a better word - it makes me worry that they've set themselves up for a fall.

This whole "my children eat all sorts and thy're fine" thing just makes me squirm.

Although I seem to be the only person in the whole of mumsnet who worries about this... so I sense I'm on my own planet here.

Haven't read whole thread only OP. But purlese, I was fed crap as a child, do I resent my parents for that? Do I hell. I am grateful and thankfil I had a happy, loving home life and was aleays encouraged to be the best I could be, whatever the outcome.

I don't know anyone who has issues with their folks because of what they fed them as kids.

Get a grip.

northerner - ALLELUJIA!!

Well, that's fine northerner.

But that wasn't my point. There's a huge shift in attitudes to food for children happening now. Our children will grow up in a world where attitudes to food are likely to be much, much more serious - and they might not think jokes about fruit shoots are very funny.

What I mean is, they'll probably judge us much more harshly on food issues than we would dream of judging our parents.

But that's not my point either. My point is that it's quite likely tht what we say here on mumsnet will be retrievable for decades to come.... and that posterity isn't going to be kind to fruit shoot smugness.

Which is sad, because I suspect that we all feed our children roughly similar stuff, but somehow mumsnet food discussions force people to polarise their views and align themselves with camps - mine being the "hypocritical fruit shoot feeder " camp: don't like junk food but allow it in public.

Incidentally, which I know is a bit of a contradiction of what I just said, I know an awful lot of people who most certainly do blame their parents for what they were fed as kids. (Not me, I was very lucky).

I think it's going to be like that times 100 for the next generation.

Which is not fair on us, but that's how I think attitudes will go.

You're probably right MMJ.

welliemum I have no idea what you point is then........

Am I worried about my ds coming on line in 20 yrs time and finding out I was happy to let him drink fruit shoots at parties?

Err, no.

Yay northerner, that's exactly my point.

As long as you are happy.

I just feel, reading some mn posts, that some posters aren't really thinking this through, ie that they'll be judged not by their own standards, but by the standards of a very different generation.

Mr Bubble has a lot of complaints about his childhood diet. Tons of meat, very little in the way of veg and not enough dairy/calcium.

He was obese as a teenager and has ended up with arthritis due to his flaky bones having to cart around too much weight.

My MIL is now trying to inflict this on DS2 which causes a lot of friction between us. She almost takes pride in the fact that my FIL 'doesn't like' vegetables. He does, if they're cooked with any interest. We had lunch there a while ago and I took a load of broccoli with us that needed to be cooked and eaten. My FIL ploughed through a load of it and she hated the fact that he'd enjoyed it.

Not sure if this is relevant to the OP but it is an example of a parent feeding their family a bad diet and seeming to be proud of the fact.

Interesting Bubble, and yes, that's similar to what's bothering me on mn.

... except that I don't think most mn-ers are feeding their children terrible diets.

Yet somehow they seem to feel they have to point out how much junk their children eat in order to be "in".

It's so like school. Yuck.

Whenever I hear that "everything in moderation" line now, I think of someone on another thread (was it Franny?) saying "well what about dog-piss then? why not dog-piss in moderation?"

And it makes me larf.

I think I get what you're saying WM. Do you mean a bit like smoking - I imagine that our mothers (some of them) would have said "I smoked with all mine, and didn't do them any harm". Which we would nowadays possibly look askance at, but then was considered acceptable?

Or possibly in twenty years time, consumption of alcohol in pregancy? Our DIL's may write shocked posts about how their dreadful MIL was so self-obsessed that she didn't even give up wine completely while pregnant.

This is about the new puritanism and changing attitudes, rather than food per se isn't it?

"but it is an example of a parent feeding their family a bad diet and seeming to be proud of the fact. "

I wouldn't take that as an eg of someone being proud of the diet, more as someone being defensive. Along the lines of 'yes I know it's crap but that's what they like and will eat' rather than' yes it's crap and I'm proud of it'. She probably felt iplicitly critisised by her DH eating the brocolli. I know there is a sort of inverted snobbery around - fresh veg are poncey, tinned are OK kind of thing - but I've not really come across it all on MN.

I've only read your first and your last posts, welliemum.

You seem to have got yourself in the ridiculous position of having the worst of both worlds! That is, your kids do drink fruit shoots, but you're not happy about it, and you feel you're being hypocritical!

How on earth have you managed to paint yourself into such a ridiculous corner? If you're not happy about them eating and drinking junk, then stop them.

"Yet somehow they seem to feel they have to point out how much junk their children eat in order to be "in"."

Again I don't think it's wanting to be 'in' it's simply a sense of relief that we're not the only ones that break the rules sometimes. The pressure of parents to be perfect is so great and many of us don't make it all the time. It's good to feel that we're not the only ones. Well that's the way I read it anyway.

Yes, exactly Caligula.

In fact, your example of smoking really resonates with me: my parents smoked in the car all the time and laughed at us when we complained - but in retrospect, knowing what we now know about children and passive smoking, it doesn't seem as funny now.

They were, and are, lovely caring parents - but times have changed and will change again.

I think the corresponding issues for us and our children are going to be food; the environment; and probably some other stuff we're currently blissfully unaware of.

Yep - seat belts as well.

We never wore any when we went in our uncles' cars. It simply never occurred to anyone that this simple measure of trying to keep us alive in the event of an accident, should be taken.

Nowadays they'd be vilified.

I honestly think you are worrying a bit too much, wellie. I honestly don't see your badge of honour thing at all except, as others have said, as a kind of exaggerated backlash when people are being proselytising hardline super healthy. I reckon the evidence of mumsnet will be that there were lots of different views on the right way to approach food and diet for children and that most people went for basically healthy with the occasional less healthy splurge. I think it's possible that a absolutely tiny minority of grown up kids of mumsnetters will be resentful that they never got to taste sweets until they left home and that an equally miniscule number might be gutted that they were routinely fed a very unhealthy diet but I would be v surprised if it's a major issue for the majority.

MrspG, if I said on mumsnet that I was going to forbid my children junk food, I would immediately be told that I was a) up my own bum and b) going to cause eating disorders in my children.

In fact they eat very healthily so I'm not agonising about it, although I'm sad they have to eat rubbish in order not to be social misfits. It seems all wrong to me.

But I didn't mean this thread to be about me, or about my children, or about food even - it's really about what we say rather than what we actually do, and how we'll be judged by that.

I also know twins who went through primary and secondary school with me. They were the kids sitting eating 'hippy food' while the rest of us were munching away on Sunblest and plastic cheese sandwiches.

They have often said that this, and the fact that they didn't have a TV at home made them feel like freaky weirdos at an age when children want to fit in with their peers. They may be in extra good health as a result of their childhood diet, but I'm not doing too bad either.

So, there you go, two sides to the same point.

welliemum - do you mean like those ghastly girls (it was always girls) who used to bray about how they had done absolutely no revision for an exam, safe in the knowledge that they had swotted themselves into a frenzy and would almost certainly be getting an A? ?
Jesus, I didn't care what they thought then, sure as hell don't care now. It's between me and my children.