Violence against children on Mumsnet

[PuttingOnTheKitsch]

There is a thread on AIBU where the posters are gleefully sharing tales of violence against children including one where someone's ex tripped a child so that "his face was turned to mush".

This is just the tip of the iceberg of the anti-child sentiment that seems to be permeating MN. Yes, people have always eye-rolled about other people's children, but there seems to be something increasingly sinister happening. Not everyone on MN is who they claim to be. We know about all the people who find pleasure in various types of attention- seeking, plus the standard Herberts, but there are unfortunately also people who enjoy children suffering and it very much seems like they've found their way onto Mumsnet.

what threads this ?

Eh? There isn’t.

It’s extremely rare when anyone or any MN thread involves any negative sentiment towards children (except teens who should pay room and board, most posters are very cruel on that front).
possibly the thread your referring to is meant as tongue and cheek. Because fuck around and find out rolling around on the floor is annoying is dark humor.

Do you have a link to this?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5509646-i-kicked-someone-elses-child-yesterday?page=1

There are some really nasty posts. I've reported also.

That is a thread about some accidentally kicking a child. The OP literally says “I sort of turned back and didn't see the child laying in the middle of the floor and tripped over him, kicking him in the process”

Manners Timothy

I haven’t a clue what that means.

I agree, it's dark and awful to read. It didn't sit right with me.

Agree. That was totally accidental.

Maybe I've missed it, but I haven't seen this happening here.

By the end of the thread OP is admitting that it wasn't really that accidental at all and the post about a man tripping up a child and "turning their face to mush" is very much on there. As are all the other posts saying that children deserve to be hurt by random adults.

No she isn’t. She made a joke. Others then jumped on her.

You said that was just the tip of the iceberg of the anti-child sentiment on MN and said there was something sinister happening on MN. Where is your evidence for that?

She made a joke
hope she didn’t give up the day job

I don't think it's particularly amusing to joke about hurting children.

I'm not going to post a whole list of other threads, but I've been on here a long time under various names and it's a tendency that I've noticed. You seem to think swapping stories about people "accidentally on purpose" hurting children are fine. I don't.

That’s not what’s happening, you’re misrepresenting the thread and the OP of that thread.

I suspect you would struggle to find a whole list of other threads. I’ve been here a long time too, MN isn’t perfect but there definitely isn’t an anti-child sentiment on here. Many of us are actual mothers.

I agree OP, the anti child and child hating posts have increased in the last few years for some reason and some posters get carried away on threads about smacking. The worst thread I seen was one where a poster had snacked her child who was aged 2. There were lots of posters minimising what the parent had done, lots saying they smacked their 1 year olds, some saying that a hard enough smack to leave a mark was the only way to teach them and others agreeing. It was left up for almost a week with lots of people saying they had reported, before it was finally deleted.

There was also a disturbing thread about a child walking a dog. The dog had barked at the OP and people were saying she should have kicked the dog and the child. I’m not sure whether that one was deleted or not but it had a lot of deletions.

The one about harming an infant has been removed automatically. I clicked onto one of the last pages and immediately found these nasty posts.

I saw the thread earlier but it was so obviously a troll I didn’t bother reading much of it.

So, you thought it was a troll but didn’t report it?

It's a catch phrase from the sitcom Sorry which starred Ronnie Corbett as a man in his 40s who still lived with his parents.

Agree, that thread was weird.

Some people have a dark sense of humour. It may not be your thing but it’s how it is. Nobody was truly advocating that people hurt children, it was a joke that some people ran with.

The world (including MN) has never been more child centric.

There are subreddits that talk about taking their child hating onto parenting sites so I do think some of it is organised. Some posters take every opportunity to tell us that they’re glad they don’t have children, even going onto the parenting board to tell new mums who are struggling with a newborn not sleeping, to say ‘this is why I’m glad I don’t have children’. That’s shitty enough but then some take it further, it’s not dark humour, it’s just nasty. Some claim to have children themselves, maybe they have, there are plenty of parents who behave like they hate their own kids on here and IRL.

She tripped over a horribly behaved entitled child rolling around the floor with no parental intervention because he is the centre of the universe and can do no wrong

I despair for the future these kids will have to face in to, unless they end up actual Timothy’s

I've noticed an increase in child hating posts on MN. It doesn't sit right with me either.