The madness of modern families

[themoon66]

This is on BBC2 tonight at 8.30pm... looks interesting I thought.....

The Madness Of Modern Parenting

All parents want the best for their children but more people than ever seem to be turning into panic-stricken obsessives in their over-zealous attempts to get it all absolutely right.

As this series shows, the madness can descend on many fronts ? from competing against other parents to plan the most elaborate birthday party for their precious offspring, to the quest for the perfect family holiday.

Then there are the lengths parents will go to to get the very best for their child, whether faking church attendance for the sake of a decent school entry or spending all weekend doing their child's complicated school project, alone.

A selection of bemused mums and dads reflect on their madder moments in this entertaining, witty and affectionate look at the absurd behaviour being displayed by parents all over Britain.

was that bannister woman not the 'token bluff northern'?

Puddle - I only saw about 10 mins at the end. The woman I know was talking about a parent going to Kent (?) to source authentic timbers for making a model of a Tudor House. She is friend of a friend and I have met her a few times and she is lovely and not at all an Islington media-type. However, we do live in London and she was probably talking about the v. popular-with-small-catchment-area state primary that hers and my children go to. Glad I didn't see the rest of the programme. It would have made me barf by the sound of it.

i must've missed that. pig.

And they are raising the TV license fee.

So they can feed us more programming about their poncey pals moaning about utter FA that doesn't pertain to 8 out of 10 viewers.

Remember that BBC employee looking for women willing to do burlesque because it's such a confidence booster to get your tits out in front of people.

Are they for real?

SERIOUSLY thinking about ditching the TV entirely.

"I turned the tv over after one dickhead parent admitted he had used the fact that his daughter had suffered from leukaemia at the age of 18 months old to get into a school."

He looked a bit like Jeremy Hardy, the comedian. It wasn't him, was it??

Yes, increasingly convinced that there is a mixture of "real" meejah types like O'Farrell and Berkmann and actors/actresses hired to read the "real life stories" from the book in self-deprecating tones. (The Asian woman in the huge roll-neck sweater has got to be from Planet Thesp.)

Go and look at the book - a lot of the wording of the anecdotes is EXACTLY the same. Come ON. You don't tell the same story in the same words twice in the same day, let alone months apart.

What annoyed me especially was that there was no examination, aside from a mention of league tables, of WHY this should all be the case. Nobody wanted to come out and admit that league tables are ghastly and pander to the prejudices of middle-class parents, and that a "successful" school is always going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nobody with the courage to say "we sent our child to the local state school because we believe in it" and stand by their views. No stories of kids doing well in supposedly "bad" schools or examination of what makes schools "good" and "bad" (or perceived as such) in the first place.

I fear there may be more truth than some may be prepared to admit in the comment about the need for league tables having more info - like the number of expensive holidays taken and the number of kids who know their true father. That was too close to the truth to be funny.

There is an interesting and urban-myth-free documentary to be made about the battle for school places AND the social/class prejudices which underlie it - this wasn't it.

i thought the woman who made the mask was definitely an actor... she even looked familiar.

Waiting for a rebuttal of the "actors" claim now!

tick... tock... tick...

They were actors trying to make the best of a crap script.

But that pink on those bannisters was the real show-stealer .

And another thing - if the producers really expect us to believe all those people were in their own immaculately-presented homes, they must think we were all born yesterday!

Well I'm intrigued now. Wish I had seen the whole programme. But I'm sure (naieve poor speller old me)that when actors are speaking other people's words then there has to be a subtitle saying such. I'll ask DH who works in broadcasting when he gets home. And I'm tempted to ask the person I know who was on it about the other participants. Perhaps you recognise people because they are actors, but also parents, and in the context of this programme they were speaking as themselves as parents?

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unquietdad yes, the book is a spin-off of the series, but it's up to the bbc whether or not they trail it. the copies they sent me all had a bbc logo in the top left corner of the jacket - and all the publicity has made it quite clear that the two are linked.

unquietdad we had access to the transcripts of interviews when writing the book. we selected from those some of the most interesting stories and, since we were quoting, had to make sure that we quoted accurately. the interviews were certainly not scripted. as far as i'm aware all the people involved were parents, relating their own anecdotes.

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Sorry if I'm repaeting whT'S ALREADTYBEEN SAID. tHIS PROGRAMME WAS APPALLING SHITE. wE HAD TO TURN OVER. tHEY CHOSE THE FOULEST PEOPLE TO SPOUT BOLLOCKS ABD NOT ONLY THAT BUT TO FEEL SMUG ABOUT IT TOO!

Quite, Unquietdad.

I mean, who would live in a house w/that pink bannister and naffo carpet that didn't even match!?

jUST READ SOME OF THE THREAD. I SAiD TO dp WHEN I WAS WATCHING IT, 'i RECOGNISE A LOT OF THESE PEOPLE.' nOW I KNOW WHY. wHERE'VE i SEEN THEM THOUGH? oNE OF THEM WAS IN bROOKSIDE ONCE I THINK.

And one of the posters on here has been in a pub . . .

i SOHLDU EB OS LKCY. i'VE NOT BEEN OT FOR 10 MTHNS.

I think because I asked her direct questions, lostinfrance!

It's encouraging to see that we are all maintaining a healthy cynicism about this programme.

and WAS that Jeremy Hardy? I'm dying to know! It looked so much like him, and yet... what he admitted doing would be so much UNLIKE my perception of him. (He's always seemed very right-on - the kind of guy who'd send his kids to the local sink comp just to make a political point.)