Women subsumed into their children

[Xenia]

We certainly must guard against woman as only mother and nothing else

www.ft.com/cms/s/2/0bf95f3c-f234-11e1-bba3-00144feabdc0.html#axzz25Ieiea9E

*amillion

wickerman - Your post included the words "I don't believe you ..."

have to say, that is rather the way it came across. I find it really annoying when people tell me they don't believe me as I'm a pretty honest person, and always try to write from my own experience of life.

Just because I'm on here, it doesn't mean that I'd know how to set up my own email account. As I said I did ask DH to adapt ours to include both our names. That suits us fine as a family.

Anyone going on the women who earn £1k a day thread or entrepreneur's thread think about photosoftware. I was working on something related and it seems really profitable if you can design software which changes images particularly if it makes very fat women look thing - massive market apparently now that 60% of british women are overweight. trouble is some of the fatter mothers are now finding their little darlings are huge too because ofh ow they feed them so the FB picture of the sweet baby may end up being in due course a picture of a massive 7 year old and the hiding the fatter self away may disappear.

Given the number of people onthe thread who don't like the look of themselves (a really interesting femniist issue) and that is the reason they use a child's photo that is probably more likely the reason than that they have no identity but as a mother.

(I said above having checked my twitter picture is simply my work picture of me but I was asked about the island www.film-locations.co.uk/catalog.php?item=805 , a very small part of who and what I am but huge fun)

You don't earn your money for your social skills do you Xenia?

The island looks really beautiful, if I were you I'd get a jetty, a motor boat and some wooden retreats built a.s.a.p, just think of the the money.........

Ignoring the...Less charming aspects of your post, Xenia that is truly breathtaking and I am very envious!

oh are joint email accounts not ok now then?

we have a joint one, we just set it up like that when we changed braodband providers, i also have my own one but most of the time use the joint one, ditto dp. its just not a big deal, you can clearly see before you open an email who it is for and everything to do with the children i e clubs, school etc all goes to the family email account and its easy that its all there and accessible to both of us.

dp gets work emails sent there as well, i could read them if i liked but i dont as i am not that interested i will just tell him he has an email, ditto my emails dp could read them if he liked but he doesnt. if i want something to be properly private i will use my own seperate email addy but that is few and far between. its just a non issue, we set it up like that as it was convenient for us and it works. if it was a problem we would change it, but its not. its just [email protected]

In that case, based on my current ravelry and twitter avatar, I'm slave to a tiny heart shaped strawberry.

Xenia I agree with your middle paragraph. Wanna start a spin off thread?

5mad I would assume that any email I sent you would be read by your husband and adjust the content accordingly.

I currently have a Mug as avatar on FB and a cople of forums and a picture of a plant on Twitter (broadbean) - it is not because my identity is subsumed to plants and tea ... I make aesthetic choices and regularly change my id pictures. In four years I have used 72 profile pics on FB and only 8 of those have included my offspring. Some have been random - a tree that looked nice, a rainbow, a leaf, others have been amusing and some relating to music/ cultural preferences. Also of course my own face has been used as well but I always feel a bit weird about selecting pictures of my self that I like as it feels a bit posed and fake 'this is my best angle' sort of thing.

I agree it is very unhealthy to totally submerge yourself into parenthood totally losing your own identity in the process. I post plenty of none child related updates as I am still a regular gig goer and am in process of planning a book group. I have a large no of child free FB friends and we talk about a range of subjects. Practicing benign neglect where possible is my parenting style and making sure my children understand my life is not run for their convenience alone.

Didn't stop my offspring trailing round after me in the holidays chanting "I'm booorreed" of course!

well as i said i have a private email so if friends wish they can contact me on that, but people rarely use that one despite having that addy as well, they just use the family one. relatives, friends etc if i want a private chat i may pm via fb but its simply not an issue to me or my friends who have ways of contacting me privately if they choose to do so.

its dp as well, we arent married :)

Is there anything wrong with being 'just' a Mother?

It is incorrect - no body is 'just' anything we are a sum of many parts and that should be celebrated.

I recall years ago when ds1 was still a tiny baby - we took a walk over to Greenwich Market and as DH was with me I went for a browse on the stalls - I was minding my own business when a bloke came over and spoke to me asking if I was an artist and basically chatting me up - I remember it as it was probably the first male attention (not from my partner) in over a year if not longer - I was mortified and scuttled off after blurting "I am just a mother" - I felt a total fool afterwards and wondered why I was hiding behind that identity as if it provided some protection from being flirted with? I am not just a mother, I am a sister, a daughter, a 'lover', a music lover etc etc. I have had various jobs and will work again that will not define me either - why be defined by one aspect of yourself?

owl of course it's wrong to dientify as being just a mother...what was the woman before she had DC? Non-existant?

And how many men do we know who would identify as just a father?

I think if you find yourself saying you are "just a ..." about anything it shows you up against some bad attitudes in society, otherwise you wouldn't feel the need to use the "just" word. So, I'm saying it's not just you

Don't feel bad about having said it, just think what it says about society ...
You don't have to "take those attitudes on board" yourself.

Sounds like you just wanted to escape from some attention, that while pleasant in some ways, was getting a bit much ?

okay, I see. I think i misunderstood! I was thinking of when it's confused with paid employment though as it annoys me (and I do work ) but I personally feel society doesn't appreciate the role of caring enough, whether that be for your children or otherwise

I have to say as well, i think people read far too much into this facebook bollocks

Some peope (well, in my age group) actually reveal quite a lot about themselves on FB. It's amazing what information they'll post...

That aside, you can read a lot into what people have written, which is what makes it predominantly bad. Sometimes it's a good thing. A friend of mine was worried her friend was suffering from Depression but it was dismissed as 'teen angst.' This girl admitted through private messages to my friend she was being abused by her father (hence the dismissal I'm guessing) friend went straight to police and her mother.

Just like MN, some people use Facebook as a way to communicate things they don't want to discuss in 'real life.' Oddly, a lot of people I know will only have Deep and Meaningful discussions with very close mates over technology.

It's great when technology works in a positive manner to help someone vulnerable be able to confide and change something. I just worry about the level of arguing and offence taken at seemingly innocuous things, mind you i don't use it anyway

A really hot close family friend of ours is a contractor. He's been through 14 apprentices in the past two years! Fourteen!!!

Because he's smart. You see, some people are stupid enough to post on their FB that their boss is a fucking idiot. Facepalm

The doc, I suspect a thread about women being too fat is not going to enhance my popularity and actually there are never more topics than on weight loss on mumsnet which is another feminist issue - all those women worrying and fussing over their looks and weight but 90% even who lost it on a diet put it on and what a waste of mental effort and time when they could be out there earning money to buy islands or fund OAP homes or whatever their own interest might be.

I certainly agree with those advising caution about particularly public FB pages. I think 30% of HR people for a start check FB when recruiting you.

On the island, thanks. I like the wildness of it so not really planning to make any money at all out of it. Supposedly a contacft out there is building me a very cheap one room hut/place on it this year but he keeps putting it off. It does mean I need to look at subjects and topics I never woudl have like to what extent you can mix concrete with sea water, desalination and all kinds of fascinating topics.

14 people have posted about him online, jeez. I don't presume he talks to them about social media etiquette though we have to sign something at work to say we will not discuss work matters on line and all sorts of shit. It doesn't stop stuff happening though. One of our managers was signed off sick and posted on his facebook he was in Ibiza and cvame back to a disciplinary hearing

Middle paragraph Xenia - the one about some women hating their appearance in pictures so much they don't post any and whether that's a feminist issue.