Month: August 2017

Why give a f**k?

I think the advertisers who are withdrawing their advertising from Mumsnet (no doubt clammy, shaking and requiring therapy) are seriously missing the point. An advertiser is surely looking to scoop up its largest target audience. If you are advertising on Mumsnet then one would presume that your target audience is, well erm, mums. I think it is frankly hilarious that the advertisers in question must think most mothers are Mary Poppins. Well, I really hate (love) to burst their advertiser’s bubble, but Mary fucking Poppins we ain’t.
I’m so sorry if you find it a little bit scary hearing the ‘f’ word, but after a few (hundred) sleepless nights, it does tend to slip out. Christ knows we were nuns before we had kids, but now the little fuckers (oops, look at me…there I go) push us to voice our thoughts where we feel we can. At Sunday lunch with the MIL, rocking in the corner saying, ‘fuck, fuck, fuck’ under your breath, isn’t deemed appropriate. So we turn to a forum for mum’s, who we know won’t mind the odd expletive. In fact, they’ll actually love it! Because funnily enough, the majority of us mums go through our entire mummy life saying, ‘fuck, shit, bollocks, wankers’ under our breaths on such a regular basis that when the nursery teacher turns to us and asks why our little darling uttered a swear word today, we can only hang our head sheepishly and admit defeat.
But defeated we aren’t! Because places like Mumsnet come to the rescue and bind all of us together (and sometimes against each other) in a communal pool of understanding.
And so, dear advertisers: more fool you if you shun the opportunity to reach millions of fairly like-minded souls. No-one actually gives a fuck.
Image result for shocked face

Hypocrites

When it comes to our preoccupation with screens, us parents are hypocrites. Perhaps it’s our earned prerogative, or simply a rebellion via the back door. We pop off to bed early to read our book, only to find that an hour later we are still scrolling through the dregs of Facebook. Just one more person’s news, just one more click and then we’re surprised (every night) that it’s suddenly the witching hour and we’re absolutely knackered and can’t sleep because something we’ve read has pointlessly wound us up. And so we lie in our bed worrying, (because every little worry creeps around at night), and one of those little worries is that we forgot to take the kids’ mobiles off them an hour before bed (again).

We’re nothing but bloody hypocrites. But it’s ok, because we are the parents and so we are allowed to take photos of of our food, our cappuccino, our glass of wine and put them on Instagram without fear of reprisal. Being an adult gives us this right. We can wake up in the morning and grab at our phone and glasses and check our e mails and the news, because we have to know what’s been going on (obsessively).

‘Screens are a drug’, we tell our kids, as we feed it to them when it suits. When we want that moment’s peace. Like the chocolate bar, the trip to MacDonald’s – just a treat. The treat that leaves them wanting more. That leaves all of us wanting more. The treat that becomes addictive. On their birthdays and at Christmas we are their dealers. Dealers with a conscience and a sense of responsibility to those who score. A responsibility that we aren’t quite savvy enough to handle.

‘You are always attached to your phones’ I tell my teens and I don’t think they can be bothered to reply the obvious. They notice, but they think it so normal that I am attached to mine. That I check every buzz, every ‘like’, every tweet. Just like them.

I think we need to stop kidding ourselves that any of this is going to change. If we can’t change, they can’t change. This addiction is assimilated in all our lives. We can read articles about its dangers and nod and agree, but at some point we have to put our hands up and say: this is life and not just our kids’ lives, but our lives too. We are hypocrites and when we admit it, then we will accept it. And you know what? We will adapt to it (we already have). We are feeding it. What’s important is that we understand it.