Parenting gurus

PostingPredictions

My predictions for 2008's parenting edicts - with thanks to Scott Pack at Me and My Big Mouth for inspiring the format. I hope - or in some cases fear - they'll prove unfounded, though they might prove closer to the truth than I suspect.

January - any pregnant woman caught drinking, smoking or eating unpasteurised soft cheese will be subject to imprisonment and a fine, announces the government. Any pregnant woman looking like she's enjoying herself will be sent to Guantanamo Bay.

February - a study appears highlighting the plight of women who have no choice but to stay at home to care for their children, claiming these mothers are an economic drain - on the same day the government again refuses tax relief for childcare expenses.

March - more reports decrying 'older' mums who hog medical resources appear. Government ministers make disapproving noises, but do nothing to improve job security or make affordable housing available - steps that would enable younger women to have children more easily.

April - moves by women's pressure groups to persuade employers to introduce more and higher-status part-time jobs are rebuffed by UK firms, who insist the only way to hold down a high-powered job is by living in a camp bed under the desk. 'It cuts down on commuting time,' workers are told. Plans emerge for training counsellors in 're-introducing' workers to their teenage children and rehabilitating staff in family life.

May - in a bid to cut costs, cash-strapped NHS hospitals turn away women in labour, encouraging them to give birth naturally, at home on their own, without a midwife or doctor. "Light some candles and hop in the bath," the few remaining midwives employed by the NHS tell women. "Good luck." Women are encouraged to think of the bragging power they'll have following a 'natural' birth.

June - new mothers to be offered tax credits for breastfeeding. Better-off mothers plan to spend their 'boob money' on restorative underwear that will lift their depleted assets. Unfortunately, the effect is negated by a decision to allow formula milk makers to sponsor the few cash-strapped labour wards still open.

July - IQ tests are introduced for six-month-olds, who are to be streamed at council-funded nurseries. Anxious parents employ home coaches who push babies to improve their loading and stacking skills.

August - as stats show that more children are born to women in their thirties than any other age range, 'older' mothers are praised in the press for their emotional maturity, financial stability and parenting skills.

September - a survey showing that children whose parents spend time playing, reading and interacting with them grow up to be well-balanced individuals makes front-page news.

October - outraged by the spate of wierd celebrity baby names, the UK government follows the French example of introducing an official list of baby names. Anything not on the list (Fifi Trixibelle, eat your heart out) is not allowed. Management consultants are called in to make an appropriate list (Jean-Francois looking unlikely to catch on in the UK).

November - research proving that 'older' women's fertility is not much different to younger women's remains ignored by all the mainstream and specialist medical press.

December - no more babies are allowed to be born this year, the quota has been reached.

Posted 01 January 2008 17:28 | Number of comments: 11 | Comments

Older mother Parenting gurus Work

PostingAttachment parenting: a sticky business

iStock000003541963XSmall_Small.jpg We are having phone trouble. It's none of the usual suspects. I'm afraid I blame a pair of well-meaning New Age parenting gurus for the problem.

A while ago I bought a book on babies by a California paediatrician and his wife. They've got eight children themselves. I reckoned they must know what they're talking about. They looked like nice people on the cover shot. Their philosophy is called 'attachment parenting'. Heard of it? Hugely popular in the US, less so in the UK.

Amongst other things, 'attachment parenting' involves: breastfeeding on demand, 'co-sleeping' with your infant, avoiding mechanical devices such as prams, rockers or bouncy chairs, 'wearing' your baby in a sling and, of course, natural birth. Being a bit of an old hippie at heart myself, I loved these ideas. I just couldn't quite translate them all into reality.

The authors never argue, but offer 'loving reminders' to each other. They write wistfully about a custom in Rwanda of not letting the baby touch the ground for the first six months of their life. Instead the local women carry their babies with them at all times, wrapped up in a cunning arrangement of knotted fabric. These women are so close to their babies they don't use nappies. They can just sense when the child needs to go.

The writers suggest that if a mother can't breastfeed, the baby's grandmother might consider re-lactating. Breastfeeding's so important, you see. I've mentioned this a couple of times to Granny, never with much success. She tends to clutch at her bosom and look affronted.

I did my best to follow their advice, and managed some of it. Beanie went in a sling, but I couldn't carry her for long without hurting my back. I breastfed. The one area where I followed their advice to the letter was their advice to invest in a cordless phone. To prevent accidents. Apparently a little-known danger to toddlers is mum wandering off to answer the phone. Or so they say.

When Beanie was born, Va-vay dutifully went off to buy cordless phones - after a 'loving reminder' from me. Eighteen months later, we spend half our lives hunting for the wretched things that Beanie has reallocated somewhere - pillow, toy basket, knitting box, or the rubbish bin. Even if we phone ourselves to find out where they are, they won't necessarily ring. No juice left. Mobiles aren't so reliable either these days. Beanie's fond of sucking on them. Helps her teeth.

Last week I gave Va-vay another 'loving reminder'. To buy us a conventional, corded phone. 

Posted 31 October 2007 22:09 | Number of comments: 10 | Comments

Breastfeeding Childcare Daughter Domestic chaos Husband Parenting gurus Toys

PostingBaboushka

Definitions of an 'older mum' can vary wildly, not just from one country to another, but from region to region, family to family. What's old in one person's eyes can be positively youthful in someone else's. Thanks again to all who commented on Tuesday's posting and reminded me of this.

750pxRussianMatroshkanobg_Small.jpgHere's another good example. Apparently even today, in Russia, women tend to have babies before the age of 25, and women older than this are categorised by maternity units as 'elderly', or whatever the Russian is for 'over the hill'.  Dread to think what they'd make of new mums in their 40s. Stalin probably rounded them up and sent them to the Siberian salt mines in disgrace for pressing their withered ovaries into service one last time. Personally I blame all those matrioshka dolls they have. Such temptation to see if there's another little one waiting to emerge.

I discovered about Russian ideas on maternal age in Oliver James' book Affluenza, in which he explores why so many more people fixate on what they haven't got and seek to be someone they're not.

Not obviously a book where I expected to come across definitions of an 'older' mum. But maternal age is relevant here, insists James. He says he mentions childbearing age in Russia, because Russian women 'do not yet define their worth through paid work'. Many of them do work, but their primary focus remains on being mothers. Hence fewer of the tensions between work and family experienced by so many of their counterparts in Western Europe.

James lays the blame for some of our social ills at the door of poor childcare. His biggest bugbear is putting young children into nurseries before they're ready and even argues that our culture's restless dissatisfaction and obsession with 'having' rather than 'being'  is a byproduct of inadequate early child care that makes us insecure and needy.

He objects to mums leaving young children in nurseries or with childminders, arguing this causes long-term behavioural problems for the children in question, who find it difficult to form relationships and tend to base their sense of worth on external factors (exam grades, size and location of house, trendy gadgets). The problem with 'affluenza' is its many sufferers are never satisfied, no matter how much they achieve or own,  leaving them with an unquenchable sense of emptiness. Since Beanie, aged 17 months, goes to nursery twice a week, you can imagine how I felt when I read that.

Here is James on the evils of day care for young children: "The message from research is clear: under three a child is best off with one person, the same one every day and one who is responsive."

However, he's not unsympathetic to mothers: "The great problem [with being a mother] is the lack of status it attracts and our having been brainwashed into believing that only paid work is admirable. Unfortunately it will be rare that anyone other than your partners will give you the credit you deserve. But in its absence, remember this: however much you were raised to be a prize-hunter, intrinsic pleasure is far better for your emotional well-being. It may not seem so very often, but the authenticity, vivacity and playfulness of small children is hugely rewarding, a much greater boon than any number of promotions or pay rises."

So there we go.

Posted 20 September 2007 13:19 | Number of comments: 17 | Comments

Older mother Childcare Nursery Parenting gurus

PostingLot of it about

Some doctors don't like treating older mums-to-be, a midwife friend confided in me recently.

Why not? I wondered. "So many questions," she explained wisely. "The older, educated mums get on the Internet and winkle out every bit of information they can. Sometimes they know more than the doctors do. Makes the doctors nervous."

But the doctors have all that status that comes with their white coats, I pointed out. How could they be intimidated by a pregnant woman who's frightened herself silly on the net? "They're phasing white coats out," she told me. "White, you know. Gets so grubby. Nobody has time to wash them." So, how then do doctors manage to outwit their uppity patients? "Big words," she said succintly. Ah, words. That would do the trick.

Then I was chatting casually with another medic, a doctor, and mentioned my interest in the issues surrounding older mums. A lovely girl. Kindly, generous and competent. But she rolled her eyes at the mention of older mums. "There's certainly a lot of them about," she told me drily.

I shouldn't be surprised that age issues can lead to difficult dynamics between doctors and older mums. The other week I experienced it myself, when I saw a young female doctor, who didn't look a day older than 30, bless her. I couldn't help thinking no way was she old enough to understand about babies and miscarriage. Goodness knows what she thought of me.

I'm still reading Kate Mosse's excellent book Becoming a Mother, which has a small section on older first-time mothers. One of the things I like best about Mosse is that she's so iconoclastic, but in such a thoroughly thought-out and sensitive way it's hard to imagine anyone disagreeing with her as she proceeds to demolish one out-dated belief system after another.

I was glad to see she had words about how some members of the medical profession treat  mum-to-be over 35 as latter-day dinosaurs who are messing with Mother Nature, automatically labelling them 'high-risk'. Mosse discovered that psychologists at Bristol's Institute of Child Health had reviewed medical literature in this field, and discovered most of it hopelessly out of date.

According to Mosse, the Institute concluded: "Social and psychological factors were not taken into account and most research is out of date. We were also surprised at the very small samples that researchers used. The problem is that poor science of this type of then used to justify the label 'high risk'."

Given that overall life expectancy has changed so drastically over the last century, likewise health and nutrition, perhaps it's time some enterprising doctors revised their definitions of what it means to be an older mum. Having had Beanie aged 38, and not yet given up hope of having another baby, I've got more than passing interest in the subject. If anybody's heard of any research in this field, I'd be interested to know about it.

Posted 18 September 2007 21:54 | Number of comments: 13 | Comments

Older mother Parenting gurus Pregnancy

PostingWhy not to have children

scan0002_Small.jpg Interesting piece in The Times yesterday about a new bestseller by French author Corinne Maier called No Kid: 40 Reasons Not to Have Children. I say 'interesting' advisedly, if only because the story made me wonder how Maier's managing chez elle, where I imagine her two teenage children have presumably had something to say to their mum about breaking this social taboo. I don't know anyone who's dared to admit they don't want kids, so I quite admire Maier for tackling this thorny subject.

Despite its provocative title and tongue-in-cheek content, No Kid actually makes some sensible arguments, with Maier suggesting, for example, that it's a mistake to pity people who do not have children, when many of them have chosen a positive and sensible alternative to becoming parents. Better to label them child-free, rather than childless, she argues. Perhaps it's an issue of semantics, but I couldn't argue with the underlying sentiment.

The book apparently emerged from Maier's concern that no one is doing anything to temper an idealised view of motherhood fostered by two potent forces in her native France: the state, which wants more babies to help pay pensions, and the baby industry. Belonging to a generation of women who despair at their own inadequacy if their babies don't possess the most desirable audio-visual stimulatory toys of the moment, ('stimulation' being one of the current baby industry buzz words) I know what she means.

The book certainly does its best to counter any idealistic views, listing all the things parents have to give up when they have kids:

1. A full night's sleep,

2. A lie-in

3. Deciding to go to the cinema on the spur of the moment

4. Staying out later than midnight (babysitters have to be relieved)

5. Visiting a museum or exhibition (children start playing up).

Then there's the colossal strain on parental relationships to take into account, when having sex has to be dutifully squeezed into those tiny windows when neither partner is too exhausted even to contemplate it, when differences of opinion on the best way to warm a bottle of milk (before adding powder or after?) assume monumental proportions it would take a peace camp to resolve.

This sounds like a clever, sophisticated book; it's already climbed to the top of France's best-seller lists, and its publishers, Michalon, must be hoping it will do the same here in the UK, but even so, I still can't agree with its basic premise. Having a baby is fab. 

Posted 21 August 2007 14:28 | Number of comments: 10 | Comments

Parenting gurus Books Childcare Dilemmas Domestic chaos Etiquette Guilt Paradoxes

PostingLeave us mums alone

The children of working mothers are more likely to be obese or overweight, says a new study. Around a quarter of the 13,000 children studied by the Institute of Child Health in London were overweight or obese by the age of three. No prizes for guessing who's allegedly to blame.

"Long hours of maternal employment, rather than lack of any money, may impede young children's access to healthy foods and physical activity," said the researchers.

The more successful mothers are, the worse the problem, which I find hard to believe. Children in households earning £22,000 to £33,000 were 10% more likely to be overweight than in households earning under £11,000.

In the last 25 years stay-at-home mothers have fallen from nearly 55% of the total to just 21%.

Reading studies like this, I wonder why working mothers seem to attract more flak than convicted criminals/fraudsters/estate agents.

What's behind these studies that attempt to guilt-trip hard-working and loving mothers, doing their best to keep a roof over their families' head?

Why don't we see reports criticising the government for lack of affordable, flood-free UK housing that would mean more mums could stay at home?

Or a study calling for better-paid, higher-status part-time jobs, with more flexible working, that would mean fewer parents have to work full-time?

Or more criticism of the food giants that make their money peddling fatty convenience foods to young kids? 

Leave us mums alone, I say.

Posted 25 July 2007 12:51 | Number of comments: 21 | Comments

Angst Food Health Parenting gurus Work Work vs mothering

PostingNaughty corner

Flying daleks hold few terrors for me nowadays. The only television that really scares me concentrates on small children with behavioural issues. Not many shows are more alarming for me than those featuring a 'naughty corner'. Luckily, The Bean is only 15 months old and, so far, reassuringly normal in her behaviour. When I see the 'corner' on telly I fear it as the possible shape of Things to Come.

The sight of Supernanny riding round America from one maladjusted mansion to the next in that ridiculous black cab of hers makes me worry that one day I might end up on one of these programmes. Obviously sans the ranch-style mansion. Or any decent parking for the cab. Plus up here people might try and hire it. Instead of marvel at it as a foreign novelty, as they properly ought. But with an uncontrollable child. While upstairs I act contrite as Supernanny tells me where I've gone wrong.

Watching these programmes I fear I'll appear on them one day, a husk, defeated by my own defective parenting. Sent to the parental naughty corner that is humiliation on national television. And made to stay there for a minute of every year of my age. Which in my case would mean nearly 40 minutes of advice from Mary Poppins.

Programmes like Supernanny make me fear that unless I get this parenting business absolutely right, then in a couple of years The Bean might win some kind of infant ASBO the government will have been forced to introduce, to combat the unruly pre-schoolers ruling the domestic roost. Perhaps called a BASBO. There, I knew I couldn't write anything about parenting without resorting to acronyms.

The ASBO for pre-school kids would be a kind of souped-up, institutional 'naughty corner'. Bans on hoods on the cardigans their grannies knitted. A large pacifier sign stamped on the front door to indicate naughtiness within. Community toddles to keep them from hanging round softplays with too much time on their hands. Curfews on drinking babycinos after certain hours. I can't see it catching on as a badge of honour in NCT circles.

When Supernanny US came on the other week, my husband did his utmost to make me switch channels, as he knows my fears well. I didn't listen to him and watched a restaurant owner and his wife meekly receive advice on the many errors of their slack parenting ways.

The damage was done. The next day I was a little bit stricter with The Bean than I'd normally be, thinking I'd better set some limits before Jo Frost's taxi arrived at the door. She was playing on the floor in the kitchen, while I tidied up. Sensing my attention was elsewhere, she made a beeline for a kitchen cupboard containing lots of precious china that we haven't got round to child-proofing yet. When we moved into our flat, The Bean hadn't arrived. So I didn't know back then it was a stupid idea to put china in cupboards at ground level when you have a child.

Just so you know I am not a complete spoilsport, I do allow her to put things in the washing machine. These range from tea-towels to toy bricks and nappy cream. She then enjoys unloading them, in a methodical fashion, before reloading them in the barrel of the washing machine. But I try to keep her away from cupboards where she could break the contents, or hurt herself.

"NO!" I thundered at her, louder than I normally would. "We do NOT go in that cupboard." All credit to her, she smiled up at me, quite unmoved, and went back to sucking on the packet of her Baby Bonjela teething gel. Her mother might deserve some time on the naughty corner. But she's doing just fine.

Posted 16 July 2007 00:13 | Number of comments: 8 | Comments

Angst Daughter Home Parenting gurus

PostingBaby police

Following my mid-week rant about acronyms polluting the world of mothering, one of my correspondents has gamely suggested I call myself Acromum. I'm flattered!

I could use the small remnants of my time not spent blogging, working or looking after The Bean, to fight acronyms wherever I see them, armed with nothing more than a hefty changing bag,  toddler reins, broccoli spears and some smelly old nappies.

That should bring people back to earth and get them to drop these silly titles like SAHM and WAHM.

The ultimate deterrant, of course, would be disemvowelling.

If I had an arch-enemy, perhaps someone from the acronym-rich military or medical professions, or even someone over at the Parenting Police HQ - Ofmum -  they could fight by wheeling out a copy of the Book of Acronyms that Ingenious Rose alerted me to.

At the sight of the dreaded volume, I would instantly wither into a pile of meaningless letters, spouting received wisdom set down by well-meaning but mostly childless bureacrats who equate life for a newborn in rural, war-torn Africa with arriving in a neurotic, middle-class family in the Edinburgh New Town.

Much of the advice on breastfeeding in the UK comes from global organisations concerned primarily with developing countries. Yet it gets applied across the board in developed, as well as poorer regions, even though the worst many of us have to contend with is a scrap over parking places in this city. Not exactly equivalent to civil war and the West Side Boys in Africa.

Though  talking of conflict, there's also the issue of differing parental opinions on the finer technicalities of parenting. For example, how best to warm a bottle - which can lead to vicious, internecine guerilla warfare.

 "Don't add the powder before you heat the water, I've told you a million times!"

"What difference does that make? You're undermining my parenting!"

 "You've got to add the powder afterwards. It's the microbes in the milk."

"Microbes? You're making this up. Oh, don't tell me you read it in one of your books."

Guess we forgot to be grateful there was no trip to a dank well involved. And took sterile water for granted.

Perhaps the Ofmum bureaucrats are right - and there's something to be said for one-size-fits-all parenting (oh dear, almost felt an acronym coming on there) - with baby police around the world marching to the same step.

Then again, important differences remain. At least in Africa the enemy isn't someone who's meant to be on your own side.

Posted 07 July 2007 11:41 | Number of comments: 10 | Comments

Breastfeeding Dads Edinburgh Husband Parenting gurus Perfectionism Work at Home Mum

PostingDisemvowelling

I'm not a girl who's easily scared of acronyms - but it would have been nice to have some warning before I became a mum that my life as a parent, especially a blogging parent, would be dominated by them. Take your pick - are you a Stay at Home Mum (SAHM), Work at Home Mum (WAHM), or just plain sahd?  We all have to be something, it seems.

No offence to my fellow blogger Stay at Home Dad, who's got a nice sense of humour and doesn't seem to take these things too seriously, but is this really how we're supposed to define ourselves as human beings?

It's almost enough to make me want to claim I'm a 'homemaker'. Another fellow blogger, Dooce, has a nice variation on what SAHM might stand for. I'm too inhibited to spell it out here.

Today I came across a new acronym - FTBCWM - for Full-Time By Choice Working Mother. Or EOE, for Embodiment of Evil, in certain circles. Fairly trips off the tongue, doesn't it?

I'm thinking of inventing my own title - PTBCAHWM. Part-Time by Choice at Home Working Mum. The hyphenation's a nightmare. But it fairly sums up my working day. And the world of the working mum is consonant-rich and vowel-poor, you see. My title could, alternatively, be a new transcription of a 5am seagull cry as the beast swoops on our rubbish bags.

Or it could stand for Poor in Time, Bewildered and Confused, At Home When Money permits. That could cover a lot of mothers, I reckon.

If you don't believe me about these titles then have a look over at Alpha Mummy, where a real old cat fight has broken out between stay at home mums and workers. The fights's got so nasty it's ended with one of the more vitriolic participants being disemvowelled - the first time I've ever come across this gruesome process outside medieval England. We were none of us overly endowed with vowels in this battle to start with.

It's not that I have a problem with acronyms in themselves. I mean, I fell in love with and married a paid-up geek. Don't laugh, but our courtship included word games based on car number plates we spotted as we strolled along. The Bean and I share our home with shelves of books with titles like XML Primer Plus, C# for Beginners, ASP.NET and XSLT.  They give me indigestion when I so much as look at them. Don't even get me started on the stash of computing books in the bathroom.

But I could never tell anyone who asked me what I do: "I am a WAHM. A Work at Home Mother." It'd be like being some tragic pop groupie from the 1980s, in denial that George Michael was gay, bouncing about in leg-warmers, ra-ra skirts and feathered earrings.

But when did all this nonsense about parenting types start? And why do we need these silly titles?

Maybe we invented the titles to give ourselves a sense of identity. Just like we coined the phrase 'parenting' for the stuff our own mothers used to do with no other job description besides 'mother'.

When The Bean arrived 15 months ago, people stopped asking me what I did for a living.

Instead, they started saying: "And what does your husband do?" As if The Bean's beaming presence at my side meant I was out of the job market for a while, and if they wanted to know about our financial status they'd need to check on her dad's earning power.

Maybe other women had the same experience, felt the same way, and so dreamt up these titles to give themselves more status.

I don't know what the people who inquired about husband's job were hoping for, but when I told them he was in IT, their faces generally went blank and they'd change the subject. It was sort of a relief. I don't have much IT small talk. Obviously they didn't either. Maybe I should have said: "He's a Mobster dad. Come on, you know, M-O-B. Mainly Office Bound." Or MOB for Man Overboard. Now that would have been a bit more accurate for the crazy early months after The Bean arrived.

Posted 04 July 2007 21:06 | Number of comments: 28 | Comments

Angst Daughter Husband Parenting gurus Work Work vs mothering Work at Home Mum

PostingSleep no more

The Bean is scrabbling at a kitchen cupboard door that her dad and I have barred against her. She tugs at the shiny cream surface, tugs again harder, loses her balance, teeters for a moment, then falls backwards onto her bottom. She emits a shriek of distress and indignation. Mishaps like this happen approximately twenty times daily, but don't normally bother her. On this occasion, however, because she is tired, the fall causes her alarm and distress. It is 9.30am, and we both know she is upset because she's now been up for two and a half hours and is due her morning nap. I silently wonder again how the researchers of a large US university could have decided in their infinite wisdom that letting young children nap could be harmful for them.

Looking smaller than usual sat down on the floor, she lifts up her arms to signal she wants to be held. I bend down to pick her up, cuddle her close to me, and carry my small, disconsolate daughter through to her bedroom, where I draw the window shutters, and lay out her sleep bag in her cot ready for her. She is too tired even to demand to play with her dreamcatcher or inspect her flowery chicken mobile that hangs from the ceiling. Go straight to the cot. Do not pass the toy basket. Do not pause to play with festive Santa bib.

I lift her into the cot, get her left arm into the hole of the sleep bag, then manage to remove her right-hand thumb from her mouth long enough to get the other arm into the bag. In another well-honoured part of our morning ritual she reaches out for the well-chewed form of Mr Bear, her faithful bed-time companion, clutches him to her, and reinserts her thumb in her mouth. "I'll be back when you've had a sleep," I tell her, but she's not listening. She's already shut her eyes, curled onto her side, and is slurping on her thumb, zoned out.

Every morning that The Bean is at home (not nursery) she has a nap on similar lines to this one she had this morning. Not just so that I can use the time to clean, do emails, chat on the phone or catch up on work, though, my goodness, it's great to have the chance to do that, but because she needs the rest, otherwise life becomes too much for her. She hasn't got the energy yet to get through a full day without a sleep top-up.

But woe betide me! For now research from Florida University says that daytime napping prevents children sleeping well at night - and could even impair mental performance. They say children's puzzle-solving abilities can deteriorate when they take longer daytime naps. I might have known it. Is there no area of parenting free of some controversial new recommendation? Pregnancy, toys, food, sleep.... none of it simple, all filled with advice from the so-called 'experts'. Who could be more 'expert' on whether my daughter needs a nap than me and her?

Now, I haven't read the full findings of the Florida survey, which I'm sure is well-intentioned and thoroughly researched. I read a summary of its findings over on Mumsnet. But the idea that day-time naps are harmful completely contradicts my personal experience. There's no way The Bean - 14 months old - could cope with a day lasting from 7am to 7pm without at least one nap. She'd be hysterical and grumpy.

This latest research into naps reminds me of last week's story that pureed food was bad for babies. What have we parents done to deserve so many scare stories that overturn so much received wisdom? Maybe the answer is that young (well, okay, I'm no spring chicken, nearly 40, so not that young) parents are a good target market for this material - you know, largely clueless, impressionable, desperate to do their best, lacking instruction manual or, indeed, clear instructions from the child herself. Ready to listen to anything that promises The Solution. Well, that's what I'm like, though in fairness I've gained a lot in confidence over the past months.

But it seems like the advice to parents changes all the time. This year's new parents are told to put baby to sleep on his back, scared witless by stories about what might happen if they don't. The previous generation was given exactly the same lines about how babies should sleep on their fronts, for the same reasons. In another ten years the 'experts' will doubtless change the advice again - but stick with the same dire warnings.

What really gets to me is that all these parenting gurus like to impart their advice with the message that if you don't follow it to the letter, disastrous consequences will ensue - with the pureed food research the authors said babies could get addicted to gloop, constipated and eventually obese. That surely can't be true, can it? In this instance, it's the threat of impaired mental performance. I don't know. Maybe they're right, and I'm stupid and cynical to suspect otherwise. What do other people think? Are we right to give our children day-time naps? Are we being preyed on by a parenting advisory industry?

Posted 29 June 2007 23:09 | Number of comments: 13 | Comments

Daughter Dilemmas Health Home Parenting gurus Play

PostingGiant step

The Bean has started walking. Short, wobbly steps that end with an abrupt sit-down on her well-cushioned bottom.

This should be unadulterated good news. My gullibility concerning parenting gurus and their writing means it's not.

Earlier this week I read a piece in New York Magazine called The Inverse Power of Praise by Po Bronson. A big mistake on my part. 

It reports that recent US research shows too much praise can make children insecure and risk-averse.

So I bite back any "Well done!" as daughter totters the width of the kitchen. I'm sparing in telling her how proud I am of her.

The research suggests children do better when praised for effort - something they can control and work on - rather than innate intelligence.

Why don't children arrive with instruction manuals that tells parents what to do - complete with a nice glossary explaining all their cries? Then I'd be less vulnerable to whatever the latest survey tells me.

Now, of course, I've got myself in such a muddle I don't know what to say to her.

Posted 22 June 2007 14:06 | Number of comments: 12 | Comments

Childcare Daughter Dilemmas Etiquette Parenting gurus

PostingNever-good-enough Mum

You just can't get it right as a parent. Hours of my life spent grafting at the coal face of motherhood, hacking up wholesome organic vegetables and reducing them to pureed slime, of which my daughter might, on a good day, consent to eat a grudging spoonful, and now look what happens.

I finally master an RSS feed from the BBC and one of the first things I see today is the latest directive from Mothering HQ telling me I've wasted my time, my sweet potatoes and my freezer space by pureeing all this food.

In all honesty I always knew The Bean preferred fromage frais to anything I made. Now it seems that pureed food is not just unpalatable, but bad, bad, bad.

For it seems purees are in fact the work of evil food manufacturers who want parents in their commercial  thrall for years to come.

The Unicef Baby-Friendly Initiative almost equates pureeing food with  formula-milk makers peddling their evil powder to third-world countries.

Truly, motherhood and martyrdom go hand in hand. I know now how poor old St Sebastian must have felt. Not so much plugged full of unfriendly arrows, as, in my case, pierced to the heart by my own Moulinex whizzing wand, stoned by a flurry of small plastic food receptacles, shamed in the village stocks by the liberal daubing of pureed parsnip thrown at me by my own daughter.

Like all parenting gurus, Unicef wheels out a battery of dire consequences for any parents foolish enough to consider ignoring the received wisdom on pureeing.

You see, babies get addicted to pureed food.

And spoon-feeding babies pureed food is unnatural and unnecessary.

Why, it could delay the onset of their chewing skills. Babies unlucky enough to be fed pureed food by their reckless parents have little control over how much they eat.

Which in turn makes them vulnerable to getting blocked up. Oh, and they could also become fussy eaters in later life.

If Unicef had their way babies would survive on a milk-only diet for six months and then move straight onto solids. Bypassing evil gloop altogether.

I've yet to meet a mother who made it to the six-month mark before breaking out the Organix baby rice. If anyone reading this has a child who made it that far on milk alone, I congratulate you. Please could you let the rest of us know how you managed it.

So, here's my idea, how about we expand the Unicef remit. It could include not just a Baby-Friendly Initiative, but a Mother-Friendly one too.

Ideally, one that publishes research proving what we all know - that once babies are onto baby rice at four or five months, their mums can get a decent night's sleep, without waking twice a night to open up the mini-bar.

Actually, no, forget about baby rice. If I'd known Unicef's ideas on purees sooner there'd have been no mulched-up carrots or rice. No, I'd have served up a nice, tasty steak and chips to my daughter. Start as you mean to go on. Medium rare, I think.... Softer on the (non-existent) teeth that way.

Posted 19 June 2007 02:38 | Number of comments: 22 | Comments

Daughter Food Mistakes Parenting gurus Perfectionism Breastfeeding

PostingVicious circle

My heart sank this morning when I read in The Times about yet another pregnancy survey that will alarm many mothers and mothers-to-be. Apparently women who suffer stress in pregnancy transmit their anxiety to their unborn child from as early as 17 weeks. Stress levels in foetuses as young as four months old rise and fall in line with those of their mothers.

The Times quotes a midwife for Tommy's, the baby charity, saying: "What is now clear is that high levels of stress in pregnancy can in some cases be detrimental to the health of the baby and to remain as stress-free as possible is certainly important."

The researchers, though doubtless well-meaning, seem to have forgotten something important in all this - stress is part and parcel of being pregnant. Pregnant women are biologically programmed to worry about anything that might present a danger to them or their child(ren) - and pregnancy is a stressful time. I fear this research could make many mothers feel bad about themselves.

Professor Vivette Glover of Imperial College London, who carried out the research, has suggested previously that the greater the stress felt by a mother, the lower her baby's IQ. The babies of stressed mothers are also more likely to be anxious and show signs of attention-deficit disorder.

In fairness, medical staff have responded to the findings by asking the family, friends and employers of pregnant women to give adequate support and reassurance during their pregnancy.

Consultant obstetrician Pampa Sarkar who worked with Professor Glover on the research is quoted in The Times saying: "We do not wish to unduly worry  pregnant women. It should be remembered that one of the best ways for people to avoid general stress is to lead a healthy, balanced lifestyle."

Pregnancy is stressful at the best of times, even with a supportive family. Will the baby be okay? How will I cope? Will I be a good mother? How will my relationship with my husband change? Will he still fancy me? What will the birth be like? What about my work? Will we be okay on one income? How will wider family politics change? What on earth have I got myself into? Will I ever get a good night's sleep again? Why has he got all the duvet on his side?

When I was pregnant the last thing I needed was someone coming along to tell me I shouldn't be stressed, because it might harm the baby. There's no escaping that life can be stressful, especially with a battery of people trying to take control of your body. In fact, I felt quite stressed just reading this report.

Posted 01 June 2007 09:36 | Number of comments: 8 | Comments

Angst Guilt Parenting gurus Perfectionism Pregnancy

PostingFeminine mistakes

An article on the excellent News for Parents site reports that an American writer has stirred up controversy with a book arguing that mothers who don't work could be risking their financial security, as well as their happiness.

In The Feminine Mistake, Vanity Fair journalist Leslie Bennetts warns stay-at-home mums that their decision to give up economic self-sufficiency and rely on their partner could have disastrous consequences.

The book's title's an ironic nod to fellow American writer Betty Friedan's 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, the groundbreaking work credited with launching the feminist movement. The book attacked the idea a husband and children were all a woman needed for fulfillment.

The latest book's stirred up a hornet's nest in the US, where according to poor Bennetts, stay-at-home mums are "burning up the blogosphere denouncing me". Last time I checked there were no fewer than 68 heated reviews of the book on Amazon alone, most of them huffy and defensive, all defending the writer's personal choices on working or not working.

Bennetts, herself a working mum, insists she only wants to alert women to dangers in giving up work to rely on a partner's income, like divorce, or a husband losing his job. My fellow blogger Omega Mum over at 3kidsnojob can tell you all about the latter scenario in her entertaining account of what happens when a husband loses his job, in their case through no fault of his own.

Bennetts also says that women who take career breaks planning to get back to work once the kids are ready should know they will take a huge salary hit - and might not get back to the same level at all. And there's also the sense of self-worth that women can gain outside the home. Plus pension entitlement. I'll see what she says about part-time work-at-home mums, and let you know about that.

The report was mostly manna to my web-weary eyes after a sorry day filling up the depleted Mother at Large household coffers. But why do I need a US author I've never even met to validate my parenting choices? Why do I need to read this to feel okay about how I arrange my life? Am I the only mother who needs approval from a book I've not yet read for choosing to work? I'd like to see a time when women can make career decisions without reference to a battery of parenting experts. Then again, maybe most women already do.

Posted 30 May 2007 22:44 | Number of comments: 6 | Comments

Angst Childcare Dilemmas Home working Nursery Work Work vs mothering Parenting gurus

PostingThe parenting paradox

You just can't win as a parent. It was my health visitor who explained the parenting paradox to me. If you take your child to ballet/football then you're labelled pushy, she explained. If you don't, you'll feel guilty for not encouraging them. Know the sort of thing I mean? Whatever you do, you can't win.

Fellow Edinburgh blogger Littlemummy did an amusing posting the other week on Socially Recognised Parenting Standards. Reading it made me realise we parents will never achieve parenting perfection, because no ordinary human could ever attain the standards we set ourselves.

I started thinking about the never-ending series of exacting rules and parenting commandments that all contradict and conflict with each other. So even if you manage by some feat of superhuman stamina to meet one of them, then you'll be breaking another at the same time. I suppose the only way round this is to concentrate on what we each think is right, and ignore other people's ideas, however well-meant.

These are a few thoughts on some of the main parenting paradoxes

Breastfeeding

Any young mum can tell you of the immense pressure to breastfeed a new baby. Not so many people talk about how only a few months later there's similar pressure to stop. In hospital after having my daughter my boobs became public property, staff were so keen for me to learn this womanly art. Hands came from everywhere to latch the baby on. Someone even told me to follow the "nose to nipple" mantra - a policy that was to cost my poor nipples untold anguish. Then, just about as soon as I got breastfeeding going smoothly, it seemed to be time to stop. No sooner had we got past the toe-curling agony stage of nipple guards and Lansinoh cream, than people were saying things like: "You've got to wonder who's benefitting from this - the mother or the baby."

Mother-infant bonding

Pick up any of the legions of parenting books available now and you'll read about the virtues of responsive attachment parenting, that involves "baby wearing", baby massage, skin-on-skin contact, and breastfeeding. The idea is these practices supposedly promote a strong bond between mother and infant. Fast forward only a few months later and it's all about fostering a healthy sense of individuality and self-assertion on the baby's part, with dark looks cast at clingy babies. How much is a good thing? When does a good thing turn into something bad? How do you get the balance right? Well, it seems you can't, because the goal posts are always moving.

Work vs parenting

This works a bit like this: you're not quite recognised as a proper human being or accorded any status if, as a mother, you don't do some form of paid work, but if on the other hand you do work then you must also express conflict, regret and guilt for doing so. Truly, no-win all round.

Any mother who loves going to work because they enjoy the banter, get a rest, earn lovely dosh to spend on nice things and can go to the loo alone never admits as much, but instead expresses stoical regret that her life has worked out this way, as if it happened outwith her control.

There's more on this theme over at The Bad Mothers' Club. Any thoughts on other parenting paradoxes?

Posted 27 May 2007 16:37 | Number of comments: 9 | Comments

Angst Breastfeeding Daughter Dilemmas Guilt Paradoxes Parenting gurus Work Work vs mothering