Mamas and Papas

Hi everyone.

So I have two things to talk about, I'm not in the most jovial of moods so you'll have to find the gags hidden in the bitter sarcasm of the post this time. Ok? Good. Ok.

1. Mamas and Papas - the pushchair saga.

Hats off to M&P this week, we didn't have the receipt for the broken buggy but they found us on file, sent a courier to collect it, repaired a whole heap of bits and replaced other bits that weren't even broken then couriered it back to us all for free. This was OUTSIDE of the 1 year warranty but within the 2 year aftercare service. Everyone was completely helpful and polite and I was most impressed. So that's that one, if you ever need to buy a buggy I would utterly recommend them as a company. The blog title is sort of aimed to get googlers on their side, I do like a nice investment in customer service training. (they did miss the pickup the first time because our house is hard to find and they do take forever to answer the phone but I'll forgive that and assume they are working on it)

2. Mamas and Papas - Oh! The sexism!

This happened ages ago: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/stayathome-mothers-may-get-more-support-says-david-cameron-2097967.html

then more recently this happened:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9942602/David-Camerons-must-end-astounding-discrimination-against-stay-at-home-mothers-says-charity.html

Now there are two issues at stake here and I care a lot about both of them. the first is obvious - childcare is incredibly expensive. Additionally, some children completely love it (I got all psyched up for the "no mummy don't leave me" tears and was actually a little disappointed by the distant cry of "eat my dust" I was given when I dropped him off for his first day at creche. He's never ever been sad to be left and he loves all his friends and the lady who looks after him. We don't NEED to put him in childcare, but we do for his own social wellbeing and growth)

Some parents were actual whole people before they had children, and part of that was them having a job. Having a job, your particular job, can be a huge facet of your identity and granted that when you become a parent you have to extend what defines you to include 'parent', really that's not that unusual. We have so many labels and identities anyway; friend, colleague, child, neighbour...it doesn't always mean a radical shift in self-image to add another. Different people have different priorities and we live in a world where we encourage young people to value themselves in a lot of different ways (ok, we do in education, in the actual world they are pretty much told just to be sexy but that's another blog) so we should be positively embracing the fact that we have the freedom in law at least to choose whether we prioritise differing aspects of our selfhood over others. Note that I didn't say prioritise our CHILDREN, I mean prioritise ourselves. I have a job and I'm a mother. I don't feel like I'm juggling the two or that they get in the way of each other. Monday-Friday 8-4 I am an employee and my job is my priority. Before and after that I am primarily a mother and I prioritise the children. I try not to take my home life to work and I try not to take my work life home. As much as possible.

For David Cameron, or anyone for that matter, to suggest that parents who stay at home to look after their children are better or worse at being citizens or employees or parents is absurd, rude and morally dubious. Some children NEED to be looked after by their own parents and some children NEED to be socialising with other children in a childcare setting. Some parents NEED to work to maintain their already existing sense of identity and some parents NEED to stay home with their children because they are allowed to choose to prioritise that aspect of their identity.

Lay off the working parents, lay off the stay at home parents and for the love of St Margot in a rickshaw will you PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop acting like you're doing the world a favour by offering shared parental leave "so that mothers can go back to work". On to my second gripe with the world. The sexism of it all.

Some issues are undoubtedly 'women's issues'. Abortion isn't something a man will ever have to go through...but it is shockingly a majority vote by men that continues to restrict women's options. Childbirth isn't something men will ever have to go through - you don't see massive poster campaigns pushing a "natural vasectomy -  all the cutting none of the anaesthetic" do you? No man would be expected to go through anything like childbirth without pain relief, but because it's women and because it's cheaper we are sold a line that it is in some way morally more acceptable to grunt and sweat and well done you for only having a little bit of gas and air right at the end.
Fuck you, to be honest, I've done it twice now and feel a total fool. If you are reading this and have not yet had a baby, as soon as you feel your first contraction get straight to the hospital, grab the inevitably male doctor by the testicles and squeeze until he sanctions the epidural.

Breastfeeding is a women's issue - men can actually breastfeed as it goes, but the equipment takes longer to get ready so I don't think there's much of an argument to promote it as the norm but I should at least mention that. In the same way as childbirth, women are heavily pressured into breastfeeding and not enough government money is invested into the alternatives. Women are harshly judged if they don't WANT to breastfeed and it isn't even subtle when arguments are used to persuade and guilt-trip women by explicitly stating how much money the NHS would save if more women breast fed. How much money would the NHS save if they didn't have to deal with drunken fights outside pubs, suspicious items becoming...ahem...lodged in places...and victims of domestic abuse and rape? Men cost the NHS money too y'know and you don't see men crying about having to let another human rip their nipples off for the sake of a few pennies do you? Well rarely.

Childcare, who looks after children, who goes to work and who is the primary carer is NOT A WOMEN'S ISSUE. I don't know about you but I had two people make my children and one of us is a man. There is actually no legitimate reason on Earth why it should be an assumption that women stay at home and the conflation of terms "stay at home parent" and "stay at home mother" in the articles above is utterly infuriating. My husband stays home with the children. We only got married at all because we knew a tory tax break was on the horizon for married couples but no, didn't come. And now we're all buggered aren't we?

The government should be doing more to help with childcare, but they need to stop stigmatising, stereotyping and shaming women in the process too. It's disgusting and I hate it.

*Insert your favourite joke here*