Why are so many women suddenly boasting they’re SLUMMY MUMMIES?
Feeding their toddlers fish fingers — still frozen. Potty mouthed rants about little ones online. Even swigging gin from their baby’s cups . . .
WHEN Georgian artist William Hogarth wanted to depict the horrors of his time, he did so in the etching Gin Lane, showing the consequences of drunkenness on a London street.
Centre stage was an inebriated mother, breast bare, so sozzled on dirt-cheap gin that she has dropped the child she is attempting to feed headfirst down stone steps, to a presumed grisly death.
In the 18th century this was considered a sign of how far society had plummeted.
So what should we make of the fact that, more than 250 years on, there is a booming trend in women confessing to their gin-soaked shortcomings as mothers, and writing books documenting how terrible they are at parenting and which storm up the bestseller lists?
In this race to the bottom to prove yourself the worst mother ever, women compete to seem incapable of caring for their children’s basic needs, revolted by the reality of changing nappies or simply bored to tears by the monotonous routine of bringing up a little one. On no account can you feel fulfilled as a mother, or be adept at caring for your children.
Heaven forbid you should let slip any sign of pride, standards or pushiness. Confessing that you’ve had a good day with the children, got homework completed on time and managed to fit in a bit of piano practice would earn you instant dismissal from the club.
Take Brighton mother Katie Kirby’s bestselling book for imperfect parents — called, somewhat ironically, Hurrah For Gin — which is filled with gems such as: ‘I love my kids always, I like them sometimes, and I want to spend time with them when I am hungover — never.’
Sarah Turner, Exeter-based author of The Unmumsy Mum and mother to two young boys, describes two of the fundamental adjustments required for motherhood as ‘less Jagerbomb drinking’ and ‘inevitable contact with another human’s snot/sick/s**t’.
One blogger even happily confessed to being so lazy, she gave her toddler a fish finger straight from the freezer to eat.
And I can’t help feeling that Ellie Gibson and Helen Thorn should have had a scintilla more shame and not told the world about opening the door to a delivery man while ‘still attached to the electric breast pump, boobs out and dripping’ in their book, the horribly titled Scummy Mummy. Ellie is a video games journalist from London with two young sons and a husband called Pete, while Helen, originally from Australia, now lives in the UK with her husband Will and two children aged eight and five.
And it’s not just books. There are legions of bloggers, all in a battle to prove why they are the most slapdash mother — backed up by ‘hilarious’ pictures of their halfdressed children on the school run, clutching sandwich bags of dry cereal to eat because Mummy was too busy looking at Facebook to feed them a proper breakfast.
Once they are tucked away at school, the mothers eagerly log on to parenting forums where, under the cloak of anonymity, they compete to be the most outrageous and foulmouthed in the pack.
A recent Mumsnet discussion prompted by the ‘come-on’ question ‘What do your children do that annoys you most?’ drew some horrible responses.
‘I hate the way he prefixes every f ***** g thing he says with the word “Mum”,’ whines one. ‘Jumping on the sofa and being so bloody loud,’ moans another. ‘Not sleeping in their own f ***** g bed,’ adds another.
Forget competing to be the most sharp-elbowed, ambitious mother — and I know a lot about that, having written a parenting manual entitled The Pushy Mother’s Guide. Today you must be the slummiest mummy of them all, and pretend to absolutely hate it, to have any sort of social currency.
The world of advertising has caught the trend, too. One advert for Amazon’s electronic ‘personal assistant’ Alexa shows a baby in a highchair demolishing and scattering a bowl of pasta. Then you hear the mother asking: ‘Alexa, how many minutes in 18 years?’
In a way, I can understand this movement. It is a reaction against the dishonesty of celebrity mums who pretend to have achieved family perfection in their artfully cultivated press and social media images.
TrUE, the reality of motherhood is not what Hello! magazine would suggest; pregnancy is rather harder than showing off your perfect bump through green net curtains a la Beyonce, or wafting around in designerwear like Amal Clooney and rosie Huntington-Whiteley.
And I appreciate how this ‘honesty’ could make new mums feel less isolated and more reassured, and old-hand mums feel entertained.
But there’s the rub. In a way, these books are just as deceitful as the celebrity mothering myth they aim to puncture.
Their target audience — mostly new mothers — is given the frankly dishonest message that bringing up a baby is nothing more than a pooey, pukey, wine or gin-drinking wheeze. In this dumbed-down world you need no brainpower or compassion to be a mother, just a clock ticking down to your nightly wine o’clock. And I’d hazard a guess that the children of these resentful, gin-soaked mothers — who are, in reality, educated middle-class authors — are actually very well cared for, enjoy organic fruit and vegetables and sleep in clean pyjamas.
And as they slumber, Mummy is more likely to be working hard at her laptop than smashed off her face in front of the TV.
To me, it all rather smacks of that annoying child in your class at school who bragged that she hadn’t done a jot of revision but was secretly beavering away and achieving amazing results.
More than the apparent dishonesty, though, what really annoys me is how these books patronise women by suggesting that a home-cooked meal, laundered baby clothes and clean nappies are beyond the wit of most mums.
They preach that mums who aspire to achieving such things are nothing more than saddos.
This is the new feminist front, it seems: not only can we no longer be happy just to be housewives, but we should find the challenge of raising a child so beneath us that we shouldn’t even try.
Because the narrative of the whingeing, wine-drinking mum enduring ‘hellidays’ with her young family is an implied put-down of well-organised mums who love spending time with their children. Mums like me, who managed to stay sober for long enough to play, bake and paint with her children.
DON’T get me wrong. I’m not saying I don’t understand that motherhood can be a chaotic and sometimes messy business. I had four children under three at one stage, and in the early years of taking care of them there was plenty of trial and error going on in my house.
But the truth is you can’t really be a slummy mummy without bordering on being neglectful. Wine-soaked parents with dirty, undernourished children who snarl expletives are a matter for concern, not funny fodder, as even Hogarth managed to see back in 1751.
Indeed, a kind of dimwit narcissism abounds in this ‘look at me, I’m a terrible parent’ shtick. It views the trials and tribulations of parenthood as nothing more than rich pickings for personalised ‘laugh out loud’ moments to share among your social media followers.
Your child having a bout of diarrhoea or bringing nits home shouldn’t just be an opportunity to burnish your bad mother credentials. After all, your children deserve dignity, too.
Perhaps what really irritates me about the boom in anti-mothering manuals is that their constant pastiche of failing at the tough challenges of basic motherhood is really just selfish moaning in another guise. Complaining about the irritations of exploding nappies and endless breast-feeding is just another way for some women to tell the world that they think they are above such drudgery.
However, these arrogant women shouldn’t forget that, as well as being hard, having a new baby is a gift.
It’s precious. Those early years should be cherished, even when you’re sleep-deprived or struggling to manage a little one who has yet another tummy bug.
All new mums, notwithstanding how sore, tired and fearful they are, also experience a sense of wonder about their baby. But that wonder is at risk of being drowned out if the only background noise from other mothers tells you you’re probably going to be a terrible parent just like them, resenting every moment your child keeps you from the gin bottle.
Those moaners should remember that there are many women who long for the experience of holding a baby
in their arms and are, for one reason or another, denied it.
When my four children were tiny, I had cancer and ended up being treated in a hospital isolation ward. I was separated from them for more than a month.
In there, hooked up to chemo, I didn’t dream of another glass of pinot grigio or of having a massage and me-time if I was lucky enough to get better. I longed to do the school run, change nappies, mash bananas and do the very best I could for my family.
The modern Gin Lane mothers should pause in their feverish mockery of motherhood and remember that, for women like me, it is all we ever dreamed of.
KATIE KIRBY
MOTHER of two boys, based in Brighton. Started her blog, hurrah For Gin, in 2013 while on maternity leave and ‘probably under the influence of gin’.
Last year, it was published as a book with cartoon drawings by hodder & Stoughton under the same name and described as being for ‘perfectly imperfect parents’. It made the Sunday Times bestseller list. She has more than 75,000 Instagram followers.
SHE SAYS: ‘We all know children are a gift! It’s just that they are like a very expensive gift all of your family chipped in to get you as a surprise; an over-the-top, gaudy bracelet that you will have to wear in public every day even though you’re not sure you like it very much.
‘You see, everyone changes when they have kids. You can’t not. But it doesn’t have to change the very essence of who you are.
‘You just need to get used to surreptitiously drinking gin from a sippy cup during rhyme Time. here are a few of the kind of qualities that would attract me to another mum: the one who brings wine to the antenatal group picnic and is totally unapologetic about it; the one who doesn’t do a sharp intake of breath because I refer to my kid as an a***hole.’
SARAH TURNER
Author of Sunday Times bestsellers The unmumsy Mum and The unmumsy Mum Diary. regular blogger of posts such as: ‘The parenting resolutions we can’t keep (F**k you supermom).’
Mother of henry and Jude, who are fans of creating ‘f ***** g obstacle courses’ with their toys around the house, she says.
She may not boast about boozing, but her tell-it-like-it-is approach has attracted more than 200,000 Instagram followers.
SHE SAYS: ‘The night feed in five psychological stages. Stage 4: rage… You angrily turn the night light on, “accidentally” kick husband in the ribs and declare, “how is he f ***** g hungry? Why is he being such a d**k?”
‘Back in the land of the living room, at least one half of my offspring is kicking off and I am left wondering whether 8.35 is too early for Toy Story 3, or whether I should wait to see what’s coming up on Lorraine instead…
‘And, more to the point, I’m left pondering the same daily conundrum: what the actual f*** am I going to do with them all day?
‘Sends texts to husband that read: “I’d rather be a bin lady than deal with this s***,” and, “You better not be late. I’ve f ***** g had enough of your kids.”
STEPH DOUGLAS
A Vicar’S daughter who regularly blogs about ‘adult headaches’ (hangovers). In 2014, she started an online company called Don’t Buy her Flowers, which sells gift packages for new mums (whom she says are always overladen with flowers).
She has two children, Buster, six, and Mabel, four, with husband Doug. She ‘behaves shamefully like a toddler when she is hungry’. has 23,000 Instagram followers.
SHE SAYS: ‘[My husband] missed bath-time and stumbled through the door pretty drunk.
‘I lost it. I screamed, I pushed him, I gave considerable thought to smashing up the kitchen a bit, but even in my rage I knew there was little point as I’d have to clear it up, which made me even angrier.
‘I left the house, rang my friend to scream about my s **** y husband and my final act of rebellion was to buy ten Marlboro Lights and smoke them on the street corner.’
CLEMMIE TELFORD
A creative strategist at Facebook and Instagram who lives in South-east London with her husband and two small boys. Also started her blog, Mother of All Lists, a collection of lists about parenting, while on maternity leave.
She has more than 37,000 Instagram followers, posting pictures of gin and tonics, high heels and the boys’ underwear.
SHE SAYS: ‘Ignoring the fact the kids are still in their nappies from the night before. Naked, filthy & a bit feral. The sign of a good day. Tell me other people’s kids occasionally end up in this state, too?!
‘There’s only one thing for it: scrap bath-time and put a bottle of Sancerre in the fridge.’