Me Mums
It’s all about having a child as an accessory
Being a parent is obviously the obsession of the moment. Everyone has got a view, a documentary or a book. A friend of mine who felt that she was far from a yummy mummy (she calls herself a sloppy mummy, which I prefer and a category I also probably fall into), was given a book called Making Happy People. It identifies four parenting types: authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent and uninvolved. According to the author, authoritative is the one that makes for happy children, while the rest are a disaster. Having not lived in our society, the writer fails to emphasise the most damaging approach of all: me-parenting. Me-parents can be authoritarian, indulgent and uninvolved – but never authoritative – all in a space of a day.
There is only one consistent rule of me-parenting and that is the parents always come first. Me-parents want to be a best friend to their children; they rarely refuse them anything, and shy away from conflict. They read this as liberal and non-authoritarian – in the child’s best interests, when, bottom line, it is all about ‘them’. Putting a screaming toddler to bed on time does not make you feel half as good as letting him curl up in front of The Incredibles with a bar of Cadbury’s – and it’s way more time consuming.
And feeling loved and needed and comfortable is the first priority of the me-parent (one whisper of ‘Mummy, I love you’ guarantees a gooey feeling of maternal compliance). Me-parents have never denied themselves in living memory, or done anything that could be construed as self-sacrificing (unless you count Pilates), so they aren’t best equipped to pass on the basics. Me-mummy parks wherever she likes, shouts at the maid and refuses to take criticism from her children’s teachers – and Junior takes it all in.
But the discipline issue is only the tip of the iceberg. Me-parenting means assuming that whichever is best for you is best for your child: that pacy city life you thrive on; the holidays in the Far East; those late-night parties when all the mums dance with their four-year-olds. The child of the me-parent is expected to be a rewarding hobby and an expression of their parents’ life philosophy; pretentious Christian names, precocious behaviour, highlighted hair (at four?) and offbeat designer clothes are all things that make it harder for the kid in the playground, but more interesting for the me-parent. Me-parent kids are currently to be seen on Sunday mornings at Costa Coffee (haven’t people heard of lie-ins?) popping out of mum or dad’s convertibles, it really is a sight for sore eyes. When the children get older, there is even more fun in store. An excellent example of me-parenting – recently cited by teenage girls as a cause of their unhappiness – is the tendency for mothers to seek advice from their daughters. ‘Do you think dying my hair blonde will make me more attractive to men?’ is the sort of question they get asked when me-mum is opening her Mother’s Day card. And they say we had it tougher…
A man’s man
What with footballers and boybands, we are not short of male icons theses days. But only too often, they are the wrong ones. This isn’t surprising, considering they are normally selected for us by the entertainment and fashion industries, neither of which are high in testosterone. A random trawl of the heroes of the past two decades proves how hard it is to find red-blooded guys. Think of the narcissistic Bryan Ferry; Boy George, who admits to preferring a nice cup of tea to sex; and Jude Law, a skinny schoolboy too pretty for his own good. None of these are seen as men of strength. What we all need is a new man of action – like Steve McQueen. McQueen, who lived his life at full gallop, was a man’s man in a way that few male heroes of today can hope to be. He drank, smoked and played hard through a life that was exactly what most men secretly fantasise about. In these days of getting in touch with their female sides and fears over political correctness, the out-and-out male chauvinism of a man such as McQueen is almost a thing of the past.
Yet I have a sneaking feeling that despite all the social criticism leveled at the attitude of the McQueen man, we still hanker after heroes who are real men’s men. Who would most of you girls choose? A caring, sharing guy who always does the dishes before he goes to bed, or a roistering cocktail of hormones, like Daniel Craig, who can’t wait to get you behind a locked bedroom door, no matter what state the kitchen’s in? After all, there’s action and there’s action…
