Would the real real woman please stand up?

Cristina Odone would like you to know that “real women” don’t want to work full-time. “Real women” find primary fulfilment as mothers. But she’s “not having a pop at working mothers”. She’s just saying they’re not real women.

Now, there’s something to (the reports of) her conclusions: yes, parents should have more freedom to choose to work outside the home or not; we should value parenting; economic contributions are not the only kind of contributions. But the big fat mother-blaming fail comes in the fact that this is all about mothers, nary a mention of the possibility that men could be fulfilled as at-home parents, and her choice of the term “real women”. Fuck you, Cristina Odone, you anti-feminist, anti-secularist, ranting pillock.

Mothers who work have unhealthy, unfit children

Clicky clicky!

Back to this old argument again. A new study has discovered that children who have working mothers *shock horror* consume sweetened drinks between meals and even worse use their computers or watched television for at least two hours a day compared to the children of “stay at home” mothers who spend less than two hours on these activities. Wow! Who’d have thunk it, HOLD THE FRONT PAGES IT’S BREAKING NEWS. Kids like fizzy juice and tv.

This story has of course been picked up by the mainstream media and various talking heads have lamented the loss of the good old days when Dad would be the breadwinner and Mum wore an apron and had dinner ready for 5pm. How is this news?! And more to the point, when this country’s abysmal financial state has us with a budget deficit of 12% of GDP in the current financial year what more is expected of us because as we all know, as far as this Government are concerned we should all be working outside the home and spending money to fill the massive hole we’ve been dug into thanks to the credit crunch.

Of course another facet to this argument is that the report also asked about exercise versus sedentary activities. Could it be that years of media coverage of PEEDOS EVERYWHERE may well have resulted in parents being afraid to let their children have the freedom to play outside of the home without constant monitoring? No, of course not. It’s the Mothers’ fault for going to work. Bad Mothers.

You couldn’t make this shit up.

For a start…

Welcome to I Blame the Mother, a blog project aiming to document the many things mothers can’t get right. News stories, research and plain old vitriol will be posted for your delectation and take-down.

And here’s a start:

Girls get less pocket money than boys and, according to psychologist Cary Cooper, it’s because mothers are in charge of pocket money, and mothers prefer boys.

(UK research, article in the Scotsman)