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I've read quite a bit recently about Jojo Moyes' article in the Telegraph saying that blogging and hands-on parenting are incompatible. All parent bloggers are, according to Ms Moyes, plonking their children in front of CBeebies while they fritter their lives away online criticising people they've never met for the choices they've made for their children (who, of course, they've also never met).
Bloggers are bad parents. Allegedly.
And I would have ranted about this. And pointed out that I am only blogging this evening because B has put Clash of the Titans on and there's a limit to my tolerance for really dreadful special effects. And that in so doing, I am only ignoring him, my children having been put to bed at a sensible hour after a home cooked (ish, it was fishfingers) meal with real vegetables (broccoli and peas, if you're interested). Or how I never turn the computer on while they're awake (with good reason, sticky fingers can cause havoc on a keyboard). Or how television is only allowed for fifteen supervised minutes or so a day. Or when they're ill. As A was last Friday.
But unfortunately Ms Moyes is right. Blogging has made me a bad parent.
Cast your mind back to last Friday, when A was feeling poorly, and sitting wrapped up in a blanket in front of Toy Story. Friday is officially a working day for me so the girls (when not ill) go to nursery and I get a break from the cooking of fish fingers and the breaking up of arguments; but as M is only seven weeks old, I'm giving myself Fridays off. This means I could do the unthinkable - I invited to my house someone who I had met online. Unprotected and unchaperoned, I met a real blogger.
I was terribly nervous, but she, (am I allowed to name her?) was just as lovely in the flesh as in the word and we had a delightful hour or so in the sunshine, admiring my baby, eating chocolate digestives, and talking, oddly, about pretty much anything other than being a mum.
And I had such a nice time that I completely forgot to feed my daughter. Until she had an enormous tantrum and I realised that it was 1 pm and neither of us had had lunch.
See. A bad mother. Blogging did that. Ms Moyes is right...
Showing posts with label television. Show all posts
Showing posts with label television. Show all posts
Friday, 22 July 2011
Monday, 7 February 2011
Where's Sheila Parry?
I watched, last night, with fascination, the last episode of Bruce Parry's brilliant series Arctic.
If you're not familiar with the fabulous Bruce, he's an ex-Marine who now presents tv programmes in which he lives, for a week, a month or longer, with another culture, putting himself as closely as he can into their shoes, living in their houses (or huts, or tents), working with them, sleeping with them, eating their food, wearing, in some cases, their clothes. He's also absolute nails.
I think he's amazing. I am in awe of how he manages, despite the barriers of language and culture, to become close to these people, whether they are Ethiopian cow-jumpers, dressed only in ropes across their chests, or Norwegian reindeer herders, equipped with helicopters, skidoos and fluent English. I suspect it's very well edited, but I don't think you could fake the fact that these people really like him, and you certainly couldn't fake the enthusiasm with which he eats freshly-killed seal eyeball, or attempts to lassoo a reindeer, or turns his youknowwhat inside out (no, really).
But what does bother me about Bruce Parry, and I realise that this is almost certainly not his fault, is the fact that he doesn't, and perhaps can't, ask the questions that I want to ask. The questions I'd ask the women:
What is is like raising children in this environment?
Do you have any autonomy?
Will you be educated?
Can you choose who you marry?
Can you work independently of your husband and family?
What do you do without nappies? Or, for that matter, tampons?
How is/was childbirth?
How do you feed your family?
Is it really true that you can manage not to bond with your newborn in the knowledge that he or she is unlikely to survive until he is five?
What do you really think about genital mutilation?
What do you hope for your children?
Do you have a voice?
Because Bruce doesn't give them one, and, as I say, I suspect that that is because he himself is a man, and that in many of these cultures he simply can't have those conversations. I also realise that, in Arctic at least, he was concentrating on the, perhaps "bigger" issue of climate change and how this is already affecting the communities in which he stayed, so the "smaller", more immediately personal questions I wanted to ask perhaps were asked, but ended up on the cutting room floor. Or perhaps just weren't so relevant in communities which are already much more industrial and like our own.
So I find myself watching, fascinated by the glimpse of another culture afforded to me, but also frustrated. Frustrated that I can't find out what it would be like to be the Darkhad, or Kombai, or Daasanach equivalent of myself or my daughters, born female, but into another culture so vastly different from our own.
If you're not familiar with the fabulous Bruce, he's an ex-Marine who now presents tv programmes in which he lives, for a week, a month or longer, with another culture, putting himself as closely as he can into their shoes, living in their houses (or huts, or tents), working with them, sleeping with them, eating their food, wearing, in some cases, their clothes. He's also absolute nails.
I think he's amazing. I am in awe of how he manages, despite the barriers of language and culture, to become close to these people, whether they are Ethiopian cow-jumpers, dressed only in ropes across their chests, or Norwegian reindeer herders, equipped with helicopters, skidoos and fluent English. I suspect it's very well edited, but I don't think you could fake the fact that these people really like him, and you certainly couldn't fake the enthusiasm with which he eats freshly-killed seal eyeball, or attempts to lassoo a reindeer, or turns his youknowwhat inside out (no, really).
But what does bother me about Bruce Parry, and I realise that this is almost certainly not his fault, is the fact that he doesn't, and perhaps can't, ask the questions that I want to ask. The questions I'd ask the women:
What is is like raising children in this environment?
Do you have any autonomy?
Will you be educated?
Can you choose who you marry?
Can you work independently of your husband and family?
What do you do without nappies? Or, for that matter, tampons?
How is/was childbirth?
How do you feed your family?
Is it really true that you can manage not to bond with your newborn in the knowledge that he or she is unlikely to survive until he is five?
What do you really think about genital mutilation?
What do you hope for your children?
Do you have a voice?
Because Bruce doesn't give them one, and, as I say, I suspect that that is because he himself is a man, and that in many of these cultures he simply can't have those conversations. I also realise that, in Arctic at least, he was concentrating on the, perhaps "bigger" issue of climate change and how this is already affecting the communities in which he stayed, so the "smaller", more immediately personal questions I wanted to ask perhaps were asked, but ended up on the cutting room floor. Or perhaps just weren't so relevant in communities which are already much more industrial and like our own.
So I find myself watching, fascinated by the glimpse of another culture afforded to me, but also frustrated. Frustrated that I can't find out what it would be like to be the Darkhad, or Kombai, or Daasanach equivalent of myself or my daughters, born female, but into another culture so vastly different from our own.
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