As Harriet Harman wrapped up her speech on the future of family policy, there was an unseemly scrabble at the lectern. A few days before Ms Harman had suggested that what hard-pressed mothers really need is a government website where we can all share tips on tantrums, fussy eaters and so forth. Consequently, here at the Fawcett Society meeting, scenting fat bags of public money, jostling to grab a bit of face-time with the minister, were a bunch of internet entrepreneurs.
The rather pushy founder of netmums.com raced up to shake Harriet’s hand first, her body language frosting over when the founder of deadly rival mumsnet.com muscled into the conversation. Not to be outdone, the guy from fathersdirect.com handed Ms Harman a large, meaningful-looking envelope.
There is much to commend Ms Harman, who was riding cross-party scorn for proposing flexible working when David Cameron was still in garish Eton waistcoats. No wonder she is outraged, now half the work is done, to see the Tories scuttle into the family arena and dangle that juicy carrot, tax relief on childcare, before middle-class voters. No wonder she is keen to seize back the agenda. But before she devotes any more energy to the subject, Harriet, please knock this government mums website idea firmly on the head. Why pour millions of parents’ tax pounds into something that is doing very nicely thanks in the private sector? Ms Harman’s thesis is that, now 70 per cent of mothers work, women have little time or opportunity to share schoolgate wisdom, those life-changing scraps of advice about how to placate a sleepless baby or silence the 8.45am pre-school-run screaming contest. So instead the Government could help by setting up an internet forum to pool such wisdom. Besides that, Ms Harman is proposing a band of “mums support” workers who’ll dish out playground wisdom, though there is no word yet on whether they’ll be identified with prefect badges.
It is true that the minute I stopped working full-time and could collect my children from school (nervously approaching the playground cliques like the new girl at school), motherhood ceased being so anxious and solitary. Your children’s primary school is among the few places that you can strike up new friendships as an adult and many of these endure for a lifetime. But then again, mothers gassing by the gates is a recent phenomenon: children of my generation walked home alone.
I think Ms Harman may be underestimating women’s ability to bond, to solicit and give advice, to pull out creased baby pictures. The female urge to connect is as natural and unstoppable as water finding its own level. And it has cascaded in a mighty wave upon the internet.
A friend has a theory about online chat rooms: she believes the men who post on talkboards are mostly those who feel unheard in real life. Perhaps they are shy, frustrated, underachieving, unfortunate-looking, solitary. The internet gives them a voice and a new, confident identity. But most regular guys would regard it as geeky, time-wasting and sad. Forums on dad websites are seldom used and topics never range beyond gadgets, sex and “how I’ll wreak revenge on my bitch of an ex”.
Whereas women blather on happily in the virtual realm just as they do in real life. A woman is the same person online as she is off. Or more true to herself, since chat room anonymity encourages scorching confessions. Every day on mumsnet.com 10,000 contributions are made on subjects as varied as miscarriage, why it is unhygienic to flush the loo with the lid up (an invisible spray of faeces will descend upon your toothbrush, apparently) and whether it is wicked to have sex in the same room as your baby.
But mumsnet is also sympathetic, humane, kind and wise: the members send Christmas presents to each other, women they’ve never met, for goodness sake! It is a democratic community in which divisive factors — geography, class, race, disability and whether you’re a size 22 mamma who may shy from other mums in the real life playground — are invisible.
I cannot see how the Government could improve on mumsnet. Indeed, the fact it is run from one woman’s back bedroom in North London makes it infinitely more trustworthy than some nannystate.com, prissily policed by new Labour. And half the attraction is how seditious, rude and politically incorrect it can be, so disrespectful of supposed experts, that the ghastly, humourless Gina Ford is trying to bankrupt mumsnet in a High Court libel action.
Now that the family is indisputably the territory on which the next election will be fought, the question is how far should the State penetrate into its inner workings. Harriet Harman, in her speech, suggested the government’s priority should be to listen to parents. And that is a better impulse than the Prime Minister’s, easy headline-grabbing recruitment of supernannies to sort out slapper mums and derelict dads. What better place to start listening than mumsnet?
And what worse place too. Because the unedited, conflicting, whingeing, piss-taking outpourings of ten thousands of lives is a modern Babel. A minister might learn a lot, if it doesn’t first send her mad.
- There is great debate in our house about what constitutes a big enough TV. Our current model is so blurry and decrepit that we have to roll up the carpet and drag it towards the sofa to see clearly the hydroplaning dolphins on Planet Earth.
It is 27in and I’m campaigning for 32in, which is the smallest model available in the age of flatter, squarer, huger screens. But my husband, dreaming of high definition footie games at pub quality in his own living room, will settle for nothing less than 40in.
I was always under the impression that big tellies are a bit common after hearing the dictum “the larger the box, the fewer the books”. But does bigger now equal best in the digital age?
- Jan Leeming’s needy, whingeing, man-pleasing jungle antics on I’m a Celeb . . . were bad enough. But even worse was the discovery that her full name is “Janice”.
At the risk of offending my dear parents, I have to say the name they chose for me is tragic, always equated in fiction with a fat, sadsack woman. A Janice is the plain mate of the pretty girl in Coronation Street, she is the hell’s hippy Soprano sister. Only in NYPD Blue was there once a hottie officer Janice and she turned out to be a lying alcoholic. Leeming abbreviated her way out of shame, which I suppose is the only option when your middle name is Evadne.
