HAPPY MUMS DAY

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY, all you wonderful women who have given birth to little gems.   I feel a bit like a travel writer writing 'the people are all very friendly' when I write that, because although it's mostly true, it's not always true.    As someone who's written about travelling with children for nearly fifteen years, really since I was pregnant with my son, and written about the politics of the playground, which is nothing to do with the kids at all, just the issues of the parents, I'm not sure if I actually like children.  

Don't get me wrong, I love my own, centre of my universe, but over the years I've met children who I felt were going to make the most appalling human beings.   That adage, mine will be different, and they will grow out of it, doesn't happen.  Yours turn out to be the same, and they get worse.   And they always blame the mothers. That's after they blame the media, the council worker, the government, the lack of nutrients in food, the teachers, the lack of discipline in the home, too much tv, computer games, violence, alcohol, celebrity culture. In fact a whole melting pot of things to blame for the awfulness of the child.    Which is unfair.    I recently produced a youtube of the top ten types of mums and I've done one for dads, but I had to tone it down because 'they' felt it might be too negative.  It wasn't.  It was spot on.  In fact it was tamed down.    But dads are rarely if ever laid to blame for their own failures let alone that of their children. No one is to blame for their own failures and that's the problem. No one takes responsibility.  Actually no.  Women usually tend to believe everything is their fault, and men tend to believe everything is everyone else's fault, so I'm sure that's why men and women get on as well and as long as they do.   Men think their failures are everyone else's fault - but mainly the fault of their mothers.  It's sounds like something Freud would say.   These ones also tend to marry their mothers or 'motherly' types', divorce when they're not being mothered any more - because their wives have given birth and have genuine children to look after and proceed to look for women who a) can't have kids b) have grown up kids c) are able and willing to dote on them the way their mothers never did...or did too much.     So happy mothers day, to all of those who have children and those who have children as partners.