The BritMums Blog

A buggy ban at Heathrow airport? Really?

We all know how very important buggies are to our children and for maintaining our sanity as parents, particularly when our precious children begin to toddle and need containment and security. Heathrow Airport has recently been reaching out to a group of Mummy Bloggers to see how much more family friendly they can make parent's flying experience.

Imagine our surprise after reading the following story in The Evening Standard yesterday. At Terminal 1, thanks to the decisions of someone at Menzies Aviation, their baggage handlers will no longer be permitted to handle buggies due to "health and safety" regulations. What this means for parents is that, upon check-in at Terminal 1 at Heathrow Airport, you will no longer be permitted to take your buggy into the terminal and up to the departure gate. You will need to check-in your buggy along with your luggage and will not be reunited with your buggy until you arrive at baggage claim at your destination. No more meeting you at the ramp to the plane! You'll have to negotiate lengthy airport walks on either side without the convenience of your buggy.

Does Cameron’s apology cut it?

Prime Minister David Cameron was on BBC television at the weekend, telling Andrew Marr that he was sorry for the ‘sexist’ comments he made on not one but two occasions. 

Some six months after the events, the PM said that he “deeply regrets” causing offence, and that the comments made in the House of Commons just “came out wrong and caused the wrong impression”. 

Child cage fighting is A OK say police. We say, er, no

It’s a story that has sent shockwaves through parents across the UK, and the biggest shock of all is that police have said there are no issues for them to pursue.

Two boys – without padding or head gear – took part in a cage fighting match at the Greenlands Labour Club in Preston, Lancashire in front of 250 paying adults on 10 September. A video of 10-minute bout, which appeared on YouTube and has since been removed, showed the young boys rolling on the floor, flailing at each other and one putting his head down and pushing into the other’s chest.

Reflections on the riots

The riots that swept London and parts of the Midlands and the North seem to have stopped now, but  as politicians, commentators and pretty much everybody else debates the what, why and who - as well as the punishments for those caught - our bloggers have been particilarly reflective. 

Not A Notting Hill Mum  has taken a step back and considered the place in history that London riots have carved, and in doing so has written a fabulously thought-provoking post about the 1958 Notting Hill race riots. 

BritMums blogger featured in the Washington Post

Watch out Woodward and Bernstein. Our very first column for the Huffington Post UK has been picked up by none other than the Washington Post, the newspaper famous for breaking the Watergate story. That’s right people, we’ve gone global. 

Describing BritMums as “the British forum of parenting bloggers” the article praises the sensitive writing of our members in their reactions to the UK riots. The Washington Post writer, Janice D’Arcy, highlights Kelly Innes aka Domestic Goddesque’s post, My legacy: rioting is not the answer. 

In her post, Kelly describes the legacy that she wants to leave for her children, and how her initial thoughts on the topic had been thrown up in the air by the activities of looters and rioters at the beginning of this week. 

Guest post: Can women ever really have it all?

New BBC ‘Dragon’,Hilary Devey, splintered opinion with a jagged edge when she boldly claimed, "Women can never have it all – it’s how God breeds us". 

Is she right? Is it possible to balance career with family and feel ultimately fulfilled in both? We asked for guest posters to share their take on this most thorny of issues and the first to take up the challenge is Rowen Campbell... 

Why shouldn’t women have it all? I believe many women would consider they do. As long as what you have is yours by choice. It’s too easy to look at someone else’s seemingly perfect life and feel the slightest pang of envy, but there are a lot of people out there very adept at putting on a show. 

Don’t be fooled.

How are BritMums handling the riots?

Bewilderment. Fear. And most of all, anger.

As London erupts into flames and looting, mum bloggers - one of the UK's largest blogging tribes - are demonstrating how parenthood is colouring their personal response to the biggest news in the UK.

Even as many remain relatively insulated from the mayhem, these parents feel a visceral response to the danger. They may live in a part of London where they listened to owls hooting rather than glass shattering overnight, or they may live just down the road from the looted Clapham department store. But their response is strong and immediate. It can be characterised simply:

What is happening in the country my child is growing up in?

"Kids these days" is a clichéd phrase, associated with stuffy old codgers who can't stand rap music. But many people are deeply troubled about what "kids these days" are doing. (The fact that these may not be political rioters but gangs intent simply on creating chaos and looting a few shops while they're at it is a whole other story.)

Britain's 15 foxiest celebrity dads #britmums

Of course the dads we fancy the most are the ones we choose as our partners – the ones who take out the rubbish, tell the bedtime stories, give us a night off to see our friends. But we can’t help but notice there are some quite alluring other dads out there as well.

So in honour of Father’s Day - and in a fit of patriotism - here is our list (in no particular order) of Britain’s foxiest fathers, with an Irish nominee as well. How do these dads rate with you?

1. Pierce Brosnan – Two other James Bonds have made our list, but mention Brosnan among a group of mums and they practically drop their Champagne flutes. Beyond 007, his Thomas Crowne – fabulously weathly, devilishly sneaky, impossibly fit - is drool-worthy even more than a decade later.

Like me on Facebook-- not in France!

The French love to be different, even when it comes to Facebook and Twitter.

Read this article by Jamey Keaten of the AP to enlighten yourself.

Apparently, broadcast advertisers can't ask viewers and listeners to "follow us on Twitter" or "like us on Facebook". It breaks a 1992 ruling for secret and unfair advertising. France's guiding authority, The Superior Audiovisual Council, or CSA, said instead they can use a generic term like "social media".

It just rolls off the tongue, non?  

Follow me on my social media, darling!

You go France! I was going to say something snarky about having their head in the clouds, but, never mind!

-Susanna (A Modern Mother)

Photo credit: Slava Baransky

Twitter loopholes and the bulging male crotch: How safe IS your account?

According to ABC News, a US congressman was suprised when this photo (right) appeared in his Twitter stream.

The theory is that someone hacked into his yfrog account and posted the photo without the account holder's knowledge. To do this all someone would need is the email address associated with the account. 

Yfrog's email posting service is currently down, one can guess because they have detected this security threat. But with all the cool Twitter apps around, it poses the question: How safe is your Twitter account?

-Susanna (A Modern Mother)

 

 

 

Forget the pageant dads, WTF is this?

I was looking around for hot parenting topics, and ran into this story from the US about pageant dads, about how dad are starting to represent their daughters in beauty pageants.

I watched the video with amazement. Not because I thought it was unusual for daddies to usurp what I guess the news outlet saw as a 'mum" duty. No, I was in shock at those toddlers in high heels, Dolly Parton hair and fake tans! Oh my.

There is even a primetime television show, Toddlers and Tiarras. Blogger Jezebel describes it as "sexy babies and creepy judges."

Thoughts please ladies (and gentlemen): surely pageants for kids are just plain wrong!

-Susanna (A Modern Mother)

Photo credit: Phil Rose

The 'genderless' baby controversy: Really?

So a family in Canada has decided to keep their baby's gender a secret from the wider world, with only the parents, the siblings and a few other people.

Here's the rationale from the mother that has inflamed experts and other observers: "We decided not to share Storm's sex for now -- a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a standup to what the world could become in Storm's lifetime."

Hmm. Not sharing the baby's gender "for now". What is so damaging about that, I wonder? The family hasn't tried to surgically make the baby genderless. They are simply trying to raise it outside the preconceived notions of gender determinism.

The vitriolic response reveals just how threatened people feel when someone gets out of the box, so to speak, with gender and with parenting. 

BritMums Royal Wedding Twitter Party

Fly your Twitter bunting this Friday for the #BMRW Twitter Party

It’s the event that has got the nation, if not the world, talking. You may be a royalist; you may be anti-royal; what you can’t argue is that the impending nuptials of Wills and Kate is the event of 2011. Well, at least the event of April 2011! While some are making a mass exodus out of London, others are planning street parties or maybe even hauling their families, lock, stock and barrel into London to experience a once-in-a-lifetime event.

What people are talking about: The Chinese parenting model

How do Chinese parents turn out music and math prodigies? Easy, says one mother in the Wall Street Journal. They're stricter, stress academic achievement more and don't let their kids get away with the stuff that Western parents do.

Amy Chua, a Yale professor, describes an incident of hair-tearing, screaming, full-out war in her house when she demanded her daughter play a piece of piano music correctly. The article has inspired more than 5,000 comments on the WSJ site, with good reason: it drives to the core of what parents believe about raising kids. (Chua has also responded to readers in a further article that - as I read it anyhow - seems to soften her message. It also points out that the title of the article was chosen by WSJ editors, not her. A piece in today's Sunday Times also describes how her method didn't work on one of her daughters.)

Losing child benefit - what do you think?

George Osborne's withdrawal of child benefit from "higher income" families is front-page news today - with good reason. It will affect 1.2 million families. Its simplistic (rather than means-tested) design creates situations in which two-earner families making £86K a year will keep their benefits while a single earner making more than £44K will lose it. (It's based on an individual's income, not household income.) It also saves £1bn for the government coffers at a time when every penny counts.

Already the policy has prompted an immediate outcry that makes you wonder whether these changes will be implemented at all. The Conservative children's minister Tim Loughton has said the plan might need revising. A thinktank said the cuts could "seriously distort" work incentives. Osborne aides have stressed that no final decisions about the cuts had been taken. Even David Cameron has said he will "listen" to those urging a review of the cuts (although the Guardian coverage speculated that he was saying this only to be polite and has no intention of revising it).