Playing Detective

Reading the Times AlphaMummy blog has convinced me that I know one of the regular commenters. She has given enough detail about her life (divorce, number of children, some of their ages, high paid job, being back at work after only 2 weeks after the birth of her first child) that I am sure that she is a lawyer with whom I used to sing in the London Lawyers Chorus. If she is, and I am right, it is further proof that it is a small world. The most annoying thing though is that I will never know whether or not I am right.

Alpha Mummy

The Alpha Mummy posters are up in arms again today. For once they are not at war over the stay-at-home vs working mothers debate (although no doubt that will re-surface presently). No, they are outraged because some people have 'hijacked' their debate. It seems the Alpha Mummies want to ban anyone from commenting on 'their' threads who is not an 'Alpha Mummy'.

It seems that what has got them het up is a MAN has infiltrated the blog attached to a national newspaper which is ONLY FOR ALPHA MUMMIES. And not only a man but one who expressed a different opinion, although it has to be said, in a slightly oafish fashion. To be fair to him I don't think his method of expressing himself varied that much from some of the other regular commenters. His crime was to start off his comment (on a post debating the pros and cons of the embryo bill - a view on which cannot surely be limited to mothers) by stating where his point of view comes from (male, a father, a catholic, a scientist and lawyer) which I think can be helpful on a thread which contains so many separate points of view. His basic, if long winded point, seemed to be that life starts some point between conception and birth and at that point (whenever it is) the embryo is entitled to protection. Ergo if 'it' is entitled to protection then it is not right for 'it' to be sacrificed for the grearer good; his viewpoint was that this point was at conception therefore embryo research in this context should not be permitted. What the alpha mummies objected to was this statement: "unless there is/are god/s then all ethics are abitrary." In actual fact, I think he is using arbitary to mean something other than coming from nowhere, rather that ethics are not based in concrete facts, to which I agree. It seems an unusual place to start an argument though, as it the existence of god/s is not something that can be 'proved' in the scientific sense. However, it is not necessarily a statement which deserved jumping on in such vitriolic fashion ending with Jane writing "My original objection to xx's behaviour here was that he arrives out of the blue, not an Alpha mummy but as a guest, and then posts in a way that makes me think his ambition is to control the debate by setting the questions that he wants us to answer".

How they wish for an alpha mummy to be defined, I don't know. Certainly some of the regular commenters go by female names and appear to have children, but as we all know, you can take on any persona on the internet. Most of them claim to have Oxbridge firsts and be busy, but quite frankly they can't be that busy if they debate so often during the day. They also seem to be unaware that they are attacking people for behaving as they are doing.

Too many cooks?

The government has announced plans that teenagers are to be given compulsory cooking lessons (one hour per week for one term for children ages 11-14), and, surprise surprise, the mothers and commenters at Alpha Mummy are up in arms again. Not content with bickering over the virtues of stay-at-home mother vs working-mother and all other aspects of parenting, they have to give their 'considered' opinions here too.

I thought that so-called 'Alpha-Mummies' would be the first to think that learning to cook was a positive thing. That proper mothers cooked proper meals and would involve their children from the start, encouraging them to make up their own minds relating to the ethics of vegetarianism and so-on. But no, all the 'usual suspects' have their own views. There is Theta Sigma Mummy who is abhorred by the idea of someone involving meat in the lives of her off-spring. There are various mothers arguing about how many A-levels they got, Oxbridge entrance and music lessons being more important than cookery. There is 'BaggofBones' who says and I quote "Whatever you can't work out for yourself from reading a recipe, M&S can provide in ready-made form".Then there is Supermother, someone who thinks she is the last word in the opinions of working mothers (and she may well be for all I know, but she and the other commenters have pigeon-holed her to the extent that she now seems to believe her hype as well). I could go on but I can't bear to as it is rather off my original topic.

It rather seems that none of these mothers think before they start arguing the same old points over and over again. Ideally we want our children to be well rounded creatures who are capable of looking after themselves emotionally, financially, nutritionally and also career-wise with a job which suits them and allows security in the first three areas. I agree that there are some aspects of these areas which are more ideally suited to home or school learning. There are some lucky children who will learn all of these things at home and the school education will merely reinforce and further their education. Sadly, there are many more children whose home lives are lacking in some fashion and will never learn anything academic let alone anything which might actually be useful.

Cooking, I think, is a great place to start with education. I am not necessarily saying that I agree with the current proposals for secondary school but I think that properly worked through and perhaps starting when they are tiny that there is mileage in this idea. After all, food is essential to us, second only to water (and some might argue, sleep). If someone can feed themselves, nutritionally, on basic rations, that seems like a good starting point for dealing with life in general, let alone obesity. Cooking can be used as a medium which is interactive and practical and a light relief but which teaches reading, mathematics (weights, conversions, percentages and so on) budgeting, science ( e.g. chemistry: ice - water -steam; biology: parts of the body and so on). Taken to it's logical conclusion with older children it can involve business models, customer care, financial advice, literary criticism and writing skills. The list must be endless.

I am not suggesting that cooking should take the place of academic subjects. However, I think that a course or curriculum could be devised which would take place instead of say, one general studies lesson every two weeks and which could use cooking as the medium for more serious learning, thereby enforcing within children's minds that cooking is easy and cheaper than its ready-made cousin, that diet, nutrition and being able to look after oneself is an important aspect of life and that cooking is not something merely for women or 'the thick ones' (as one Alpha Mummy commenter suggested). It would also reinforce the idea for children that they can be their own person. Just because Mummy or Daddy is vegetarian (or not) doesn't mean that the child should be subjected to this too. S/he should be able to make their own decisions, but informed decisions. This should extend to ethical decisions regarding price versus animal welfare and other age appropriate issues on which people should be able to debate rationally.