Jenography

The best flash mob ever

I saw this video on @allisonpearson's Twitter feed and I was something like the 14,489,882nd person to see it, so I'm hardly on the breaking crest of its popularity. But the juxtaposition of the food court and the singers' clothes with the beauty of the song somehow really brings Christmas to life.

 

Take part in the eBay blogger challenge and win £100!

For me, Christmas shopping really begins the day after Thanksgiving (Nov 24) - the time in America during which every single sentient being with a wallet and a credit card descends on the shops. Yesterday I put together my Christmas list. Today I actually went to the shops with the entire family (emphasis mine) and bought things for under the tree. But while shops decked out for Xmas are quite jolly, what I really love is a bargain.

That's why I'm thrilled to be one of the bloggers taking part in the eBay Mummy Blogger challenge.

My fellow challenge-er, Sian at Mummy-tips.com, described the challenge well:

Five bloggers, each with £250 to spend on eBay in the run up to Christmas. We need to spend wisely, bag some bargains and pull in all the help we can from fellow eBayers in order to win the challenge.

Of course there's something in it for you too. We each get to pick our most helpful supporter who will then be rewarded with a £100 PayPal credit to spend how they please!

The challenge runs until Dec 12th - so I need your suggestions for great bargains on eBay as well as your votes. The other bloggers are off and running - see all our activity on this groovy Facebook app.

Until then, I'd love your suggestions on:

* Cool stocking fillers for a 12-year-old who mainly seems to want apps and Nintendo games

* Stocking fillers and cool little extras for a 7-year-old tomboy who doesn't like pick anymore, mummy, so don't buy anything else in that colour!

* Cool, perhaps British, gifts for a Texas grandmother who likes art, beautiful clothes, good books and pretty jewellery

* Brit gifts for Americans - if it's cool, quirky and you can't get it Stateside, I want to know about it!

If you see anything on eBay that fits the bill - or if you just see something fun, strange or interesting - suggest it to me by clicking on the "Suggest a Gift" tab on the Facebook page. Because Christmas is all about giving, and it would be great to give you £100 to spend on whatever you'd like!

Happy shopping!

 

Travel: Should there be child-free flights?

Nobody enjoys hearing the wail of a child on an airplane - it wakes you from your fitful uncomfortable doze, it drowns out even the sound of the engine, sets your teeth on edge and makes it hard to watch the reruns of Frasier. For parents, the problem is figuring out not just to keep your child happy but to keep them from making others unhappy.

Is the solution segregating passengers with child-free flights? An article this past weekend in the NYTimes quoted child-free passengers extolling the perceived virtues of such an arrangement. (Guess what, there's a Facebook group for it.) Of course, as a parent, in theory I'd love to have a special area where kids could talk loudly, walk the aisles without my worrying about them bodging people, play on the floor. The NYT article quotes an industry expert who's sceptical anything like that could come about, with an industry fighting for its life and the associated logistics problems.

Feministing suggests what we need isn't child-free flights but family-friendly culture, where everyone amps up their tolerance levels and acknowledges that kids cry (you did too, when you were young). That's a good rule to apply to everyone onboard - some people stand in the aisles, clueless, during boarding; some people hog the armrest; some people carouse during the universally acknowledged "sleeptime". It's easy to feel self-righteous about the person ruining "your" flight - although depending on whom you fly with, the airline might have already beat them to it.

Is teen pregnancy making us hysterical?

We are obsessed about teenage pregnancy. As a society, we are the equivalent of a stereotypical teenage boy thinking about sex - constantly worrying, plotting and planning around it, mostly ineffectually.

News reports announce that teen pregnancy is growing (it's not), they give the impression that most teen parents are young teens (a large proportion are 18 or 19 years old and cohabit or are married), they handwring about rising rates of STIs (not surprising, given our growing rate of testing the young).

A debate on how policy is obsessed with teen pregnancy at this weekend's Battle of Ideas unpicked a number of factors that feed into our ideas about teen pregnancy. These include everything from the government's interest in having citizens that adhere to a family norm to our discomfort with our children turning into sexual adults.

As my friend Jan Macvarish, a researcher at Kent University and author of Teenage Parents' Experience of Parenthood, aptly said, "Teenage pregnancy is all things to all people."

We're all familiar with that popular scapegoat the gymslip mother, who's usually yelling at her toddler while swigging an alcopop and blowing smoke in the face of proper society.

Yet it's social and economic deprivation that causes poor outcomes, not just the age of the parent, said Rosalind Edwards of Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research at the Battle.

Everyone overestimates teen pregnancy, which has been falling since 1970, said Simon Blake, a panelist who is the national director of Brook.

I found myself agreeing with Blake when he said that our preoccupation with teen pregnancies is closely intertwined with how conflicted we are about teen sex.

We think they're all doing it all the time (cue another story about weird teen sex parties), we don't want them to do it, we can't agree how to talk to them about it. Alongside that there is often the demonisation of things that prevent teen parenthood - contraception and abortion.

Additionally, we don't talk about sex as something aspirational and something to plan for and think ahead about, Macvarish said.

(Blake thinks it's wrong that teenagers have sex without orgasms. One does tend to wonder, what's the point then?)

I came out of the session with a fuller understanding of the factors that influence my opinion of teen pregnancy, as well as how government policy tries to address it. The upshot for me was that we should stop with the hysterical hand-waving, throw out the smelling salts and stop looking at that pregnant teenager as a symbol for all that's problematic about society and teen sex.

How to put pressure on your MP

As important as petitions and online groups are to creating momentum and pressure for important causes, I've always wondered how effective they are for actually making the politicians who represent me sit up and take notice. (Blogger activism is becoming more and more prevalent - read the guest post by Eva Keogan on being a blogger activist that I put up on the British Mummy Bloggers blog.)

You always hear that personal letters make more of an impact, but I've never really known what to put in something like that. This video tells exactly what to put in a letter so that it's more likely to be circulated among staff and grab the attention of the person you're writing to.

While it's done with an American letter-writer in mind, its suggestions are just as relevant to people writing to their MP or even Prime Minister. (I found this video through StopCrush.org, a website set up to stop the videoing of small-animal torture - a horrifying activity that I didn't even realise was a problem. Thanks to them for sharing this video.)

 

 

Why cheerleading is good for the UK

  The other day I discovered A Modern Mother's dark little secret: she used to be a cheerleader. I loved this little revelation because I, too, used to be a cheerleader (evidence pictured) and frankly, it can be a little lonely. Even if we are amazingly hot, we're still dumb blondes who mindlessly shake our pompoms at the footballers - we don't even know what to do with ourselves after the game ends.

It's funny how this stereotype persists and is parrotted by people without any real experience of cheerleading. I was a cheerleader in Texas but even in the seat of football country we didn't live down to the image. We cheered and supported all the teams - from girls' volleyball to junior varsity basketball for girls and boys to track to, yes, football. I'm biased, yes, but because my opinion is based on reality.

Today The Times tackles cheerleading here in the UK (subscription necessary), interviewing Pat Hawkins, who promotes the teaching of cheerleading in schools. The paper visits teams in Manchester and Macclesfield, talking to the boys and girls who take part.

The writer Stefanie Marsh doesn't like "the smile" in particular:

Men don’t have to smile while playing rugby or football or, come to think of it, any other sport. Women are expected to smile: in swimming, in gymnastics. The smile is not just annoying: coupled with make-up and ribbons, it implies a willingness to please.

She misses the point. Plenty of performers smile as part of the performance - certain types of dancers, all kind of stage performers. There's also the assumption in the article that the boys would rather be playing football (er, why? Because cheerleading is "girlie"? Seems like it's not just girls who get stereotyped).

The  real problem of course is that view of cheerleading as something silly, titillating, and intrinsically demeaning.

This is despite experience of the kids involved in it - who find it fun, athletic, a mode of expression and a way to conquer their shyness. The Times admires Hawkins's enthusiasm and efforts, but then goes on to say:

If only it wasn't cheerleading. If only Pat had put her energy behind something like trapeze-walking, they could still wear the "pretty uniform" but the whole business wouldn't sound so annoyingly provocative, even if it really isn't more provocative than, say, gymnastics or synchronised swimming.

Which is a pretty sad indictment of how people are willing to abandon a positive activity for kids (which doesn't emphasize microminis and bare midriffs and also includes boys, by the way) because of the misconceptions around it.

We've been working at smashing the stereotype of dancing as a "girls" activity, of maths as a "boys' thing", yet we're willing to let our ideas about cheerleading be dictated by leering men's magazines and outdated notions based on a pre-feminist image.

Even 20 (or so) years ago, being a cheerleader was a positive experience for me, emphasizing hard work, teamwork, scholarship, school support and gaining confidence. It may not be the activity some would wish for kids (too American, not a real "sport"). But Pat Hawkins's programs expand opportunities for kids and they enjoy it. Why can't we cheer about that?

The hair-raising world of kids' Halloween costumes

It's officially autumn: we bought our first bit of Halloween paraphernalia today at the local pound shop. My daughter has been carrying around her string of skull lights all afternoon before setting them up on her bookcase for bedtime. (We then had to turn them off because they were a bit too spooky.)

In the past on Alpha Mummy I've written about distasteful "sexy" Halloween costumes for kids. But this year what I'm noticing is just how bizarre some of the costumes are. Forget about "witch" or "cat" or "vampire". Now you have Spider Fairy, Bat Witch, Devil Fairy, Queen of Flames and loads of other permutations that throw in everything vaguely "spooky" with something girly, all manufactured from highly flammable synethic fabrics, and call it a night.

Boys costumes tend more toward the old reliables - Werewolf, Pirate, Grim Reaper - but you do occasionally get the completely bizarre, like Skate Punk Zombie. (The most adorable are the baby costumes. The only time your can dress your child like this or this is when they are too young to stop you, so enjoy it now.)

Maybe we should blame it on the short attention spans of the young multi-tasking set for the rise of the mash-up Halloween costume. Maybe I'm now just part of the older generation that doesn't get it. I suppose I should just be thankful that, for right now, we have some time left with the inscutable costumes before my daughter advances to the indecent ones. That's when it really gets scary.

 

The funniest thing you will read this month

This is the funniest @&#*ing thing I've read in ages.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2009/10/20nissan.html

(Not for those with tender sensibilities)

Abolishing child benefit for the middle classes - bad idea?

It's all over the papers today, George Osborne's move to end child benefit for individuals earning more than £44K, as part of sweeping budget cuts. But the uproar against the move was immediate, with even Osborne's aides seeming to backtrack by saying no final decisions on the cuts has been made.

Read my post on the British Mummy Bloggers blog and tell us what you think about the proposed cuts. If you've written about it on your blog, you can also add a link via a Linky tool.

Read the BMB blog post on child benefit cuts now

Do we need child-free cafes?

 

Update: a restaurant in America has banned screaming kids. Read Mummy-Tips's blog on the subject

At AlphaMummy I once wrote a post about children in pubs and how everyone should quit screeching that kids ruin the whole "slowly getting off my face" experience. After all, there are all kinds of people who ruin the pub experience for others. For me these are: screaming girls talking about the "wild night" they had, groups of men who hog the bar so you can't get up to the front to order, and televised sport of any kind. I'm happy to admit that to some folks these may be things that make a pub visit simply peachy. So we each gravitate toward the places that fulfill our expectations. 

Now the anti-kid, anti-family vibe has seeped out of the pub and invaded the cafe.

On a neighbourhood blog in Balham, where I live, a resident complains that families have taken over our neighbourhood cafes to talk about Gina Ford and baby massage.

"...other people, apart from a very few good friends and family members, find other people's children very irritating and don't want to spend their down time being with or listening to the hubbub that comes with anyone under, lets say 10 years old.  Yet, in  Balham, that is virtually an impossibility during the day and at weekends."

Believe me, I know how irritating it can be to be child-free and have to negotiate pushchairs, highchairs and children toddling glacially in front of you. When I lived in New York City, I avoided certain parts of the Upper West Side and Park Slope, Brooklyn, on weekends because I couldn't stand the Maclaren gridlock. Then again, I also avoided 14th Street and Times Square on Saturdays, because that's when those places were rammed with clueless tourists taking pictures of taxicabs.

So maybe this kind of curmudgeonly talk is just part of urban living. Someone will always be annoying us and kids, who can be messy and loud and darned inconsiderate sometimes, are among those annoying people.

John Comyn, who goes to one of my favourite local pubs The Nightingale, hates a lot of his fellow pubgoing types. He details them in a recent article in the Publican: people who complain about the price of pints, people who pay for one drink with a credit card, and - of course - parents who "slurp your Pinot Grigio, bleat about house prices and ignore the fact that you're being willfully blind, smug, inconsiderate gits" while little Tarquin and Jemima run riot.

It's nothing new, the enmity towards families and children. It's understandable too. We've all been places where the parents sit by while their offspring wreak havoc.

But are we really misantropic as to ban children from certain cafes? The idea of calling something "child-free" sounded anti-social to me even when I was child-free. A no-kids-allowed  restaurant/pub/cafe sounds like the kind of place where people sit around bitching about families. How fun! 

Better to create an atmosphere that encourages the grown-up behaviour and thereby discourages little Thomas from running laps round the dining room yelling "Charge!"

There are some great cafes near my house that I would never go to with my daughter because they're obviously set up for the young and single set - tables wedged in close together, rickety chairs, food for grown-up palates. I sought out these kind of places before I was a parent and so should people who can't bear the sight of a baby slowly gnawing a rusk into mush.

Of course, owners and managers have a responsibility to make sure everyone behaves responsibly in their shops; that includes children. If tearaways have changed your favourite spot into a setting for Lord of the Flies, have a word with the manager and ask them to intervene. If they don't or won't, seek out a more mature venue for spending your hard-earned money.

But don't sit having your coffee and sulking because the cafe is too child-centric. Stop that pouting and please just grow up. 

 Picture: Garden Tea Party by Peppercorn_pixie via Flickr.com