Came across a tweet lately that apparently the latest idea of the ideal trophy wife for 'tech bros' is a brilliant high-flying woman with an amazing career who will give it up to have their babies.
- And after I had disposed of the sickbag in a tidy and hygienic fashion -
- Especially taking into account the comments that said that even high- ( Read more... )

I daresay I have perorated before about people - especially blokes - who become parents and It Transforms Their Life, not in the sense of before then they had never thought about changing nappies or hallucinating from sleep deprivation, no, it is a Deep Existential Thing of feeling a connection in a previously rootless existence.
Which is just one ( Read more... )

My father was not a cruel man by any means.
No, really, he was making his family entirely miserable, but he wasn't cruel? When my father realised that his sullen, accusatory silences were having no effect on me, he extended them to my mother, so that the house became a virtual tomb. The situation worsened with explosions of temper and destruction ( Read more... )

- just on reading the the cover of the Guardian Saturday Review, which promised its readers a letter from Karl Ove Knausgaard to his unborn baby.
And when Tonstant Weader had finished fwowing up, she wondered how much nappy-changing KOK (fnarr, fnaar: am 13 at the back of the class) signs up for, rather than providing Deep Existential Insights?
( Read more... )

Idly surfing around via tablet over the weekend, I came across somebody writing to an advice column seeking counsel as a widow with 2 small children contemplating remarriage -
And whether she should pick the suitor who knew a lot about theories of child-rearing.
NB there was no mention either of whether he actually had children of his own, either ( Read more... )

Billed as an 'overhaul of masculinity', the event on London's Southbank proved that real men can even multitask.

More info here:
A group of extraordinary contributors and leaders in their field explore all facets of masculinity and male identity. Subjects range from fatherhood, heroism and the tribal nature of sport to online addictions, sex, war, ( Read more... )

Age with particular reference to gender seems a bit of a theme in today's Guardian -

Besides Lynne Segal's What happened when the generation of free love grew up? A socialist feminist looks back on a life of protest and passion -

Philip Hensher seems to me to be, on the whole not condescending about Penelope Fitzgerald (he cites in his review a ( Read more... )

Another dire idea in approximately the same category as 'cosy sitcom about funny suffragettes': Cecil, George and Bert, the only young men left in the sleepy provincial village Rittle-On-Sea who are either too scared, morally challenged or physically disfigured to sacrifice their lives for the great war. Do we feel that this merits being mentioned ( Read more... )

David Mitchell has good points about people groaning about the media trope of Hapless Fatherhood:
Men and fathers are so favoured in our society, the world is weighted so much to their advantage, that comedy writers can safely make them the perpetual butt of jokes. The fact that Homer Simpson is the funniest, most prominent and most popular ( Read more... )

Seen on the Tube this morning: two blokes with infants in pushchairs, sitting opposite one another, clearly together, as they were chatting to one another, rather than by random coincidence.

It did turn out that at least one of them was with (presumably) the mother, who had been sitting elsewhere in the crowded carriage, when they both got out at ( Read more... )