11 things I hate about the word 'Mum'

Our friends from MumsRock wrote in with this lovely list about why it's OK to hate the M word:

It goes without saying that we love lots of things about being a mother. Otherwise we would have cleared off by now and rented a condo next door to Jake Gyllenhall.

But back to the 'M' word – let's be honest, you spend maternity leave trying to coax your baby to say the word and it's downhill from then. Once they're past age five they make the transition to calling you "mum" in an "I want something" whine, eventually petering out to a grunt in their teenage years.   

But it's not the use of the 'M' word by our children that I'm talking about. It's when it's used to group us into one big happy army of Next knitwear, sticky tissues and Tupperware. Here, the 11 most irritating uses of the 'M' word:


1. When couples start to call each other "mum" and "dad", their sex life is now demonstrably a thing of the past.

2. Doctors, nurses, and midwives call you 'mum' when you take your kids for appointments. Obviously it's so they don't have to bother finding out your name.

3. It makes you feel like your mother. And not in a good way.

4. If you're hitting the dating scene again, Mum joins up with that other word to become…Single Mum. On dates you'll soon learn that you must use the 'M' word with care. If your date starts fiddling with his mobile, go ahead and pay the bill - the date's finished. If his eyes mist up and he wants to put his coat around your shoulders, run.

5. It’s part of one of the most annoying ad campaigns that propagates the 'homogenous Mum' school of thought. "Mums go to Iceland" not only implies that we all share the same fashion-sense, shoe-size and postcodes but also assumes that as Mums we actually think it a good idea to feed our children a £3 frozen chocolate gateau. It's as if Jamie Oliver had never existed.
 
6. When you become a mum, your Google ads on Facebook suddenly change. You now find you're invited to enjoy 'free samples for women over 35" or urged to embrace the Oprah diet. Welcome to your new demographic.

7. Once your kids start bonding with their peers, you will spend at least a decade with your child's name as a prefix to your title – e.g. Josh's mum. That's now two steps away from who you were, and only a whisker away from becoming Granny.

8. Pre-kids, you would look at a teacher and think - low pay, low prestige, low aspirations. Now those same teachers have the upper hand - long paid holidays, final salary pension and a big say in your beloved child's future. Come parents evening, even the way they use the 'M' word ensures you'll spend the next six months worrying that the only thing your child will ever amount to is a starring role on the Jeremy Kyle Show. 

9. When your children are screaming "Mum" up the stairs at you, it's really hard to put on stockings for date night and not feel like a suburban hooker.

10. However brilliantly put together or expensive you think your outfit may be, when called the M word it is instantly transformed into either a Daniella Westbrook try-hard horrorshow or a sheepish ensemble that looks like it was purchased from a long-deceased department store ‘in town’.

11. Aerobics instructors, gym trainers and Pilates teachers automatically assume you want to focus on something called “bums and tums”. After further consultation, it turns out they are right.

With love from MumsRock

www.mumsrock.com

Comments

[paul]

Can we stop pretending teachers are saints. Easy turn up get the cash pension etc, if it gets too hard play the stress card have a few months off - virtuallly unsackable by their LEA - they work as hard as they want. The good are really good but for many its money for old rope. Lets be honest its not that hard...open your books to page etcetc

[Co]

Sorry to wade in slightly off topic, but as a former employee of Iceland I have to state that they are not 'amazing' or 'conscientious', as another poster has put it

Little attention is paid to animal welfare, i.e. the caged hen eggs that go into that £3 gateau, and the fact that the chicken is from Thailand, raised in appalling conditions (remember it is Thailand where many outbreaks of bird flu start). It is all about being cheap and nasty at that supermarket. That's why so many of our customers were either Jeremy Kyle extras or mothers looking to cut the cost of food so they can afford that new car.

I am not a mother myself, but I do feel that the word 'mum' can imply an Aunt Bessie-ish sort of figure, which I don't exactly think many women of any age would be particularly chuffed with.

[Lizzy]

References to mum, mummy, ma, etc are all fine by me - each to their own. However, it's the constant reference to 'baby' as in "softer for baby's skin" which sets my teeth on edge. What about the definite article? Is this country completely going to the dogs? Is it really that difficult to toss in a simple 'your'? "Softer for your baby's skin" is far kinder to the ears and helps me to eradicate the image of the vacant-eyed,smiling moon-face which usually utters such piffle. Can I make a plea that adverts, doctors, etc kindly add in a 'the' or 'your'?
Sorry, that was a bit of a rant. Apologies to any moon-faces too, I don't know what came over me. I do in fact have rather a moon-face myself.

[yazzle]

"Mum-mee!" - the sweetest word I ever heard. Call me old fashioned...!

[Turner McNeil]

Mum or Mummy are the sweetest words in the world... we waited 11 years to get our son. Every time he calls me Mum my heart lifts!

[LouJ]

Slightly off tack here but I'm fed up with people being sniffy about Iceland. Iceland is an amazing, conscientious and high quality supermarket. Unfortuneatley it is very much let down by it's marketing.
Icelands own brand products contain no hydrogonated fat, no GM and no artificial colours or flavours so actually if you are going to let your child eat a frozen chocolate gateau, one from Iceland would probably be a good idea.
Back to the subject, though: I am mummy, so is my mummy and my mother-in-law is ma.
My daughter starts school in September though so I'm expecting a change of title then!

[caroline]

Mum! Mum! Mum! Who Are You! I am me and they love it!

But then are all estate agents / lawyers / accountants the same?

No, but I have found that most estate agents are total arseholes and that's a fact in my experience!

[miss.amaryllis]

Nick Cotton: "'Ello, Ma..."

My mother disliked "Mum" and so do I. I'm still Mamma to my three, now grown up, but was resigned to being (child's name)'s Mum, and "come along now, Mum!" from other child-associates. Groan - but it doesn't go on for ever. School teachers always addressed me formally.

Oh yes - the Ballet Mistress! "Where's Mummy W..... ?" Made me giggle a bit.

[Toxic_Kitten]

Ooh, very funny piece, liked it alot.

I remember when i was pregnant the leaflets that came with the health Visitors pre-natal chat which included sound advice about having one's hair cut into a short and manageable style because once baby was born Mum wouldn't have ANY TIME TO HERSELF. Having had long hair almost all my life and still do at coming on 40, I ignored that one with a snort.

Similarly the way "professionals" dealing with your children use the ubiquitous Mum as reference just seemed like another slightly authoritarian reminder that your child now superceded you in every facet of existence - it never came across as a badge of honour or merit, rather that you were now simply the caretaker of a child that now replaced you in the hierarchy of importance. It grated no end, but initial resistance had to give way because one or two things were said which implied that any interest in such things meant I was not putting my childs needs first. So hey ho, why sweat the details, I know my place. And being analytical is obviously not allowed. Kerry Katona probably isn't analytical.

Aside from that my son calling me Mum is fine, my husband referring to me in a conversation with our son as Mum is fine, and people who meet me for the first time in the context of being my sons Mum are allowed to say it until they remember my name.

It does seem that the world we live in loves to put us in neatly labelled boxes while at the same time bangiing on about individuality and self-expression.

Sometimes I both feel a little schizophrenic about it all......

.

[Ruby]

I am 30, call my mother 'Mummy', and don't feel silly doing this at all in public or in front of people whose opinion might actually matter. When I and the other 'kids' (aged 41-48) are talking about the parents, it's 'Mummy' or 'Daddy'. Anything else just feels... wrong. And I might add, it's not some wet, chinless, teddy-hugging affectation either.

[noughtpointzero]

Teachers have "low aspirations"? How unbelievably patronising. Some teachers enter the career because it's, like, a VOCATION, you know?

[Lisa]

Sometimes, after hearing 'Mum' shouted, wailed, whined and groaned at me 300 times in one evening, I say, 'I am no longer called "Mum". My name is Mrs Snodgrass from now on'. Makes my children laugh anyway, but they are only eight and six.

Other times it takes me by surprise. I suddenly think 'Wow, I am a Mum'. Soppy, I know, but true.

[Supermother]

"With regards to men who say "who's your daddy?" during sex I think it's just as wrong to refer to your partner as "baby"."

That's whole other thread but alphamummies seem to be madonna rather than whore, sexless mothers who have moved from sex partner to mother so we don't do sex threads.....just threads about all kinds of trivial child things the nanny normally deals with.

[Jos Costello]

Right now I'm mummy to my children, and that's fine. To my girls' friends I am (insert child's name here)'s mummy, and that's fine too. Anyone else - doctors, dentists, husbands, complete strangers - calling me 'mum' or 'mummy' will get glared at. I don't object to being identified as my children's mum by those to whom it's relevant and logical, I do object to it from people who ought to know better and have better manners. Simple, really.

[ww]

I've always been "Mama" so far, although there was a certain amount of grumbling when the children went to pre-school and found out most other people had a "Mummy". But to be honest, this article seems very piffling. Alphmummy, you are not in the slightest bit alpha at the moment. Could do better if tried, I reckon.

[LM]

MumofTwo as sensible as ever - I'm in complete agreement (though it does irritate me that some of my cousins still can't spell my husband's surname after 12+ years of marriage). When friends have different surnames and they have children, I usually address envelopes "To The X-Y Family" as it covers all bases and anyway as I recall from childhood, it's the children who want to open the Christmas cards and get disappointed if they aren't included on the envelopes.

As for the "kids" vs "children" discussion, it does seem terribly old-fashioned and a little bit pompous and reactionary to keep reminding everyone that "kids are baby goats not children" etc. Of course that was the origin of the word, but language changes (as Fiona rightly pointed out). If you're going to be pompous about this, I hope you only ever refer to gay people as "homosexuals" as well. After all, we all know the real meaning of "gay" is "happy"..

[Sas]

Don't breed and then you'll never have to become one... Also kinder to the planet.... and my ears.

[mumoftwo]

Helen, to take an example, every moment your child's teacher (plus the head, supply teacher etc) spends memorizing the names of the parents of all the 28 children in their class, some of whom have just a mum, just a dad, both mum and dad, two dads, grannies, childminders who pick up, who all have different surnames, hyphenated names, obvious names spelt differently (Jon, Rachael) and working out how to say 'Sinead', they are not planning your children's lessons. I really think if, as I do, you all have different family names in your family, you cannot blame people if they sometimes get muddled and they just refer to you as Mrs (Child's surname). Even if they get the surname right, they may get the title wrong (Ms, Miss, Mrs, Dr etc). I use schools as an example, it happens elsewhere, but what should people do, carry a clipboard of the entire family tree of names of families with multiple surnames and titles in case someone takes offence..? I couldn't even remember the surnames of some of my closest friends' children this year (as they seem to be changing it as the child grows up) plus judging by my Christmas cards, no-one knows what we are called either.

[Lata]

When I was a child I always called my parent's friends Uncle or Aunty Firstname - e.g. Uncle John.

So I find it faintly shocking to be called by my firstname by my friends' children.

Am I just old-fashioned/out of sync/weird?

[THE WHITE RABBIT]

At 33 I call my parents Mummy and Daddy - its who they are to me and a sign of our relationship rather than an affectation

Do you really believe its an affectation or rather a normal sign of being white and middle class and therefore something that society seems to think should be stamped out so as not to show differences between the traditional Mum / Mummy classes ?

[More than a Mother]

Hmm, almost as interesting reading the comments as the blog itself! I am most definitely 'mummy' to my three; often scummy, occasionally yummy, but always mummy :)

http://morethanjustamother.blogspot.com/

[More than a Mother]

Hmm, almost as interesting reading the comments as the blog itself! I am most definitely 'mummy' to my three; often scummy, occasionally yummy, but always mummy :)

http://morethanjustamother.blogspot.com/

[Helen]

What I hate is being referred to as 'Mrs X (daughter's surname)' when I'm Miss Y. Surely you should be called what YOU want to be called, not what someone else thinks you should be?

[mumoftwo]

My husband asked to join the 'mums and babies' swimming group at the local authority pool. Initally they said, no, the other mums wouldn't like it, but after much consultation (and quick checks to lawyers, I suspect), he was allowed!

[Matt King]

My wife received an invite from the primary school that said 'Join all the other Mums for a night of fun, drinkies and chat'.

She is currently applying for a visa so we can move to Borneo.