Alpha Mummy - Times Online - WBLG

Should girls wear headscarves?

There's a thought-provoking piece about the headscarf debate in Turkey in today's Times. Does the wearing of headscarves by devout Muslims change society overall, perpetuating hard-line ideals and sexism? A female journalist there says: "The harrassment of women who don't cover up is increasing. I get called a whore as I walk down the street. The confidence of the Islamic movement is shoring up lumpen sexism among Turkish men."

She goes on to say: "Women who wear headscarves have already been exposed to religious ideology. It affects the kind of things they want in life. They make more passive choices."

Can we say the same about the wearing of headscarves in the UK? Are girls who wear headscarves being molded into meek specimens of womanhood? I think requiring them to wear headscarves jars with our society's ideology of equality. But for some it is simply a case of parents passing on their ideals to their children, just as one might pass along the tenets of Protestant or Catholic beliefs.

I've always been interested in women who cover themselves for religious reasons, at the same time feeling a bit sorry for them. They seem to be colluding in their own disenfranchisement and oppression. They - together with those who champion the niqab and burka - seem to buy into the idea that a woman's hair or face or body are dangerous things that must be controlled. That they are naturally "bad" because they are too stimulating and provocative for men to see.

And when it comes to young girls, there is a moment where they pass over from the freedom of childhood - of being able to run and play as equals with boys - to having to be modest and decorous and not too visible. That's my personal opinion and there are many who disagree. But then who's to say what's "right" when it comes to the rules of the country we live in?

12 most expensive celebrity baby pictures

Can we just step back for a moment and marvel at the news of Angelia Jolie and Brad Pitt having twins and selling the pictures for an estimated $11 million? Before the birth, paparazzi camped out in front of the hospital, and the mayor of Nice announced the twins' arrival along with the couple's doctor.

There is big price escalation for celebrity baby pictures these days. Consider that in 1989 pictures of Lisa Marie Presley's baby - quintessential tabloid fodder - sold for $100,000. Nowadays that barely covers the catering bill at baby's first photo shoot. But really, what is our fascination with celebrity baby pictures?

There's a ludicrous predictability to them all: parents beam as the little blob looks uncomprehendingly up at the bright photography lights. "We're a happy, normal family" the pictures attempt to project, but the perfectly styled mums and dads end up looking as posed and artificial as the babies look unformed and natural. People in "the business" say the rising prices of baby pictures is fueled by fans wanting to know the "real" person behind the celebrity facade. But these pictures look as plastic as a pacificer. And while ostensibly they are focussed on the baby and the family unit, they seem to be about one thing alone: burnishing the parents' image.

12 celebrity couples and what they sold their baby pictures for:

1. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt: Twins Vivienne Marcheline and Knox Leon, sold for a reported $11 million to a US magazine
2. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt: First child Shiloh Nouvel born in Namibia in 2006, sold for between $5-7 million to People magazine
3. Jennifer Lopez and Marc Antony: Twins Emme and Max born in 2008, sold for $6 million to People
4. Matthew McConaughey and Camila Alves: Levi, reportedly sold for $3 million to OK!, according to TMZ.com

5. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt: Adopted son Pax Thien, sold for $2 million to People in 2007
6. Anna Nicole Smith and Larry Birkhead: Dannielynn, sold for a reported $2 million to OK! magazine
7. Christina Aguilera and Jordan Bratman: Max, sold for a reported $1.5 million to People in February

8. Jessica Alba and Cash Warren: Honor Marie, sold for a reported $1.5 million to OK!
9. Jamie Lynn Spears: Maddie Briann, sold for a reported $1 million by OK! in June
10. Nicole Richie and Joel Madden: Harlow Winter, sold for a reported $1 million to People in February
11. Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale: Kingston, sold for a reported $575,000 to OK! in June 2006
12. Britney Spears and Kevin Federline: Sean Preston, sold for a reported $500,000 to People in November 2005

And three high-profile celebrities who didn't:

* Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, for Sunday Rose, because they said they did not feel that it was right

* Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, for James Wilke. The actress stood outside the hospital with her baby and posed for free.

* Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, for Suri Cruise. The couple reportedly took the pictures off the market after a bidding war. Pictures taken by Annie Leibovitz ran in Vanity Fair.

Source: Forbes.com, The Times archive and agencies

From the 'Oh Come On' Department

Toddlers who dislike spicy food could be deemed 'racist'

Ladies' day at the church

Just when you thought you might have to stop worrying. Just when you thought, we've got the vote, we've ostensibly got equal rights by law, we're no longer our husband's chattal, some clergy shatter the illusion. Thank goodness the Church of England officially decided to consecrate women bishops, and leave behind the antiquated idea of females as not up to snuff when preaching God's word, but the groups rallying against it give me cause to worry.

I've been meaning to join a local church, especially after my daughter asked in the car recently, "Who is God?" Yet the call for no women bishops reminded me how important it is to choose the right church. It's pretty shocking to realise that some religious leaders still think women are inferior to men. Some people are saying this is the end of the CofE, but it's the opposite: if people feel the church reflects evolved and modern moral and ethically viewpoints, it will become more relevant to their lives, not less.

I'm reminded of the hysteria when I was young about Satanic messages embedded backwards on records. At a youth group, several kids asked the minister if we should worry about absorbing "bad" messages via pop. "How many of you regularly listen to your records backwards?" he asked jokingly, before dismissing the scaremongering as a distraction from the real issues facing us - coping with parents, peer pressure, budding sexuality. He made me realise that there was a church that actually tries to help people with real problems in their real lives, that I could feel a part of. Now I feel that way about the CofE.

Ruth Gledhill blogs about the debate on her excellent Articles of Faith blog - check it out if you want to read more about the full motion.

(Thanks, KM, for bringing up the bishops issue in the comments of Caitlin's post.)

Caitlin talks sense about abortion

If you haven't read Caitlin's comment piece in the Times today about girls and abortion, you should. She cuts through the hysteria about the latest statistics on teenage abortion and refocuses the conversation where it belongs - on teenage pregnancies.

Let’s face it, the rise in teenage abortion is not the scandalous statistic here. It is, ultimately, the teenage pregnancies that are the problem. Why are these pregnancies occurring?

Plus she makes this very important point:

Almost exactly half of the cause of teenage pregnancies - teenage boys - rarely, if ever, get mentioned.

If you missed it, check it Caitlin's blog about Why I believe abortion is part of being a good mother and the lively discussion that ensued.

Childcare: the hot potato in the political world

The froth whipped up by the Caroline Spelman story would be funny if it's weren't so damning about the country's attitudes toward childcare. So here's the deal: More than a decade ago a working mother pays her nanny extra - during school hours when the children aren't there - to work at her home office opening mail, filing and answering phones? Then she stopped doing it. It's hardly hookers and cocaine, is it? Ironically, she would have been better off spending more of the taxpayers' money hiring a separate person to do these time-consuming but essential tasks.

Yet what strikes me is that - with the exception of David Blunkett's "nannygate" - it's only professional women who are swept up into nanny scandals. Don't male politicians have young children as well? Yes, but of course it's the mothers who organise childcare. Ultimately it's still the woman's responsibility. And in the male-dominated political world, that's the root of our problems with childcare.

We still have to pay childminders out of taxed income and until recently couldn't use childcare vouchers for nannies. As the Guardian says today: "Gordon Brown was promising a national childcare strategy that would deliver affordable, accessible, high quality care to all. Ten years on, that's one more promise he has failed to keep."

The piece goes on to say,

Whatever the outcome of Spelgate, among her critics there might also exist just a touch of ambivalence. It's a bit rum that in a profession awash with allowances, including the cost of staying away from home, office expenses and a London supplement, there's no allowance for the one job that should matter as much if not more: someone to care for the children.

The general outcry about the affair is not just a little hypocritical, considering how many people pay for their childcare in cash or under the table, or regularly jiggle the numbers - giving the nanny £100 "grocery money" every week to buy some milk and bread. We have to realise that our attitudes about childcare directly relate to our attitudes about working women.

The Times Libby Purves writes, "However much the nation pretends it wants their skills, working mothers are still the bottom of the heap."

Maybe that's why I can't get worked up into a lather about Spelman. Giles Chichester paid hundreds of thousands to a company in which he was a director and now we're talking about paying someone - not a family member, not one's self indirectly but a nanny - to do a little bit on the side. I wonder if Spelman would have fared better if she'd hired the woman as a personal assistant and paid her for babysitting on the side.

Fathers are drawing a blank

To listen to the latest directive from the government, requiring that fathers sign their babies' birth certificates, you'd think there was an army of disenfranchised dads battering down the door at the local birth registrars.

Currently in about 7 per cent, or 50,000, births, mothers choose to leave the father space blank on the birth certificate and no questions are asked. Now, as part of the Welfare Reform Bill in autumn, the man within married couples will automatically be entered. If a mother attempts to register a birth without the father's name, she'll be asked and then, if she provides the father's details, the agency will pursue him to be named.

Babies need fathers. But the formality that happens down at the registry office is miles away from a dad who pitches in to help raise a child or takes an active role in its life. A few fathers might hear of a baby's birth when they might not have otherwise. But in practice the law is unworkable - just imagine the overworked civil servant in your borough playing detective to get a dad on the record.

In theory, it's paternalistic. It reminds me of politicians lecturing about the horror of teen pregnancy, while ignoring that for every young pregnant girl there was a boy not wearing a condom.

This move paints a picture of mothers wilfully cutting out fathers, perhaps on a whim, and scapegoats them for absent fathers. It ignores the fact that some of these mothers may be protecting themselves and their children from fathers who won't contribute to a child's well-being - because of drug use, abuse or other factors. You can't legislate happy families.

All those poor dads missing out on signing the certificate and all those mothers swanning around refusing to acknowledge them. Next thing you know women will want to get an abortion without the approval of a second doctor and society will descend into anarchy.

Is IVF tourism really a good idea?

At an age when most women are settling down on their nest egg and knitting themselves a second house in Bournemouth, one woman and her partner headed to India to start a family.

A 59-year-old woman and her 72-year-old partner travelled to India for fertility treatment, being too old to qualify in the UK, the Times has reported. The two were born in India but are British citizens and live in Birmingham. (Initial reports in the Sun said the two had abandoned their newborn twin daughters because they weren't boys, which has been vigorously denied by the NHS.)

This story really highlights is the vast difference in fertility services people can get in different countries. Prospective patients can shop for services on websites such as this one, in countries across Europe, yet shouldn't finding an IVF provider be different from tracking down an affordable facelift surgeon?

What investment does a doctor or fertility team in the ultimately well-being of the client and offspring when they fly in and fly out from distant lands? Are doctors really so in love with scientific advances that they believe providing IVF to a 58-year-old and her 72-year-old partner is in the best interests of the couple and the children produced alike?

The Times reported on the disparity between fertility treatments across Europe back in July 2007:

Many assisted reproduction techniques that are considered to be best practice in some EU member states are heavily restricted or outlawed in others, and safety measures introduced in parts of Europe are contravened routinely elsewhere. Germany and Italy, for example, ban embryo-freezing, egg donation and embryo-screening for inherited diseases, forcing couples who need these services to pay for treatment in countries that permit them, such as Britain, Spain and Belgium.

This isn't about the idea that people get "sub-par" treatment in India or anywhere else. Many people rave about their experiences in India, such as this couple and this woman in a news segment on ABC in the US.

What we really need European-wide regulations, at the same time promoting sane guidelines - and affordable treatment - here in the UK. Couples who want IVF need to be able to pursue it, but not everybody should be considered a viable candidate.

The abortion debate: who's having a good day or bad day

It’s life affirming that MPs have chosen not to cut the 24-week abortion limit or confirm the need for a father figure to be produced for IVF procedures, although it's not good news for everybody.

A good day for

1. The idea of women as grown-up people capable of making intelligent decisions. Perhaps best described by Kathie Guthrie, a consultant gynaecologist, in the Observer on Sunday:

'People think abortions are what little girls or feckless women have, and that's just not true,' says Guthrie. 'For some women their circumstances are such that the only solution for them, after heart-searching, is to turn to abortion. To patronise women this way is treating them as if they are not capable of self-determination and decision-making, which is not credible in Western society today.'

2. Non-traditional families. Britain’s politicians really want to save the family, the cornerstone of society. As long as the family looks exactly like theirs.

3. Science. Survival rates for babies born at 20 and 22 weeks haven’t changed. This is agreed by almost everyone, excerpt perhaps those who have heard an inspiring story about a very premature baby surviving against all odds or those who find it dovetails with their political agenda to think so.

Temperance at Tesco

Man walks into a Tesco, takes a six-pack to the counter and tries to pay. That's where the joke begins. Dominic Zenden, a 45-year-old spiritualist medium, was told by the cashier that he couldn't purchase the beer in case he gave some to his 15-year-old daughter, who was with him. Even after he assured the cashier the Budweiser was for him, she refused to ring it up.

A Tesco spokesperson said:

“We are doing lots of work to try to stop under18s getting alcohol, and one of the biggest problems has become adults buying for people who are underage. If our staff suspect that people are doing so, then we do not serve them. Obviously there is an element of common sense involved in making that judgment. It is not a blanket ban."

It's been a while since I was underage, but as I recall, usually the "adult" buying for under18s tended to be a skinny 19-year-old buying wine coolers for a carload of friends in the packing lot, not a father purchasing the King of Beers to drink at home. I think drinking the watery, flaccid-tasting Budweiser brand in general should be banned, but that doesn't allow me to intercede either.

Underage and binge drinking is a problem. But do we actually have so few ideas about constructive ways to curb it that we'll target parents legally buying alcohol when shopping with their children? It's as silly as prosecuting parents who allow their child a drink at home. This isn't about a retailer taking a stand in a public health issue. It's the same kind of impulse that leads waiters to refuse to serve a glass of wine to a pregnant woman. It's pure busybody-ness.

How does your husband compare?

I thought my husband was hard to take sometimes, like when he spent the first six months after my daughter's birth going to "headwettings" three times a week. Or how he always leaves empty packs of Extra gum around the house. But marriage to Tony Blair is obviously no picnic, according to Cherie Blair's new memoirs as she reveals the reaction after a miscarriage.

Twenty minutes later Tony called back. The kids were OK, and he hoped I understood, but he had to tell Alastair. Ah, yes. Alastair. I lay there just waiting. Then the phone again: this time the two of them on the line. There were implications in not going on holiday, they said. It was known that we were going to France. It was all to do with Iraq. There had been talk that we might be sending troops in. If we didn't go on holiday, the concern was that it would send out the wrong messages. They had decided that the best thing was to tell the press that I'd had a miscarriage.

I couldn't believe it. There I was, bleeding, and they were talking about what was going to be the line to the press. I put down the receiver and lay there staring at the ceiling, as pain began to grip.

At times it's seemed that Cherie was universally loathed in the UK (I once saw her speak at an antiques event where she was booed by the well-dressed crowd); she's been demonised more than her husband. Yet this really shows what life is like for a politician's family and how much their private life is intertwined with the public job. In an era of self-aggrandising political memoirs, it's gutsy to write about the messier sides of life. I applaud her for it.

Is this bouncy castle too dangerous?

Everyone will agree that it's very very sad that an 11-year-old boy named Sam was permanently injured on a bouncy castle when a heavier boy accidentally struck him on the head with his heel. Yet the ruling yesterday by the High Court is bad news for parents and indeed the UK at large.

The mother who had hired the bouncy castle (and was hosting Sam) had given Sam permission to get on but had not watched him properly, the judge found. At the same time, the judge dismissed the case against Sam's father, who was also at the party and named as the third defendant, strangely enough.

Sam's parents said in a statement: "We appreciate that thousands of children enjoy playing on bouncy castles every year, and we would not wish to stop that happening, but it is vital that those hiring them supervise them properly if accidents like Sam’s are to be avoided."

But where is the parents' responsibility in this? Where is the acknowledgment that jumping on a bouncy castle, riding a bike, roughhousing in the sitting room has its risks? If you're worried that the kids will get too boisterous or are at risk, you have a responsibility as a parent to look after your child.

This kind of action is a part of the need to find someone to blame, no matter the incident. Coming up at the next summer fete or birthday party: legal disclaimers signed at the door?

Drinking in the Algarve

As expected, the plot thickens regarding the couple in the Algarve whose children were taken into protective custody. Today's story seems to say that the wife was ill but the husband was fine, that they arranged for the hotel to look after their children while she was taken to hospital and that the father was 'conscious, orientated and helpful with staff' at the hospital.

The discussion on Alpha Mummy has kicked up some theories about British drinking habits, mostly that we are all lushes. Get your two cents in here.

How much should you drink around children?

In case you suspected that all the fun stops when you have children, along comes the Portuguese government and removes all doubt.

Eamon and Antoinette McGuckin were taken to hospital and their kids - ages 1 through 6 - were taken into care temporarily after the adult McGuckins apparently passed out in a hotel lobby and bar. The plot thickens as stories report that Antoinette says she only had three beers. Friends and neighbours describe them as devoted homebody parents rather than as, y'know, ginhead chavs.

What does the scandal in Austria tell us?

It's hard to get your mind around the horrific story of Josef F (pictured) and what has happened to his daughter. Two stories in the Times today discuss how such a macabre situation could have unfolded in this Austrian community.

Roger Boyes reports from Vienna about the uncurious society there; Stefanie Marsh and Bojan Pancevski write about the several child abuse scandals in Austria and how attitudes among police and politicians have played into those situations, pointing out that "in two of these cases, neighbours admitted to reporters that they knew the perpetrators and victims of the crimes only by their surnames."

Nannycams: Is it wrong to watch those that watch your kids?

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How's your sex life?

Love is in the air in the past few days. Or at least, sex is.

Caitlin Moran rejoices that new research shows the best sex last between 3 and 13 minutes. A story in the Sunday Times magazine details the intricacies of marital strife since the early years of Relate, including the piquant observation that in the past 10 years the number of men who have gone off sex has risen dramatically. And a friend of mine recently confided that she and her husband rarely have sex - neither of them want it after a hectic day.

So it seems sex has become shorter, rarer and - for many married couples - a lot less fun.

Gloria Steinen reportedly said, "A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after." Is a satisfying sex life after marriage or children possible?

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Natasha Kaplinsky's pregnancy: when did she know?

Channel 5 has announced that its new marquee news reader Natasha Kaplinsky is pregnant. Three months pregnant. Which means whether she knew it or not, she was pregnant when she started her million-pound-a-year job. It’s good news for her and her husband, and thought-provoking for everyone else.

Kaplinsky is good at her job - ratings for the news bulletin are up a reported 72% since she started. But you have to wonder whether Channel 5 knew they were handing over the suitcase full of money to top talent that would be slipping out the door several months hence.

She talked about parenthood to Andrew Billen in February:

Does she still hope to have children? "What do you mean still?" She is 35. I meant, I say, having signed this three-year deal with Five. "God yes, absolutely and of course that was part of what we discussed. I hope I will but you never know, do you?"

How do you make the Internet safe for kids?

Dr Tanya Byron's report on the Internet and child safety was all over the news last week. We just set up a computer for my 9-year-old stepson in the dining room so we can keep an eye on what he's doing, but frankly it's hard for me to imagine the dangers. There weren't Internet risks around when I was a kid and while you hear of "grooming", you get the sense that the dangers posed by Internet can be a lot more subtle: exposing kids to adult ideas and images, enabling bullies and promoting an open-door policy to any manner of online "friends". The most we've had to deal with was some risque emoticons that he didn't fully understand anyway.

Recently, talking to the folks at Norton, I was made aware of another issue: kids allowing viruses onto a family computer. I hadn't even thought of that: 9-year-old gets "wicked" attachment to an email or IM, runs an .exe file and suddenly your hard drive is erased. Or your personal information is sent to a back room in Criminal-stan and you get a bill for a BMW and £10,000 of handbags. It's the first time I thought about how my children's computer usage affects the whole family.

Mothers Supporting Embryo Research

At the moment, an incredibly important bill is going through Parliament. The Human Embryology And Fertilisation Bill, if passed, will keep Britain at the forefront of stem cell research. Stem cell research is by far our best chance of curing dozens and dozens of diseases - something reflected in the fact that 223 separate patient charities have signed an open letter supporting the bill. They explained that stem cell research is currently being hampered by a shortage of donated human eggs, and that scientists propose using hollowed-out animal eggs, with an introduced human nucleus, as a source of stem cells. The resulting ball of cells would not be allowed to develop beyond a maximum of fourteen days.
The great majority of the British public - between 70% and 79% - support the use of human embryos for medical research. Alas, public support and the potential to save or transform millions of lives are essentially nugatory concerns to the Church - particularly the Catholic Church. Whilst Rowan Williams has done his usual, waffly C of E thing - "it [all] requires some argument" - the Catholic Church have come out all guns blazing, with Cardinal Keith O'Brien using his Easter Sunday sermon to call the bill "monstrous." “It is difficult to imagine a single piece of legislation which more comprehensively attacks the sanctity and dignity of human life than this particular bill," he said. “ In some other European countries, one could be jailed for doing what we intend to make legal.”
I'm not usually a controversially-minded creature - I like being part of the pack, albeit a part of the pack mucking about at the back, trying to secretly smoke a cigarette - but honestly, when people and organisations start saying these kind of essentially meaningless things, it drives me nuts. You're just wasting society's time with these kinds of concerns. You're indulging in semi-hysterical thought processes that are embarrassing. Anyone claiming that their faith is being offended by these kinds of things is essentially being attention-seeking. A real offence to humanity is a parent coping, every day, with the unimaginable pain of a terminally ill or seriously disabled child. I have a friend who had twins, one of whom died, and the other who now lives in a wheelchair, and regularly has to be ambulanced to hospital with simple colds and infections. She simply doesn't know when he will die. She was in tears recently when she realised that all his heroes - Spider-Man, the Hulk - are human beings who, through some kind of medical accident or experiment, turn into something else, and become stronger. Even at the age of eight, he has some grasp of what his best chance for the future is. The idea that the outrage to her peace of mind - being able to offer no treatment to her child - is somehow less than that of a Catholic campaigning against stem cell research is, frankly, distasteful. The humans who have these diseases are real people, with thoughts and feelings and parents and children and jobs and lives, and a million memories that tie them to the Earth. The effect of their death is palpable. The effect of fourteen day embryos not subsequently being implanted, gestated and born is not.
I don't know what these campaigners are imagining is happening in these research laboratories, but I rather suspect that they might be envisioning a tiny baby in a petri dish, wearing a bonnet and screaming "Help me!" The reality, of course, is a clusters of cells, barely visible to the naked eye, and still at such a rudimentary stage of development that they could fuse and merge back into any twin in the womb.
Mothers know the difference between an embryo at fourteen days, and a fully-grown, solid, heavy, flesh, thinking, reasoning, loving child. Mothers know what life really is.

You can sign the petition supporting the bill here.

Heather Mills didn't get enough money

Yes, she's a "less than candid witness", yes, she has living needs that total £600,000 a year and finally, she actually owns a suit that looks like a harlequin's outfit, but the former model-campaigner-ex-McCartney muse was awarded £35,000 a year for her daughter Beatrice, with Sir Paul agreeing to pay up to £30,000 for a nanny. And while I know many will scoff, in the scheme of things this is just not that much money.

We used to have a nanny share for my daughter with another child and because we felt strongly that we should pay a fair wage (we kinda like our daughter and figured it would be good to have someone well remunerated for looking after her all day), we were able to hire an amazing woman. She cooked healthy quinoa dishes, she organised endless playdates, she corrected them when they tried to sit on each other's heads. And as a result she earned the equivalent of around £32K a year. That is to say, a living wage in London.

I know Sir Paul has the admirable desire to live as normally as possible. But £30,000 for a nanny is just scraping by. Chuck in the fact that the nanny will need to be discreet, security-minded and immune to tabloid payouts and that number looks to breed resentment.

Why is it that the people who are the most important to our children's development outside of family - the nannies, the childminders, the teachers - are paid so little? Do we really still think that these are low-skilled jobs or as a society are we just looking to get as much as possible out of the people who provide services for as little as possible? We stop ourselves from thinking about the children of our nannies who themselves go into childcare so mummy can get paid to look after someone else's progeny.

Of course Heather can perhaps find some spare cash in her £24.3 million award to augment the nanny's fees. And she could always use that age-old nanny budgeting trick used in our neighbourhood: Give the nanny a generous weekly food shopping budget and let her keep the change.

Which would you rather: prostitute or affair?

To me the most shocking thing about the Eliot Spitzer scandal in New York is the amount he spent on prostitutes and the financial finagling he did to hide the payments. This from one Times story:

Mr Spitzer allegedly wanted to transfer more than $10,000 to the ring’s front company, QAT Consulting Group, but broke it up into smaller amounts to avoid the bank being required to report it to the Government.

That to me is a lot more shocking than "powerful man has hotel sex with callgirl". Just days before the story broke my mother and I were talking about President Clinton and she said, sighing, "It's just the type of personality that's drawn to politics."

Naturally the widely circulated pictures of Spitzer from his press conference show his wife standing stoically by his side. If it were my husband I think I would be angrier at the money - the family's money - spent on these escorts (really, how good can sex be for it to cost so much?) and the health risk he would have put me in. While you can rationalise that sex with prostitutes is just about sex and an affair cuts more deeply because it's emotional, in a way having an affair seems more human and forgiveable.

Here's an interesting bit on Boingboing about the mindset of people who pay for sex.

What do ya'll think?

Picture: the prostitute behind the Spitzer scandal

Alpha Mummy interview with Fearne Cotton

Fearne Cotton is dropping by the Alpha Mummy office on Monday to talk to us about her role as ambassador for World Vision 24 Hour Famine. The charity is urging young people to get sponsored to go 24 hours without something - TV, their mobile phone, even food - to raise money for a project to help children who live on the street in Chennai, India.

Cotton visited Chennai and met with children of families who live literally on the streets - you can see a video of it here. It really highlights the conditions under which some people have to raise their children and the disparity with our lives here in the UK.

Post your questions here for Cotton about her visit, the charity or, well, anything, and we'll ask her on Monday.

The Alpha Mummy list of 10 things mums really need for Mother's Day

In the run-up to Mother’s Day, £85 million will be spend on cards alone, with children, dads, and other family members shelling out £230 million on flowers and £65 million on chocolates, according to the British Retail Consortium.

One expects most mother’s would greet this news with a swift calculation of how many babysitters and house cleaning hours could be bought for a similar amount of money.

There are two ways to approach mothering Sunday. The sentimental among us will say “Every day is Mother’s Day when I get a cuddle from my children.” The jaded will say “Every day is Mother’s Day as I spend all 365 of them mothering every one else.”

Branded everything!

  Children who don't have the latest designer must-haves - from Iphones to trainers - feel depressed and anxious according to a new report by the Children's Society published today. It damns the advertising industry for selling kids a lifestyle without which they begin to feel out of step with their peers and excluded. The Archbishop of Canterbury has also waded in to say he agrees that childhood is becoming commercialised.

My kids are only five and two but I feel the truth of this already: the other night I was reading my daughter an old book of fairy tales from my own childhood. We looked at the pictures of Cinderella: "that's not Cinderella" said my daughter, "Cinderella wears a blue/silver dress and has blonde hair" (the Disney version). When it came to the traditional version of Sleeping Beauty that was deemed 'wrong' too - it didn't have Maleficent, the evil fairy, turning into a cartoon dragon - again Disney has made her feel it has a monopoly on these old classics to the point where she thinks any other versions are wrong - Disney has successfully marketed all the Princesses (from Snow White to Pocahontas as a set to little girls, with buyable costumes, dolls,  magazines, colouring books, pyjamas all reinforcing the myth).

And it's not just Fairy Tales: this half term I tried to buy some Fuzzy Felt - but these days you can only buy Bob the Builder Fuzzy Felt or other ghastly themed Fuzzy Felt from children's telly. Even the arts aren't sacred - the Royal National Ballet are putting on an Angelina Ballerina ballet... if you try and buy childrens clothes, even in places like Marks and Spencer they are all daubed with characters too. What happened to letting children make up their own fantasy worlds, free of trying to sell them stuff. I spend my time trying to find unbranded toys and un-pink clothes for my daughters, but it's an uphill struggle - and another part of me doesn't want them to feel like freaks because they are the only kids who have never heard of Iggle Piggle... what do you think?   

Do you discipline other people's children?

David Cameron says we all have a duty to intervene with other people's children when necessary. Well to reference a book by the XX presidential candidate, it takes a village to raise a child and I'm not afraid to play mayor.

Here's a story: In the Faro airport, waiting for an EasyJet flight, we sat next to a coffee bar, which was next to two play areas - one for younger kids, one for older. Our toddler daughter was playing in the wendy house made of snap-together plastic pieces with a few other young ones. Suddenly three of the older kids ran over from their area to the wendy house. They tore round, wrestling on the floor and jostling the younger children. Then they started pulling off the roof and walls of the wendy house,  collapsing it on the boys and girls inside.

So naturally, I went over and said in a firm but friendly voice "Don't take apart the house - nobody will be able to play in it" and started putting it back together. They looked surprised but then started to help me. The older girl became a quick convert, saying "C'mon - we're building the house!"

I'd assumed their parents were distracted or otherwise didn't know what was going on. Imagine my surprise when, upon seeing me intervene, they got up from a table on the edge of the play area, walked over and started telling their children to take care around younger children and go back to the big-kids playscape.

When my daughter is acting up, especially around other children, I would expect other parents to gently correct her. Would you be that parent?

Extreme mothering on the front line

Last night I went to the most fascinating talk; Christina Lamb - perhaps the most brilliant foreign corresondent of her generation - was speaking about her life as she has just published her memoirs called Small Wars Permitting: Dispatches from Foreign Lands (it's fantastic, a romp that reads like a thriller about her time as a 22 year old blonde in Pakistan, leaping on the backs of motorbikes ridden by the Mujhadeen who are now the Taliban, over the high mountains leading from Peshawar into Afghanistan). She has had more brushes with death than anyone else I've ever met and remains passionate about the need to bear witness to the terrible sufferings going on around the world, and the need to tell the stories of the people she meets: her specialist areas are Pakistan, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe - so she's been a pretty busy lady recently.

So why am I writing about her on alphamummy: well partly because it's good for you ladies out there to expand your minds with a bit of well-written geopolitics, partly because I found her so inspriring that I named my own collection of journalism by women from the last 100 years after a piece that she wrote for me in the Sunday Times. The collection is called Cupcakes and Kalashnikovs after an article that Christina wrote about how she juggles interviewing dictators, and zooming around war zones with being the mother of a lovely little boy. Christina is perhaps at the most extreme end of working motherhood; she has a nine year old son and she leaves him behind with his Dad to take on hair-raising assignments. One of the things I most respect about Lamb is her honesty about all of this: she wrote in one dispatch where she was almost killed when pinned down under Taliban fire in Afghanistan last year about the bullets whistling over her head and her wondering if she was ever going to see her boy again. But what was she supposed to do? When he was only two years old 9/11 happened, right on her patch, she probably knows more about the Taliban, Afghanistan and the causes of worldwide Islamist terror than anyone else; the young men whose motorbikes she clambered onto all those years ago were those hanging out with Mullah Omar, she is close friends with Hamid Karzai (President of Afghanistan) and was great friends of Benazir Bhutto. We all needed her to report. Yes she left her son, but he was with his dad and she had a seriously important role to fulfill in explaining to us all why this came about. All of our own dilemmas about work/life balance are thrown into a new relief by Christina: when I asked her about all of this at the talk she gave last night, she explained that she was thinking of stopping but then she met an incredibly brave human rights lawyer from Zimbabwe - where hundreds of thousands have perished - who said to Lamb how much her visits to Zimbabwe meant to the people there, how the fact that Lamb was brave enough to bear witness to the terrible suffering of the Zimbabwean people gave them the strength to keep going. Set against the ghastly, unfair, grim lives of the people caught up in the wars or regimes that Christina writes about, her own guilt about her son somehow seemed kind of irrelevant. She is an inspiration, buy her book. It rocks.

Read more by Christina Lamb Zimbabwe's silent genocide Lamb on Benazir Bhutto's bus when it was bombed Hear Lamb's account of the bombing

Never too young for handcuffs

What’s the worst phone call you’ve ever had from your child’s school? As a parent, you expect to receive the odd call during your precious bundle’s 13 or so years in the care of the State. Hopefully about nothing worse then a skinned knee, a lost lunchbox, or – if I’m any barometer - your consistent failure to provide some diverting artefact for Show & Tell.

Five year old Dennis Rivera's mother, Jasmina Vasquez, can probably beat any war stories you might have. Dennis began misbehaving during a morning class at his school in Ridgewood, New York earlier this month. He was taken to the Head Teacher’s office where he reportedly knocked a few items from a desk.

A school safety agent (do we even have those here?) handcuffed the boy and called an ambulance to take him away for a mental health examination. His Mum was then called and she dashed to the school, calling the boy’s childminder en route as she was closer.

Little Dennis has been diagnosed with speech problems, asthma and attention deficit disorder in the past, and had struck a teacher only the previous day. He sounds like quite a handful, but do you think a school should ever have the right, or the need, to handcuff a 4’ 3” infant who weighs about 5 stone soaking wet?

Teens gone bad

Two stories in the Times today about bad teens. The more flamboyant is about an Aussie teen who threw a party while his parents were out of town. So far, so predictable. But then the party, with invitations sent by text and posted on MySpace, spiralled out of control and hundreds showed up to trash the house and the neighbourhood. Wake me when something newsworthy happens. Like when a news show interviews the teen and the presenter scolds the teen take off his sunglasses and apologise. And he refuses. Like when the kid starts to become some kind of instant legend, written about all over the world and lauded by kids and grown-ups alike.

Then there's the more sobering story of the three teens found guilty of kicking a 47-year-old man to death in front of his house while his family watched. One of them had been bailed from jail only hours before.

I know that misbehaving, violent teens grow out of a bad environment. But the truth is that once you have a person - 16, 26 or 66 - who has no empathy for others, who has no moral compass and thinks only about themselves, then that person is a problem in society.

Meanwhile here's a bit of oh-so-sweet advice about how to keep your teens from wrecking your house with parties while you're away. Just tell them that no, they're not to get into the vintage wine collection, they're not to smoke, ingest or other imbibe in illegal drugs, they're not to tear the doors off the hinges and throw all the furniture into the swimming pool or indeed dig a swimming pool if you don't already have one. You must simply lay out the rules clearly. Those partygoers who steal TVs, smash windows and vomit into the wardrobe? They just didn't know it was wrong.

Or, you could do what my parents did, give the "I'm very disappointed" speech and ground the teen in question for the foreseeable future. Just think: weeks cut off from the social calendar on MySpace - that's real punishment.

What do you think? Are teens in general more out of control these days?

The 20 most popular posts on Alphamummy in 2007

Ok, ok, so in fact the 10 most commented posts I wrote about yesterday weren't necessarily discussions about the original post. So sue me. What's interesting about today's list is that it's not exactly the same as the most-commented. It just shows how many lurkers are out there, peering in the AM window and presumably wanting to be part of our whole zeitgeist thingy.

As for what gripped everyone's attention last year: everything from sexy toys, not liking your new baby and why kittens will ruin your life. Plus, check out the interesting discussion on the bonus 21st post, Are fairies real?, with stories from people who have had fairy contact.

1. The 7 worst sexy toys for children - bling spas and tarty dolls

2. Legal advice for working mums: 6 things you should know - telling your boss about pregnancy and other vital advice

3. 11 stupidly expensive gifts for preschoolers - and you thought private education was expensive?

10 most commented-on posts on Alphamummy in 2007

Alphamummy turns one this month. To celebrate we trawled through all of 2007 to find the subjects that really got you going.

The most hotly debated topics this past year were abortion, yummy mummies, the McCanns, luxury baby items, birth, Claire Verity, breast feeding, working versus stay-at-home mums, nappies and - perhaps in a nod to climate change - cycling. They're listed below, with the most-commented first. See what got everyone so riled up last year.

1. Babies out of nappies at three months?

A writer in Body&Soul wonders if elimination communication (EC) could have helped her get her son potty-trained as an infant. Readers jumped on the topic, commenting on potty-training, disabilities and, ahem, the issue of beind financially dependent on a man.

As for EC, FM writes: "Don't forget to set aside for the psychotherapy bills in their teens, or later. Potty trained at three months may seem a boon to an infants parents, however that is not as nature intended it to be."

It's good reading material

2. Why I believe abortion is part of being a good mother

Caitlin Moran talks about her abortion decision and readers jumped in on both of both sides of the debate with ferocity:

Caitlin writes: "I’m not being flippant when I say it took me longer to decide what worktops to have in the kitchen than whether I was prepared to spent the rest of my life being responsible for a further human being."

A reader writes: "What do you say we lighten things up and talk about abortion? Lets talk about abortion. Lets talk about about child killing and see if we can't get some chuckles here."
The abortion discussion

3. I hate yummy mummies

Eleanor lets loose on the "regressive" label. "Everytime a friend of mine has kids and tells me they're going to 'stay at home', keep house and generally be a 'yummy mummy' (it's always kind of in quote marks even when spoken) a small piece of me dies."

Margot writes: "Those 'yummy mummies' - yes, the ones in the Boden skirts - are like the ones who will pick your child up from school when it's a half day and you are at work, they will run the PTA with events for your child's benefits, they will be looking after their elderly relatives,…they will be raising huge amounts of money for local hospitals and charities, and generally active in the community in which they live. You know what - they probably also read newspapers, join bookgroups, and watch art films. Some of them even .... think!"
The verdict on yummy mummies

4. Maddy - the horror goes on
This discussion started after an interview with Kate McCann in which she said leaving her daughter felt "perfectly safe". Some vilified Kate and Gerry McCann. Others empathised deeply with them. Eleanor writes, "What haunted me about this interview are her comments about how she can never go home, never go back and live in their old house in the UK."

Alphamummy turns 1!

A lot can happen in a year. During January 2007 Silvio Berlusconi publicly apologised to his wife for his romantic dalliances, Jeremy Paxman called the BBC hypocritical over its actions regarding climate change, and the Work and Pensions secretary questioned “why so little is asked of lone parents”.

Amid this environment, the Times's Alphamummy blog was born. With four bloggers - Caitlin Moran and Sarah Vine of the Times, Eleanor Mills from the Sunday Times and Jennifer Howze from Times Online - we began a blog devoted to mothers who work, used to work or would like to work. The idea was to create a forum for informed, intelligent debate on motherhood, work and parenting culture in the UK and beyond.

Since then the blog has taken in everything from why four is the new three, to tales from an adulterous mummy, to why men big it up when they stay home with sick kids and beyond.

This week we'll be celebrating a year of Alphamummy (not counting those first couple of months as we ramped up). Send us your comments and the things you'd like to discuss in 2008.

To kick things off, tell us how things have changed for you this past year.

Here's my short list:

Then: Thought three was the absolutely cutest age

Now: Realise I was a fool and that four, with its accompanying pronunciation of "use" as "ooze", is far and away superior

Then: Lived in tiny, overpacked flat with pieces of stickle bricks constantly underfoot

Now: Live in lovely house with pieces of play mobile phones constantly underfoot

Then: Hairclips and tights

Now: Alice bands and skirts over trousers

Then: Dora the Explorer

Now: Barbie the vet

Having your cake, big-time

I think I'm in love with Chidi Ogbuta. Not only is she from my home state of Texas but for her wedding she commissioned a life-size cake that resembles her. This is a woman who takes seriously the mantra of the wedding industry: It's your day.

The cake-alike has a white tiered skirt, veil, pink bouquet and dramatic up-do. In comparison, Jordan and Peter Andre's cake was a mere five feet high with five tiers, white chocolate roses and hearts.

Naturally, you that you don't have to be a bride to enjoy outrageous parties. Whenever I hear of former Tyco chief Dennis Kozlowski's over-the-top roman-style party for his wife's birthday - complete with toga-clad women scattering rose petals and an archer "whose flaming arrow lit up the message: 'Congratulations Karen & Dennis'" - I wonder if I could wrangle an invite to his coming-out-of-jail party, in case it reaches similar heights.

Of course Kozlowski's party was party funded with company money; Ogbuta on the other hand, paid for her super-sponge out of her own pocket (not included on cake).

Scary Santas, a story in pictures

I took my daughter to see Santa for the first time last week. The night before when I reminded her we were going, she said she wanted to go, then burst into tears and said, "I don't want to sit on his lap!" Later, when we were standing in line, she asked us, "Will you go in with me?" as if we were going to send her in alone to a detention room with the jolly torturer.

She didn't cry, as the picture shows, but she and Santa both seem to be in agreement about their encounter. Both have the same dazed expression.

For some truly hysterical pictures of scary Santas, check out this gallery from a paper in Florida. It just goes to show you, some kids really hate Santa.

We're putting together a Scary Santas picture gallery for the Times, so email in your Santa encounters to alphamummy@timesonline.co.uk.

Picture, from the sun-sentinel.com