The Goth Sloth

And now for something completely different...  Whimsical poetry to be precise (I think reading kids books all day has inspired me / warped my brain).  This one was written today after I noticed that the fluffy sloth that sits on the back of our sofa looks like he's wearing really over the top eye make up. 

 

(Incidentally, it only works if you pronounce 'sloth' so it rhymes with 'cloth', which we do in our house, though I know a lot of people say 'slowth'.  Sorry if you're one of them - this poem is probably going to bug the bejesus out of you).

_______________________

Susan the Sloth
Liked to dress as a Goth
Complete with black platforms and hair
This was fine on the ground
But soon Susan found
Climbing trees was a total nightmare.

For a sloth this is bad
She grew terribly sad
For she longed to hang by her toes
But she could not roam
Her arboreal home
Because of the outfits she chose

Her coat would get stuck
And covered in muck
And the twigs would poke holes in her skirt
Her boots were so clompy
The tree would go wonky
And she'd fall out so hard it would hurt.

"Give it up," her friends said
But the sloth shook her head
She was stubborn and really quite proud
"I like being a Goth,"
Said Susan the Sloth
"I don't want to be part of the crowd."

One sunny morning
As Susan was yawning
And applying more black to her eyes
A little voice said,
"Hello sleepy head,
Hurry up for I have a surprise!"

Susan looked all around
And eventually found
Upon her right shoulder a moth
The moth was all black
With red stripes down its back
Quite clearly this moth was a goth!

"Come follow me!"
Said the Goth Moth with glee
And fluttered away through the trees
Off Susan ventured
And finally entered
A field full of black bugs and bees

"Welcome Goth Sloth!"
Said the little Goth Moth
"To my home; we call it Goth Town
We heard of your woes
And between us we chose
To help you get back upside down".

"You'll see by the pond
Past the hedge and beyond
A hammock in which you can swing
Just hop inside
It's a wonderful ride
And you won't have to climb up a thing!"

Susan was thrilled
This Goth Moth was skilled
His hammock was tremendously good
She swung day and night
In utter delight
The happiest Goth Sloth in the wood

How the Conservatives Won It

So, the general election is over, and the dust is settling following the Conservatives' unexpected majority victory. I will be upfront - I am at heart pretty liberal and left leaning, and like many liberal lefties, I was disappointed, and a little taken aback by the result. However, I am also a pragmatist and a great believer in the existence of complexity and nuance in all things. Questions over the fairness of our electoral system aside, we are where we are, and the change occurred because more people voted Conservative this time than last time. The question is why?

 

Political pundits have provided all manner of pet theories and have analysed to death the voter demographics and statistical swings that resulted in the Tory's return to full control. I've been frustrated by the lack articles that take a holistic overview of things however, so I thought, while I waited for an impossibly delayed train, I'd have a go at pulling together something myself. As you do.

 

Perhaps the best place to start is by looking at the things that influence party political affinities in the first place. A quick Google (I'm so NOT an academic!) of the question "what influences the way people vote?" brings up a range of answers, which can be sorted into three basic categories. The first might be best described as voter attributes, such as: 

• Income
• Class
• Age
• Ethnicity
• Gender
• Religion
• Sexuality
• Health and disabilities
• Family, friend and colleague opinions ('peer pressure')
• Profession and personal interests
• Personality type

The second category covers the actions of the political parties (and their MPs): what the parties say they're going to do as part of their manifestos, but also what they have done (or not done) in the past, and what they say about their rivals.  

 

The third is a conduit between the two previous categories: the media, and more precisely, the way the media represents the policies, activities and values of the political parties.   

 

In addressing the first of these categories, we can be reasonably confident that the UK demographic will not have changed significantly in the 5 years since the last general election.  Attributes such as the above tend to indicate general voting trends (i.e., older populations tend to lean to the right and younger ones to the left), but as they shift so slowly, they are rarely the catalyst for any significant change in the seats held or lost from one election to the next. That said, one attribute that has shifted a bit is income: the economy is stronger than it was in 2010 (if not as good as it might be) and unemployment is down, so for many families, income is more dependable now than it was then, if not necessarily higher. However, for those still unemployed, or on benefits for other reasons, their income may now be less due to the cuts made to welfare provisions. While I don't have the resources to crunch the numbers, it is plausible that any shift towards Labour by voters fed up with benefits being slashed would be offset by a swing towards the Tories by voters pleased to have jobs again, and glad the economy is largely back on track.

 

Of much greater significance is the actions, policies and rhetoric of the parties themselves. The Conservatives won because some parties did badly - primarily the Liberal Democrats - and others did well in areas they were never going to win, knocking Labour out of contention - think the SNP. The Huffington Post and others have provided a very good overview of why the Lib Dem's lost so many seats this time around, so I won't reiterate in any detail, but essentially it boils down to a lack of understanding/belief amongst voters of the Lib Dem's achievements while in the Coalition (mostly because the Lib Dems failed to shout about the few there were), their slightly negative/weak "we're only worth voting for because we can stop the other parties being nasty / fiscally irresponsible" campaign, and the trust that the party lost when it backtracked on tuition fees. Many voters switched to the Lib Dems last time round because they were fed up with Labour, but couldn't bring themselves to vote Conservative. This time, the issues above, together with the fear that voting for them might have unintended consequences (such as a Labour / SNP coalition - see below), meant the Conservatives didn't seem such a bad option (or even the Greens, who stole a fair few votes too). 

 

The seats lost by the Lib Dems are only half the story however. Labour, who were always going to be the Conservatives' main rivals, managed to lose a fair few seats themselves. In Scotland, traditionally far more left-wing than the rest of the UK, virtually the whole country switched to the SNP from Labour. The strong feeling left in the wake of the Scottish referendum is probably primarily responsible (the recent sting of losing caused many more SNP supporters to actively turn out to vote than Labour supporters), but the SNP's leader, Nicola Sturgeon, also proved herself to be sharp and likeable, and did very well in the leadership debates. Labour also lost ground in the South of England and Midlands, but here, some believe that this was due to them being too leftist, as opposed to the view in Scotland that they just we're quite leftist enough (see Larry Elliott's piece in The Guardian for more on this). What this means for the future of the party is unclear, but the impossible quandary makes me very glad I'm not in any way involved in the debate.

 

Finally you have the role of the media in all of this. The media are the filter through which we receive the majority of communication from the parties concerned, whether directly, as in party political broadcasts or leadership debates, or indirectly, through news on the parties' campaigns and reporting on the latest polls. The newspaper you read and the news you watch is to a large extent governed by your political leanings: people like to have their own opinions reflected back at them, and most papers (in particular) also do an excellent job of perpetuating and reinforcing those opinions, and making sure alternative options are never really explored (at least not in a truly 'balanced' way). It's a generalisation, but if you vote Green, you're unlikely to read the Daily Mail, nor would you likely read The Guardian if you voted UKIP; both because you wouldn't like the content, but also because the paper you do read would probably, subtly or not, have persuaded you that all supporters of the other guys - and thus readers of rival papers - are raving lunatics. 

 

I often wonder what would happen if every paper in Britain radically shifted their position on the political spectrum for a week. Would people simply throw their cornflakes over the pages and cancel their subscription? Or might some minds be opened to other ways of thinking?  If reactions to The Sun's flip-flopping between Labour and the Tories is anything to go by, only about a third of readers would actually notice, but as it's never going to happen across the board, let's get back to the point...

 

In the same way that they make their position on the political spectrum apparent, many media outlets will be quite upfront about the associated Leader they back, with their choice influenced by vested interests (think the Murdoch media empire) or traditional readership (think the Guardian). Others remain neutral, though even organisations such as the BBC are accused of bias - most commonly towards the left, although as a number of commentators have noted (see the Independent and Guardian), their more recent coverage has focussed predominantly on traditionally right-wing issues. How much leadership backing actually influences the way people vote is debatable - as Jane Martinson explains, it is very difficult to gauge such things accurately, but experts on the subject are largely of the opinion that any real influence is marginal. However, it is notable that the bulk of newspapers backed the Tories this time around, most notably The Sun, The Times, The Daily Mail, The Telegraph, and even the Independent towards the end. Rupert Murdoch's media empire in particular is often credited with swaying the vote - The Sun has backed the eventual victor in every election since it was founded - though whether this is due to real influence or simply a canny knack for predicting a winner is unclear.

  

What is fairly clear is that social media, despite being seen as displacing the traditional print media, has less influence than those traditional channels, at least if the weirdly but wildly popular #Milifans campaign is anything to go by. I don't see the attraction myself, but Ed Miliband's Twitter fans were certainly very enthusiastic, and their campaign of Ed worship was by far the most prominent Twitter trend of the election. If nothing else, at least he got to step down in the knowledge that an army of young women regarded him as something of an geeky Adonis, not something that poor old plastic-faced Dave is ever likely to experience in his lifetime. 

 

A potentially more influential factor was the media's reporting on the polls leading up to the election. Polls on voting intentions are meant to help parties gauge the impact of their election campaigns and tweak their targeting accordingly. Interestingly however, they can also influence the result of the election by encouraging tactical voting in marginal seats. Ethical or not, the neck-and-neck finish predicted by so many pollsters is likely to have pushed some voters to vote for a candidate that they didn't necessarily support, but whom had a much better chance of blocking a candidate they really hated than the candidate they might more naturally have gone for. With a bit of a frenzy whipped up by the Tories and the media that voting Lib Dem could open the door for 'Red Ed' and a Labour / SNP coalition (which apparently would have been a BAD thing), tactical voting for the Conservatives was encouraged by a number of papers, particularly in areas where the polls suggested it was too close to call. The Liberal Democrats have blamed this tactical voting 'craze' for losing them a huge number of seats, though again, exactly how much it contributed to the final outcome is difficult to fully quantify, at least at the moment.

  

If it did influence things however, it begs the question why did the pollsters get it so wrong, and might the result have been different if they had predicted a Conservative victory all along? The BBC presents a useful overview of possible reasons for their failures, including the 'Shy Tory' factor (essentially a reluctance to admit to pollsters that you vote Tory, presumably due to their reputation as the 'Nasty Party'); a lack of representative voters participating in polls; a sudden and largely inexplicable last minute swing to the right; and the 'Lazy Labour' voters who simply failed to turn up on election day. As to whether the result may have been different - this is essentially a paradoxical question, as a prediction of a Conservative victory that prevented quite so much tactical voting may well have resulted in a hung parliament after all, and the pollsters would still have got it wrong. Once again, it's difficult to say!

 

What we can be reasonably sure of however, is that the election result proves the old adage that change at the top does not happen because the opposition campaign changes people's minds, but because the party in power loses it. The Conservatives are not loved with a passion in the UK (as the 'shy Tory' phenomenon suggests). There was no great upsurge of joy when they won. As yet however, they've not done anything that has caused the nation to turn against them, as Margaret Thatcher did with the Poll Tax, or Tony Blair did with the Iraq War. David Cameron has been reasonably competent and comparatively inoffensive as Prime Minister, and evidently most voters couldn't really conceive of anyone else doing the job any better, even if it is likely that his party's policies will be rather harsher now the Lib Dem's mollifying influence is gone. So the Tories stay, for now, while the more liberal sectors of the country wait and hope that they slip up in some major way, preferably before the country is turned into a living nightmare by NHS privatisation, welfare cuts and an idiotic exit from the EU.

British bias and reporting on the Nepalese earthquake

The earthquake that hit Nepal on 25th April is an unfolding tragedy of epic proportions. Over 8,000 people are believed to have died, much of the city of Kathmandu and surrounding areas has been destroyed and millions have been left homeless, jobless, or both.

Reporting on the tragedy in the UK media has been its usual mixture of detached, fact-based analysis; diagrammatic 101s in seismology; and emotive, personal interest stories. A recurring theme however has been "The Britons" affected by the disaster.  Because, you know, they're the people that really matter.

 

This search for a UK-centric angle to a disaster story is hardly a phenomenon unique to this particular event, but some of the reporting this time has struck me as particularly nationalistic. "Amanda Holden Sister Trapped In Quake Hell" was the Daily Star headline on 27th April, followed by a paragraph explaining how Debbie Holden was "trapped in the Mount Everest Earthquake Hell, where up to 50 Brits are feared dead." Now I'm sure Amanda Holden's sister is very dear to her, and I am glad that, as it transpires, she is safe. I wouldn't wish to imply that the threat to her life is any less terrible than the threat to anyone else's out there; the basic premise of this post is that all lives should be considered equally valuable. Yet I can't help but roll my eyes a little at the obvious play to readers they fear will only be interested in the story if a Brit is involved. Preferably a sort-of celebrity Brit stuck up a mountain.
 

It would be disingenuous to suggest that all reporting has been focussed on the British people affected, but I would wager that the percentage of column inches and airtime given over to discussion of the UK angle is greater than the percentage of individuals affected who are British.  Just a two minute search of online articles identified the following, amongst many others: "Dozens of Britons missing after Nepal earthquake and avalanche" (The Telegraph, 26 April 2015); "Escape from death mountain: Newly-wed British couple describe terror on Everest as they were engulfed by killer avalanche" (Daily Mail, 26 May 2015); "British woman who survived Nepal earthquake needs YOUR help to be rescued" (Daily Mirror, 27 April 2015); "Nepal earthquake: UK investigates British death report" (BBC.co.uk, 28 April 2015); "UK aid flight carrying 120 Brits from Nepal arrives in Stansted" (ITV News, 30 April 2015); "Royal baby latest: Prince William visits Nepalese Embassy as the Great Kate Wait goes on" (Daily Express, 01 May 2015)...

 

I don't want to sound naïve - I know that the public relate to stories better when their fellow countrymen and women are directly affected. They want to see things from a less alien perspective, and to learn if anybody they know was involved. Certainly one of the first things I did was to check whether anyone from work was out there (my organisation does a lot of research in Nepal), in the fear that some of my colleagues might be amongst those missing.  Such reactions are understandable - daily life is only ever going to be truly affected when someone we know personally is involved in a tragedy - but it would be nice if we could get more than 2 lines or 10 seconds into a news report on the subject without the hackneyed phrase "At least X Britons are thought to have been killed/injured" arising.

Of course, the degree to which the majority affected - actual Nepalis - are discussed is dependent on the news outlet you get your information from. Without wishing to be snobby (and of course being exactly that), The Daily Star is hardly going to be running a double spread editorial on the social and economic impact of the disaster. The Guardian on the other hand might, and indeed has published a number of excellent pieces on the effect of the quake on Kathmandu's citizens, particularly the poorest (see for example "Nepal Earthquake: What the thousands of victims share is that they're poor"). Yet even The Guardian is not immune to bias, running a series of specific articles on the British, Americans and Australians killed, injured or missing. Admittedly this is a more "international" bias than some sources manage, but it still essentially singles out those from the English-speaking world for special mention.  This weird kind of compatriotism is not unique to this disaster either: when similar incidents (plane crashes being the primary example) fail to claim any British victims, there seems to be a unwritten 'pecking order' of other nationalities that are considered noteworthy, usually topped by the Irish, then Americans and Aussies, and possibly other European nationals.  If none of the above are involved, then a disaster has to be pretty catastrophic or unusual to get mentioned at all.

 

Social media - which offers a much more democratic voice in as far as language barriers allow - can act to rectify some of the bias and personalise a disaster story in a way that more conventional reporting may struggle to replicate.  But with Twitter and Facebook being increasingly engaged as 'easy' sources of personal insight by the mainstream media, it is perhaps inevitable that social media outputs will be cherry picked to only give a voice to fellow nationals too.  Unfortunately, once these nationals return home, a sigh of relief is breathed, the media moves on and the people whose lives are in tatters back in the country concerned are quickly forgotten by the general public, if not, hopefully, by the aid agencies and the government (though I could write another 20 posts on the challenges posed there...).

The proposition is not that the British media should only should only ever talk about 'local people' and their plight, or that British people do not matter.  It's that reporting should be less conspicuous in its bias in an attempt to prevent the implication - intended or not - that some lives hold more significance and value than others.  We would not immediately sort victims by nationality were a disaster to strike at home, and nor should we automatically do this when one occurs overseas.  Rather than "The Brits" forming the headline therefore, an article on the UK nationals involved might be pushed to page five; and rather than the TV news report opening with the line "At least 2 Britons are thought to be among the 8000 dead", the section on British people affected might be delivered towards the end of the report.

The media are essential in raising awareness and raising funds for those affected by the disaster. It is their responsibility, for this reason as well as for their own sales, to help readers see Nepal less as an alien land of seismic volatility, relative poverty and mountainous landscapes, and more as a nation of people mourning in the same way that any of us might if half our family and our livelihoods had been wiped out. Finding a common bond is the key to ensuring that people feel connected enough to the disaster to donate and help Nepal start the long road to recovery, and that doesn't come from only worrying about our own.

Talking of, to donate to the Nepal Earthquake appeal, please visit the DEC website: http://www.dec.org.uk/.  Thanks!

The Fun Stuff

Following my post about what a tough first year I had with Duckling, I have been feeling a bit bad that I made motherhood sound like such an unmitigated crap fest. Though I have absolutely no regrets about having him, it doesn't come naturally to adulate my little boy or extol the virtues of parenthood, in part because it really has been hard, but also because I’m a typical understated Brit and don’t really like to be effusive about anything. Plus having had two miscarriages myself and a friend who recently lost her baby at 39 weeks, I am wary of being too shiny happy and in your face about how wonderful it is to be a Mum. Although I suppose whinging about it is just as crass. Anyway, I felt it might be nice to offer a counterpoint to my previous post by discussing some of the nicer stuff about having Duckling around - particularly the bits I wasn't really aware would be so much fun.

Starting at the beginning, the first really lovely thing I remember from the blur of early days bewilderment was sitting in our rocking chair with an uncharacteristically calm Duckling on my lap, his little hands and feet lost in an oversized sleepsuit, eyes perpetually drawn to something just over my shoulder (never did discover what) and little mouth doing that funny goldfish thing that newborns do. It didn't last long, but in that moment he was happy, so I was happy and all was right with the world.

Once some of our early tongue tie and weight gain issues had been ironed out (I will be eternally grateful to my sister for donating some of her breast milk), there was also a certain satisfaction to be gained from my body’s magical ability to sustain another human simply by recycling my breakfast, lunch and dinner. In the 33 years before Duckling arrived, my body had never even had to think about making breast milk (or squeezing out an 8lb 14oz baby for that matter), yet somehow it knew exactly what to do. I still find that incredible. Though not as incredible as the extra 500 kcal that breastfeeding uses up every day... Chocolate Digestives have become a religion.

It's a bit of a cliché but first smiles are another big plus in the early weeks. Duckling used to be particularly gurney first thing in the morning, when I was generally at my least amused; a deliberate ploy I suspect to help me forgive him for the shattered night's sleep I'd just had. Equally cliched but no less lovely is the wonder of watching your baby discover the world around him: first his own hands and feet, then your hands and facial features, then toys, then every bloody dangerous object within a 100m radius. Almost on a par though is the invention of amusing nicknames. Baron Von Criesalot (Poopsalot / Snotsalot / Parpsalot...), Dribbley Bob, The Lord Fricking Mayor (so called for his insistence on being carted about facing forwards so he could address his subjects with noisy wails), Pumpkin Munchkin, Squealy Joe (THAT was a fun phase), Grumpalicious, Terror Tot... I could continue but I don't want to reinforce the Mean Mummy label which I have no doubt just acquired.

More recently, considerable hilarity has been derived from the odd obsessions that Duckling has developed. Yesterday he wouldn't go anywhere without an empty pot of Vicks Vaporub and a flannel. This evening it was a pencil and a sock (always two things...). Posting is a big obsession too - everything must be slotted, dropped or squashed into something else at the moment. I was taking a shower this morning, when suddenly a red foam letter 't' appeared in the bath from behind the shower curtain, shortly followed by an 'e', 'c', 'g' and 'a'. By the time I'd finished, a quarter the alphabet was floating about around my feet and together we'd put together the words 'enamel', 'climate' and 'artisan'. Plus a few ruder ones I won't repeat. I'd like to think this letter fetish indicates Duckling is a going to be some kind of child genius, but his subsequent obsessive chewing of the letter 'i' suggests maybe he's not ready for Countdown just yet.

Duckling can be so entertaining that I will admit to occasionally letting him make a massive mess or investigate something he probably shouldn't just because it makes me laugh. Drake gets very annoyed that I keep letting him go off with the TV remotes (one ended up in the kitchen bin last week) but Duckling's delight when he gets hold of them is so charming, I don't have the heart to stop him (plus they keep him quiet for 5 minutes). Mind you, I'm not the one who keeps having the football switched off during penalties or MTV turned up to volume level 99.

From a social perspective, having a baby grants you access to a circle of friends you would never have met otherwise. This new club meets on weekday afternoons (imagine!), doesn't require any formal dress code beyond "vaguely clean" and isn't going to shun you if you have to leave a gathering 10 mins after you arrived due to infant melt down. I honestly don't know what I would have done without my lovely nct friends and the many opportunities they've given me to laugh and gripe about the lunacy of the whole baby enterprise. I am also extremely lucky to have a sister who had her first child, Gosling, just a month after I had Duckling. Gosling and Duckling are utterly delightful when they play together. They're chalk and cheese personality wise, but somehow this seems to work perfectly. Gosling is incredibly laid back and keen to watch and take in the world around her, while Duckling is intent on charging about, shouting at everything and leaving mayhem in his wake wherever he goes. Duckling entertains Gosling with all his protestations, then she takes the time to teach him the things (like crawling) that he's been too busy fighting to properly master. It's brilliant.

The last thing on my list is without a doubt the very best bit about being a Mum, but probably also the root of the very worst bit: love. The unconditional love I feel for Duckling is completely amazing, but it's so strong it often terrifies me. Just the thought of him getting injured or worse fills me with unspeakable dread. I've had to stop watching “Call The Midwife” because the remotest hint of a Mum losing her baby leaves me traumatised for the rest of the day. Drake thinks it's hilarious that I've become such a sap, but then as much as he loves Duckling (and he absolutely dotes on him), he's not imbued with quite the same fierce hormonal bond that I am (see my Fear of the Tiger post for more on the evolutionary roots of the nurturing instinct). Love is what gets us through all the crying and nappies and exhaustion and snot and trouser leg clinging. It's also what causes us to sacrifice our iPhones under the wheels of a car in our desperation to get our tricycle-mounted tot out of its path (as my colleague did this week - her third broken work phone in a month). Love is also, weirdly, what has made going back to work bearable. Though I miss him during the day, the excitement I feel going to pick Duckling up from his childminder in the evening always reminds me of how I used to feel on meeting Drake at the airport after one of his stints abroad. Except without the need to don uncomfortably frilly knickers and do something creative with my hair. It doesn't matter how fractious he's been in the morning or how knackered I am, by 17.30, I can't wait to see my little Terror Tot and give him a massive hug. Everyone says working makes you appreciate your child more, but it really is true. In fact, I think it’s the single best thing about being back.

So there you have it. Good stuff about being a Mum. Next week - 17 fun things to do with a pencil and a sock.

Thoughts on overthinking

I have a tendency to overthink things; a useful attribute as a blog writer, less so as a wife and mother. Today was definitely an overthinking day, and I spent most of the morning in an infuriating loop of disappointment, guilt and resentment. I'm not sure if anyone else ever experiences this (Drake certainly doesn't seem to) but it drives me bananas when it happens.

As I was turning left out of our estate (with Drake in the passenger seat), a car came towards us. It was quite far over on my side of the road, a fact Drake underlined with a sharp intake of breath and a 'watch out', so I pulled in further to the left to avoid it and in doing so, I clipped the kerb. Nothing major, but on checking later I noticed I had scuffed the alloy. Obviously this is annoying from an expense point of view, but I also tend to throw myself into a tailspin of self-flagellation whenever I do daft stuff like this. Which is quite often - I am rather clumsy, prone to day dreaming and get easily distracted. All that said, I am generally a pretty good driver, and have never had an accident that was my fault (touch wood and all that). The second Drake gets in the car with me though, I turn into a learner all over again, unable to execute even the most straightforward of manoeuvres without flapping. I don't like my abilities being scrutinised at the best of times, but he is a hopeless passenger, and spends most journeys where I drive sat bolt upright like a wary meerkat, checking junctions and warning me of approaching obstacles he thinks I haven't seen. I honestly don't know why he ever suggests I drive, or why I agree. I suspect he's trying to prove that he's not a backseat driver, while I'm tying to prove that I don't always drive like a total pillock. Usually we fail on both fronts - my incompetence makes his wariness greater, which in turn makes my driving crappier.

Anyway, after clipping the kerb, I primarily felt angry at myself for not being more careful. However, I was also peeved at Drake - his reaction on spotting the car had prompted me to move closer to the kerb than was really necessary. So, once I'd noticed the damage, I blamed him for making me overcompensate. He protested and then made me feel guilty because, as he reminded me, I'm the one in control of the car and the decisions I make should be based on my own judgement, not his. Plus I knew I was unfairly taking some of my frustration at myself out on him. I apologised, but as usual, because I was still annoyed, I overdid it ("You'd never have hit the kerb, I'm such an idiot, etc. etc.") Then I became really resentful because a) I know deep down these things happen to us all so I shouldn't be beating myself up (though they do seem to happen to Drake far less...) and b) Drake had assumed no responsibility and was now laughing at me and my overreaction. So I went back to blaming him, then feeling guilty, and so the cycle continued.

I was raised (in a roundabout way) to always think about my actions and admit where some of the blame for things going wrong might lie with me. I like to think this is a sensible and mature attitude, and that the world would be a nicer place if everyone did this. However, the downside is that it can leave you feeling guilty much of the time, and resentful when others don't meet you half way. I have lost count of the times I've said "I'm sorry, all my fault" to Drake in the hope that he'll say "No, not entirely, I could have done ABC better", but it never happens. Instead I get the line "Never mind, these things happen" or "You worry too much" or "Oh well, you'll know for next time". If I do take the less self-deprecating route and point out how he made the situation worse or could have helped to avoid it, he'll either just laugh, as though the possibility that he's in any way accountable is hilarious, or he'll get annoyed and imply I'm being unreasonable.

The point here is not that Drake is a git - far from it, he's generally a very lovely guy. It's just that he's quite normal in his reactions, while I massively overthink everything. He hates being wrong, but if it's very clear that he is, he'll usually admit it and apologise. He then has a healthy enough ego to just shrug it off as "something that happens to the best of us" and get on with things. I on the other hand, feel intensely disappointed at myself for the initial faux pas, then doubly disappointed at my overreaction to it, then dwell on my failures for the rest of the day. And write a blog post about it. Clearly I expect perfection in everything I do, including my reaction to imperfection.

This leaves me with a dilemma in terms of how we raise Duckling. I want him to always think about his actions and how they affect other people, and behave accordingly. What I don’t want him to do is overthink his actions, then beat himself up over them. Guilt and self-admonishment are useful as behaviour regulators – we don’t like feeling bad about what we’ve done, so we try not to do bad things. Too much guilt however is unhealthy and can actually piss off others more than the original indiscretion. I think being a boy will help. For both social and biological reasons, women definitely seem to be more predisposed to feeling guilt than men. Beyond this, I suppose the best thing I can do is try to set a good example – apologise where appropriate but try not to overreact or heap blame on myself where it’s not warranted. I also need to avoid giving him the impression that other people upset or offend me whenever they do the slightest thing wrong. I think this is why I’m prone to feeling so bad - in my family, other people's behaviour was always under scrutiny and regularly criticised, which has probably subconsciously given me the impression that everyone gets so easily put out. By contrast, Drake’s parents (and Drake himself) don't analyse people much and are offended by very little, so he assumes everyone else is as easy going, and doesn’t sweat the small stuff. This is just a theory though. Chances are I’m overthinking it...   

Toilet trips, stain tips and the silliness of modern advertising

As I was refilling our loo roll holder for the tenth time this week (Duckling is going through the obligatory toilet paper unravelling phase) I noticed that the back of the Andrex packet featured a five-step pictorial guide on use of the product contained therein. Seriously. Thought that wiping your bum involved a few sheets of scrunched up bog roll and a quick swoosh round your nether regions? Think again! To do it properly, you first select 3-4 sheets of paper for an initial wipe. You then repeat, wiping front to back until the paper comes away clean. Next, you use 1-2 moist Andrex Washlets for a truly thorough cleanse before you "pat dry" with further sheets of regular paper. Finally, in a public spirited step five, you are encouraged to Wash Your Hands. I'm surprised there isn't a step six suggesting you then dry them with loo roll as well, before eating a few sheets for elevenses.

 

Many people get incensed by corporate attempts to infiltrate every aspect of our lives in the pursuit of profit. This is entirely understandable; one only need look at tobacco and alcohol advertising to realise the dangers of giving companies free rein to promote their products in any manner they see fit.  However, I would wager that for the most part, advertising executives have less power than they believe they do.  For Andrex, the dream I'm sure is to persuade the entire nation that they've been improperly wiping their bottoms up until now (the unsanitary troglodytes) and that they must start using an extra ten sheets plus a moist towelette at every toilet trip.  Putting aside the fact that the majority of toilet paper is used by women who don't actually wipe their bum at most visits (or indeed ever, for all you men out there who don't believe that ladies poop), this dream I suspect is of the pipe variety. Yes, mentioning the moist version of their toilet tissue on the back of the pack is going to inform people that it exists, and may even prompt them to buy some.  But we no longer live in the 1950s - most people are pretty wise to marketing ploys and I can't imagine many who will decide to totally overhaul their lavatorial routine just because the Andrex gurus tell them they should.  Although I am a very thorough wiper already so there isn't much room for improvement at my end...

 

The silliness continues in brands' attempts to cash in on current trends in online communication and social media.  John Oliver recently did an excellent piece on Last Week Tonight regarding the cringe-worthiness of big name companies tweeting about public events which have no relevance to their brands.  The Build a Bear workshop tweet which appears to inappropriately commercialise 9-11 is a particularly awkward example.  Then you have things like the Vanish Tip Exchange. For the uninitiated (you poor souls), the 'VTE' ostensibly offers worried washers the chance to share suggestions on the best way to get stains out of things.  A noble aim were it not for the fact that the answer to every single question in their tip section appears to be "put some Vanish on it".  Got a chocolate stain? Here are forty marginally different ways you can use a Vanish branded product to get it out. Or you could just use a regular detergent, because, you know, chocolate doesn't actually stain that much (unlike baby poo which no amount of Vanishing, Shouting or Stain Devilling will get out. Maybe I should use Andrex Washlets on it...).

In the spirit of investigative journalism, I signed up to the VTE to gauge whether the many "use some Vanish" tips had been written by the ad execs themselves or left by real people (in which case why?  I mean what would possess you to go on a site not just sponsored by a product but actually set up and run by it, just to promote that product further?  I can only imagine they're all married to / siblings of / being blackmailed by a Vanish employee).  The site is a bit of a shambles but eventually I managed to find a page where I could leave a tip. It seemed to offer a genuine opportunity to share my wealth of stain removal knowledge, and looking at the tips left by others, the poor spelling and dodgy photos implied the posters were real people.  However, a week after posting, my suggestion that you could get grass stains out with a lawnmower has not appeared, presumably because it didn't overtly sing the praises of the titular white powder in the neon pink tub. You might say my contribution has suspiciously Vanished.  Ahem. 

 

This example of transparent band-wagoning is not to say that corporate attempts to tap into popular culture can't be successful - indeed some even manage to create it.  The Baby Oleg toy in Duckling's room is testament to the fact that with the right formula, advertising campaigns can take on a life of their own. The recent craze for all things meerkat, the upsurge in animal-fronted adverts (think Virgin's sofa bear, Muller Rice's bear, the Sofa Works sloth, the Music Magpie, the McVities kittens / puppies / owls...) and a general penchant for whimsy might all be attributed to Compare The Market's wildly popular campaign.  I actually shed a tear recently when little Baby Oleg decided to remain in Africa to live out his days with the stripy pyjama horses (I am SUCH a sap these days!).  The adverts are perfectly pitched - funny, sweet and slightly nuts - but I'm sure even the ad execs who came up with them never dreamed they would still be running six years later, or that Alexsandr Orlov would have over sixty-seven thousand Twitter followers. Such success is always hoped for, but rarely achieved.  The companies keep trying though, and as a result, amongst the market comparison sites alone we have a whole gamut of 'lovable' characters and catchphrases: think Confused.com's mildly annoying Brian the Robot, the utterly nauseating Gogogo Compare ads (I honestly preferred the opera singer) and You're SO Money Supermarket.  With Snoop Dogg. Natch.

 

So, while I slightly despair of the painfully obvious desperation of much modern marketing, there is also certain delight to be taken from the forced silliness of it all; of being able to rise above and recognise the clunkiness of trying to commercialise popular culture and everyday life in ways that simply don't work.  Provided of course we can recognise its silliness, because as ever, there is a flip side.  I think I'll save my post on the vulnerability of women and girls to sinister and pervasive 'body perfect' advertising for another, less flippant day however, because right now, the Andrex (toilet) and the Vanish (washing) are calling...

Fear of the tiger

In my last post, I posed the question "why is mothering not easier, more evolutionarily refined?". I asked because I so often overwhelmed with the intensity of motherhood in the early days.  I wondered why I didn't naturally have greater internal resources - mental, emotional, intellectual and physical - to deal with everything my baby threw at me, and indeed why my baby didn't naturally sense my exhaustion and do something to help!

Evolution - or more specifically natural selection - has of course done much to ensure successful mother and child pairings.  It's just that it selects for traits important for survival, rather than those that guarantee an easy life. For example, babies almost certainly want to be held a lot in the early months (and cry loudly when put down) because in the days of cave dwelling, it simply wasn't safe to pop a baby down and leave it.  'Good' babies who didn't make a fuss would most likely end up freezing to death, or being munched by a peckish sabre toothed tiger, thus extinguishing their particular genetic line.   Looking at the other side of the partnership, as a mother, your baby's cries cuts through you because to ignore them might once have mean death for your baby, or indeed for you if the predator your baby attracted with its cries was hungry enough.

So, evolution has given us the drive to nurture and protect.  Where it's not so helpful is providing the energy and practical day to day techniques needed to keep both baby and mother happy and comfortable in the prevailing environment. We are not born knowing how to wrestle our baby into a babygro, deal with tantrums or get our baby to sleep in a cot - this is where family, community and society (and Google) step in.  Their role is to ensure we raise physically healthy kids, but also informed, well adjusted and useful members of our community.

Arguably, the problems arise when society somehow falls out of sync with our natural biological programming. Though human social groupings are a product of evolution themselves - survival is far more likely when people live and work together - societies change far more rapidly than inherited individual traits do. As explained above, because neglected children are less likely to survive into adulthood, a propensity to care for our children has been engrained in our behaviour as humans over many millennia.  Unfortunately our power of reasoning, another great triumph of evolution, can subvert this natural instinct if the ideas it produces are socially embedded to any significant degree.

 

Consider the generations of parents who were told to leave their babies to cry to avoid 'spoiling' them.  The idea came from a combination of the Victorian obsession with germs (which led doctors to recommend touching babies as little as possible) and Behaviourism - an influential paradigm in psychology during the early 20th century which represented all human behaviour as conditioned responses to external stimuli. So, an ignored baby would eventually stop crying (the desired outcome) as they learned that it did not result in attention from a parent. A true enough hypothesis, but one that failed to recognise that this short term gain for the parents could have major long term psychological and physiological implications for the child.  Numerous studies have demonstrated that ignoring a baby raises the levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, in its brain and over the long term, this can actually alter the way the baby's brain functions.  Children who are not adequately comforted (or are actively abused) by their parents grow up with a much lower tolerance for stress, and as such are more likely to react disproportionately or impulsively in stressful situations, or abuse substances to help them to cope with life. 

The reason for this is no doubt itself evolutionary - as Margot Sunderland's book "What Every Parent Needs To Know" explains, the human brain is highly malleable at birth, enabling it to be 'wired up' according to the environment the child finds itself in.  The brain of child with bullying parents will therefore develop chemistry and synaptic connections that promote hypervigilance, a strong sense of fear and / or aggression and rapid attack / defence reactions.  This will probably help that child to survive, but will be at the expense of their 'higher' reasoning and self-soothing abilities, and in all likelihood their long-term happiness.  Furthermore, their adult behaviour is likely to be disturbing to others in their family and community and detrimental to overall social cohesion, particularly as a child who has not been shown love in their infancy will find it much harder to express love towards their own children, thus passing down their 'toxic' stress through the generations.
 

Poor care as a result of parents who have been damaged by poor care themselves is a more intractable problem than poor care due to the unhelpful advice of pseudoscientific experts (and the 'helpful' relatives who have been influenced by their thinking). Social institutions can however act to remedy both situations.  Counselling has been shown to help adults resolve some the issues arising from a lack of love in childhood, and institutions such as the NHS can do a lot to supply good quality, evidence-based childrearing practices (at least until the next set of scientific studies show us we have it all wrong!). Many now do so, and though some unhelpful ideas certainly persist, a degree of circularity is now observable in the way that attitudes towards childrearing have changed over the past few centuries. "Instinctive" parenting, once the norm for lack of any other methodology, was for a time replaced by advice that essentially denigrated parental, particularly maternal, attachment as weak minded, inconvenient and in more recent years, a bit 'hippy dippy'. Today's more rigorous scientific methods and brain imaging techniques (plus, arguably, greater female involvement in the public sphere) are however changing this hippy dippy label, and we are once again returning to an emphasis on more natural, nurturing behaviours. 

 

Returning to my original question, I think, on reflection, that actually I am quite lucky - not only do I have the basic mothering instincts bestowed on me by the countless generations that have come before me, but I also had parents who were loving and, thank goodness, a mother who had studied child development as part of her training to be a Nursery Nurse, and therefore managed not repeat some of the mistakes she admits her mother probably made with her.  Evolution has actually refined my skills far more than I realised - it's trying to fight against what feels most instinctively comfortable (because sometimes, unavoidably, we do have to get dressed and leave the house) that makes life hard!  My resolution for this month therefore twofold.  Firsly, I am going to try to trust my mothering instincts more, rather than berating myself for not 'getting it right' (see my last post for more on that!).  Secondly, I'm going to try to bear in mind that everything Duckling does also has some basis in his ancient genetic programming.  While I know that my baby is not going to be eaten by a tiger at 2am when he wakes up alone in his cot, he does not.  So, however aggravating it may be, the best thing I can do is respond, comfort and dream of the day when he's old enough to understand that suburbia is a tiger-free zone.