1 day Ago By Pravina-rudra
I’ve recently noticed an uptick in videos online from young British comedians like Antonio Fedez, Luke Hamnett, and Lewis Hancox imitating their #mums using just a few props: a dressing gown, a falsetto voice, and a mug of tea. They do not speak so much as shriek – standard mum things like “If we get a pet, who’s going to be the one to look after it?”It is extremely relatable, all the more funny, because they are men. And yet, something feels a bit off.
You can’t imagine these men doing a similar imitation of their girlfriend screeching at them, stupid and beholden to her emotions. It would be an unhinged expression of misogyny.But then, I, too, am guilty of making mums a punchline to jokes.
Last week at the pub, I was discussing with some mates how, anecdotally, people who join MI6 tell one parent about their job. I exclaimed: “Like my mum would be able to keep that quiet!” The others laughed, riffing on how their mothers would go gabbing around Tesco. I’d never be so confident of that reception on a joke about dads.
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addToArray({"pos": "inread-hb-ros-inews"}); }There are manifold ways to make fun of mums. Recent years have spawned the phenotypes of “boy mums”, who have an Oedipus-like devotion to their sons, and “crunchy mums”, so named because they eat homemade granola and are also anti-vaxxers.One popular video online about “school mums you meet in Bristol” includes mums like Pigeon, who uses Etsy to sell precious stones (“some people call them gravel”), glitter-wearing Gitsy, who loves jungle music, and Sarah, who works in TV and “moved down from the Big Smoke to um, Brizzle” to gentrify it.
Three archetypes in just one city. Yet, in internet comedy, the depiction of dads is one-note. Dads can nap anywhere, are slightly baffled by their kids, and don’t know their age.
A woman who tells us her dad got lost at sea when she was seven finds a letter in a bottle washed up on shore. When she finds it consists of a thumbs-up emoji, she exclaims: “It’s him!”In a way, the true spoof of dads is the very dearth of content about them – there is less to parody because they are around less and show themselves less. You can only do so many reels about a two-dimensional dad who is slightly checked out.
Mothers, in contrast, are too much. They are overwhelming; they run high with the emotions which fathers lack. Even when mum is benign and adoring, they make it clear she is one wrong comment away from being tipped into fury.
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addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l1"}); }How can this be? There is safety in mocking mum. Because she was once an authority figure, it’s not punching down – and our sexism can be subtle. Most importantly, a mother’s love feels a bit more unconditional.
Mum is soft; the word mumsy has come to mean dowdiness. An angry dad would be a bit scary; it might be grounds for some kind of family reorg. But an angry mum is just a mum.
I’d like to think I am relatively “woke” on the gender stuff, and yet I catch myself judging how women I know parent – and just being impressed at dads for showing up. It’s sort of scary how ingrained the sexism towards mums is.That we mock mothers for being too much is evidenced by how “Mumsnet” has mutated from the name of a mum-focused parenting forum into an adjective indicating lunacy.
Some of this is justified by the screenshots from Twitter accounts such as Mumsnet Madness. One user apologetically asks on the anniversary of 9/11 what happened to the planes which hit the Twin Towers: “Did they come to a crash landing afterwards? Or did they continue flying?”.But it’s often omitted that – who would have thought? – a forum where mums are vulnerable about trying to do the best for their kids can also be beautiful and supportive.
It is telling that Mumsnet is still synonymous with the penis beaker. This deathless part of internet culture started in an infamous thread where a woman asked whether her husband’s post-coital rinse in a beaker by the bed was normal. The story should have been about the husband – but the lore came to be about the woman who talked about him.
There is no Dadsnet that can rival Mumsnet for numbers or cultural clout – so mums are punished for being vocal in their attempts to do right by their children.#color-context-related-article-3376891 {--inews-color-primary: #3759B7;--inews-color-secondary: #EFF2FA;--inews-color-tertiary: #3759B7;} Read Next square PRAVINA RUDRA When did motherhood become a curse?Read MoreThe implication is that mums (like women in general) should be more detached and cool. But they’re also blamed if they don’t care enough – they are generally the subject of any pop therapy-style video on social media of how our childhood explains our attachment style or trauma.
When people depict the ridiculousness of gentle parenting online, they rarely show dads. Perhaps that’s no surprise: 89 per cent of three million single-parent families in the UK are headed up by a single mum, and more generally, they still do 75 per cent of the childcare.if(window.
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adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l2"}); }But it feels a little like we’re punishing mums for being there for us.
When I think about the ways in which I get irritated at my mum, it’s often related to her being too protective and too loud; the times she was angry because she poured so much love into my life and was hurt by the feeling I didn’t return that.And my god, I’d rather it this way: for my mum to care too goddamn much than for her to care too little..
