Pushy mothers
Shyrley
Curse of the pushy mummies
Catherine Bennett
Thursday March 13, 2003
The Guardian
With luck, Britain's pushy mothers were too busy shoving
yesterday to read about Professor Stephen Bell's lecture on the
advantages conferred a pushy mother.
As anyone who encounters these frightful creatures will know,
what they need is a ball and chain, not encouragement. In
response to the increased academic competition now faced by
her children, the typical pushy mother has become something
worse; she is remorseless, unstoppable, a human battering ram
who tramples lesser specimens in her wake as she forges from
tennis lessons, to ballet, to rocket science, to piano, to drama,
to swimming, to additional tutoring, filling any spare moment
with demands for extra homework and the search for possibly
advantageous insider information on school scholarships and
preferences, which is then jealously guarded from possible
rivals.
In some cases the pushing urge is so dominant that the women
cannot forbear from literally pressing their shrinking children -
"Go on, show your lovely picture!" - towards any promising
source of admiration or advantage. Even as he admires the
astonishing and self-denying efforts made by these individuals,
Bell should take pity on their miserable children and on the
non-pushy mother who reads his remarks on the pushy model's
accomplishments - "She ensures that her child gains skills,
capabilities and a certain orientation to schooling which work to
constitute him or her as clever" - and knows she has been found
wanting.
Catherine Bennett
Thursday March 13, 2003
The Guardian
With luck, Britain's pushy mothers were too busy shoving
yesterday to read about Professor Stephen Bell's lecture on the
advantages conferred a pushy mother.
As anyone who encounters these frightful creatures will know,
what they need is a ball and chain, not encouragement. In
response to the increased academic competition now faced by
her children, the typical pushy mother has become something
worse; she is remorseless, unstoppable, a human battering ram
who tramples lesser specimens in her wake as she forges from
tennis lessons, to ballet, to rocket science, to piano, to drama,
to swimming, to additional tutoring, filling any spare moment
with demands for extra homework and the search for possibly
advantageous insider information on school scholarships and
preferences, which is then jealously guarded from possible
rivals.
In some cases the pushing urge is so dominant that the women
cannot forbear from literally pressing their shrinking children -
"Go on, show your lovely picture!" - towards any promising
source of admiration or advantage. Even as he admires the
astonishing and self-denying efforts made by these individuals,
Bell should take pity on their miserable children and on the
non-pushy mother who reads his remarks on the pushy model's
accomplishments - "She ensures that her child gains skills,
capabilities and a certain orientation to schooling which work to
constitute him or her as clever" - and knows she has been found
wanting.