Podcast – Slouching towards Thatcham

The Slouching towards Thatcham parenting podcast is dead. Long live the Meet the Parents podcast!

The Slouching towards Thatcham podcast was born a little over six months ago in a flurry of enthusiasm, optimism and, with the benefit of hindsight, a huge dollop of naivety.

The idea was simple enough. Give parenting bloggers a platform on which to read their posts the way they were intended: in the author’s own voice.

25 episodes and 23 blogging guests later, I’m proud of what I’ve achieved. I wanted to feature both mums and dads, and to both showcase the big names and introduce some smaller but no less talented bloggers to a wider audience.

That number includes 2015 BritMums Brilliance in Blogging award winners Jess (Wry Mummy), Julian (Northern Dad) and Hayley (Downs Side Up) as well The Unmumsy Mum herself, Sarah. But my guests have also covered the whole gamut of topics, from the funny side of parenting to living with depression and muscular dystrophy, gender and racial stereotypes, abusive relationships, the lesser told father’s side of miscarriage and the often ignored challenges facing mums trying to return to the workplace.

I’m grateful for my peers’ willingness to share their work and the raw emotion involved in reading often deeply personal posts out loud for an audience. And I’m genuinely humbled.

As for me, on the one hand I’ve contributed some off-key singing with my parenting parodies of Bohemian Rhapsody and Fairytale of New York. On the other hand, I’ve shared some of my innermost thoughts, such as my post about the brother who never was, which took me three long years to write.

I’ve laughed. I’ve cried.

It’s been much harder work than I ever anticipated.

And yet it’s also been more fun than I ever imagined.

So why the change of tack now?

In the run-up to Christmas, I started to wonder if there was a space for a podcast that embraced both a mum’s and a dad’s view of the world. There are quite a few parenting podcasts out there already but generally these feature either mums or dads, not both.

And so the idea for the Meet the Parents podcast was born.

The idea is simple enough. (You may have noticed by now that I’m all about simple ideas!) Instead of having weekly guests, build a team of fellow parents – mums and dads, younger and older, stay-at-home and working – and chat about parenting-related topics from a broad range of perspectives. Real parents, real stories.

If the Slouching towards Thatcham podcast was like a series of one-night stands, Meet the Parents is more akin to a steady relationship, albeit one involving more than two people!

Hopefully it will be like eavesdropping on a group of friends chatting down the pub. Or around a dinner table. Or at one of those mysterious ‘book club’ meetings that Heather rolls in from at 2am with a suspicious whiff of stale wine on her breath. Some serious chat, a lot of laughs and (in my case at least) a glass or four of Pinot Noir.

I sounded out a few of my previous podcast guests as potential co-panelists and was overwhelmed by the positive response. And so here we are. Last week’s episode of the Slouching towards Thatcham podcast was the last. Tomorrow’s episode of the Meet the Parents podcast will be its first.

We’re starting with half the new crew tomorrow, where we’ll be introducing ourselves and chatting about Valentine’s Day from a parent’s perspective. Why not give us a listen?

You’ll be able to find us on iTunes and other podcasting services, as well as via our new website at meettheparentspodcast.com. And do please follow us on Facebook and on Twitter @ParentsPodcast.

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Welcome to episode 25 of the Slouching towards Thatcham parenting podcast!

Every week my guest and I each talk about and read one of our favourite posts about life as a parent. It’s as simple as that: bite-sized chunks of blogging brilliance!

This week I’m joined by Tracey from the blog Mummyshire.

Tracey’s a mum of two who moved from London out to the leafy shires. In her post Staying calm, she talks about her struggle to bite her tongue in the face of lazy racial stereotyping and what Michelle Obama has termed ‘micro-aggressions’.

You can follow Tracey on her blog Mummyshire, on Twitter @MummyShire and also on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and Google+.

Like Tracey, I lived in London for a long time but moved away, although I did so long before our kids came along. Nonetheless, the kids and I love being close enough to the capital to head in for days out whenever the mood takes us.

This week I’m reading a post called 5 modes of transport, 3 boys, 1 brilliant day about a particularly good trip into London with Isaac and Toby last Easter.

You can also subscribe to the podcast via iTunes, Player.fm, Stitcher or directly via this link. Or you can find every episode contained on the blog here.

Before I go, one final announcement …

This is the final episode of the Slouching towards Thatcham podcast.

Next week will see the launch of the new, bigger and better Meet the Parents podcast. Join me and a team of mums and dads every week for family-based chat, bringing you real stories from real parents on both sides of the fence.

You’ll be able to follow us at our new website meettheparentspodcast.com, on Twitter @ParentsPodcast and on Facebook. Do please follow us on each of those and join us next week for even more parenting podcasting!

Next podcast: Thursday 11th February – Meet the Parents podcast episode 1

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Welcome to episode 24 of the Slouching towards Thatcham parenting podcast!

On each week’s show my guest and I talk about and read one of our favourite posts. It’s as simple as that: bite-sized chunks of blogging brilliance!

This week I’m joined by Sarah from The Unmumsy Mum.

Sarah has become something of a blogging phenomenon, with a Facebook page that has (at the time of writing) gained over 350,000 fans. Her first book, The Unmumsy Mum, is due out on February 11th.

In her post Sometimes that’ll do is all you’ve got, Sarah reflects on how she has lowered the high standards she once set herself since becoming a parent – and why it’s not such a bad thing that she has allowed this life-changing experience to, well, change her life.

You can follow Sarah on her blog The Unmumsy Mum, on Twitter @TheUnmumsyMum and also on Facebook and Instagram.

Sarah and I first met last October at an event in Winchester where she gave a talk about her path to success that I found inspiring but which also knocked my own confidence a bit.

It prompted me to write Inspiration and a crisis of confidence, a reflection on the importance of being not over-confident but confident enough to tackle life’s little setbacks, and of wanting to instil that kind of confidence in my own children.

You can also subscribe to the podcast via iTunes, YouTube, Player.fm, Stitcher or directly via this link. Or you can find every episode contained on the blog here.

Finally, if you’ve enjoyed the podcast and you’re an iTunes user, I’d really appreciate it if you could spare a minute to provide a quick review and rating. It makes a huge difference to how it’s ranked within iTunes’ listings. You can do this directly in iTunes or via this link.

Next podcast: Friday 5th February

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