Is ranking family members really necessary?

Last week I spotted an article titled "Do you put your hubby or your child first?"

Thankfully, it wasn't the article I expected. 

The author had noticed the same thing I noticed some time back - that a new trend had emerged. A trend which ranks the order of your love. 

The article reads:

"If you claim you put your children first, you’re Martyr Mummy, running yourself to a ragged standstill  accommodating your children’s whims, then swatting away your husband’s tiresome sexual advances in favour of a bottle of wine (or two – right, girls?) and a resentful flick through your collection of Ryan Gosling memes.

"The racier reply, popular with celebs, is to beam sunnily that you put your relationship before the children. Which is meant to signal to the world that you’re still the frisky little lovebirds you always were prior to little Liam or Madeleine’s arrival."

Celebrities such as Keith Urban and Giuliana Rancic as well as several writers and journalists have been forthcoming in proclaiming the latter. 

Though research suggests that - when asked - most people identify with the former. That is to say they put their children first, but does that mean they love them more? Or just differently? 

Or more to the point, why are they being asked in the first place? 

Do we really need to start ranking our loved ones? 

The question offends me almost as much as the ever-popular, "do you have a favourite child?"

Most of us have a lot of love to give. And some of us are blessed enough to have many loved ones to whom we can offer that love. 

Proclaiming who you love the most - and even having a personal ranking system - is, to me, an absurd concept. 

But what about you? Do you have a favourite child or purposefully order the love for your children and partner? Or do you find such questions as off-putting as I do? 

Women talk about "women's issues"... again

I watched last night's episode of Q and A with both interest and disappointment.

The panel consisted of an interesting and diverse group of women, all intelligent and articulate and all of whom possess different and sometimes opposing opinions on, no doubt, a variety of different topics.

One such topic, of course, is feminism.

Unsurprisingly, it was the first subject discussed.  Sadly, it was the only one.

While feminism is unquestionably an important issue, and a conversation I was looking forward to hearing (enough to keep me from my Monday night guilty pleasure, Revenge), I couldn't help but be disappointed that the first time an all female panel presents itself, the only topic covered is... feminism.

There were a few loose diversions, such as sex work (which was extraordinarily glamorised by most of the panel with the exception of Mia Freedman), politics and Islam - all were directly linked to feminism.

Deborah Cheetham tried to swing the conversation a couple of times, and both she and Janet Albrechtsen attempted to add some much-needed depth to the feminist discussion, but to little avail.

While it was undoubtedly an interesting episode (surprisingly I found myself nodding most enthusiastically to both Germain Greer and Janet Albrechtsen), it really was an episode about feminism as opposed to simply an "all women panel".

Even if they wanted to limit the discussion to issues effecting women, some broader questions could have been put to the panel, relating to, say, parenting, politics (non-gender), careers, the environment - anything really!

Alternatively, to legitimise the importance of the feminism issue - should this be the focus of the episode - perhaps a male panelist should have been included?

For me, despite consisting of remarkable women discussing a very important topic, although it was an interesting show, there was a hint of "novelty" about it.