AGMs are a necessity, but they would be poorly attended were it not for our efforts to find one and sometimes two high calibre speakers from the UK and more recently from other European countries to liven up the event. As you can see from the reports, they have all been interesting and have given us a great deal of thought.
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 Address given
by Anne-Claire de Liedekerke to Full Time Mothers on 15 November
2010
Realities of
Mothers in Europe
Anne-Claire de Liedekerke came from Brussels to
tell us of the extremely important work which the Mouvement Mondial
des Mères (MMM) is doing to raise the profile of mothers both
within the European Union and at the United Nations. Anne-Claire is
President of the European Delegation of MMM (MMMEurope) and was
explaining to us their ground-breaking report “Realities...
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 Sue Palmer’s address, November
2009
The future is
not some place we are going to but one we are now
creating
Few of us can have come away from Sue Palmer’s enlivening talk
without inspiration. Never doubt, she said, that a handful of
committed citizens can change the world and I am sure that she
inspired us to believe that we at FTM can do just that.
Showing her skills as a teacher of literacy, she spoke without a
note, telling us that what had prompted her own work on children’s
upbringing was returning to school life after a gap bringing up her
daughter. As a...
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 Talk given by Tom Hodgkinson to Full
Time Mothers, 11 November 2008
Learning to
Idle
Tom Hodgkinson introduced himself as the son of an ardent
feminist mother. His own politics are closer to those of an
anarchist, because of governments’ insatiable need to
interfere. The system of consumption and capitalism eats into
ever more of our lives. Tasks which were always outside the
monetary system of exchange are being sucked in, and now even the
care of children is being priced.
Hodgkinson thought it was time to talk, to get lots of people
talking. The subject should not be hardworking families,
which he dismissed as a horrifying idea, exemplified by the term
‘preschool’. Why was...
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At our AGM in London, Jay Belsky, Professor of
Psychology and Director of the Institute for the Study of children,
Families and social Issues, Birkbeck University of London, gave us
a thorough overview of research into daycare spanning thirty years
– and reactions to findings, both from the popular press and within
the research community.
In the late 70’s there was little available data on the risks or
benefits of daycare. From the evidence available most children
seemed to be coping well enough. People heard what they wanted to
hear. There was no overtly ‘bad news’.
Trickle of disconcerting evidence
But in 1986, during the course of an invited...
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AGM Presentations