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butterflynjesus -> RE: Women's role in the Home - One Stop Thread (1/4/2008 12:47:04 AM)
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quote:
I agree with your post, however, our life has been down-sized as much as possible and I still have to work to make ends meet. I would like to be able to stay home with my kids, but it is not possible for us. We only own one car and live in a small trailor outside of town. We don't own a pool or any other sort of luxuries. I have kept all costs to a minimum and have sacraficed much just to survive. Let's face it, life isn't as it used to be and it seems to get harder and harder for people to put food on the table for their families and pay the rent. We can't afford day care costs which is why my husband works evenings, so he can take care of the kids during the day and I work days to take care of them during the evenings. Plus we don't want our kids growing up in a day care. With that said, I still agree with your post, but although I agree, it is a life-style that is not possible for us, at least not presently.
I haven't been able to read though the whole thread but I related to this response from what I did read. We only have one car too and we rent a townhouse. I have had to take p/t jobs and probably will soon even though I don't want to.
I currently stay home. My husband has been asking me to go back to work in little indirect comments he makes, even though it didn't help that much last year. I tried it last year p/t. We married young and had kids young. I started school and then chose to stay home with the kids. Therefore I don't have the education to get a good job like he has. I stayed home and took care of him and the kids so he could. I wish I had done a lot of things differently as a SAHM and a wife. My father died when I was two and my mom was selfish, spent most of my childhoold depressed, moving us around, couldn't work, sometimes used drugs etc. So I never really got to see how a home was run, kwim? I've realized I've come up short I'm sure because of this and I need to really work on it. But what happens when the kids are grown, do you all expect to still SAHM and be taken care of? I'm leary of that. THe last few years I think I've been lax and he makes a lot of rude comments, but there are other reasons why that I won't get it too. I'd say for the most part, I've not only enjoyed, but done well at keeping the home and when I run the money, we do well. When he does, we don't eat.
Because of our finanical instability and my concerns I had planned on going back to school when my third child started 1st grade. I loved being home though and doing all the room mom things etc. Well, my husband had wanted another baby for awhile though and I prayed about it and decided to see what the Lord brought. He brought a little boy and I'm so grateful. But, I don't think it's wrong to work as wives and mothers. He was laid off for almost a year once too and that killed him to see me go to work with a one year old baby but I had to do it. I worked p/t for 3 years too missing dinner meals and nighttime bath and bed routines with our youngest, but for the most part, we were getting things we NEEDED, not WANTED, On a regular basis and also getting things we wanted. Even though he had gotten a job just shortly after I got hired, I stayed on because of guilt and feeling like I needed to.
My husband had horrendous money managment skills for many years. He's really working on it, but his ways with money really really hurt us. I tried to be his "helpmeet" to help him in the areas that other grown men can do for themselves, but then I was being controlling etc. So we've spent most of our lives living like the working poor even though he made almost $74, 000 last year in over time. I guess I gave up being the manager of the home in that area because it felt futile, so as SAHMs, we can only do so much. There is another adult in the picture too. I want to work on meeting his needs better at times and he needs to see that taking care of us means more than going to work for 8 hours a day.
He basically told me I had to go to work again last year after he had badgered me to quit for a long time at my other p.t job. His timing coujldn't be more worse as I had just started homeschooling three kids and I was already having trouble with it.
He basically told me that he feels like I'm not helping, he's doing it all, all we do is take, he's drowning, he NEEDS me to work etc and I could tell he was just panicked otherwise he wouldn't be saying such stupid things [8|], so I did get an evening job. I was trying to run the house during the day while homeschooling three teenagers, two of of them with ADHD/Depression (unmedicated) AND I had to work a p.t job where I wasn't coming home some nights til midnight. Did I mention I had to get a 1st grader off to the bus at 7am and try to manage and clean the house is school children who find paying attention and listening difficult. How is that not work?
So, I work and work and work and what does most of my money go for? NSF fees or meager groceries. I got tired of that. I ended up angry, depressed, overtired, overworked, and very annoyed. I have NO IDEA how moms work full time with kids and then do all the house stuff. I have a few friends who did this. Even though they work they pretty much still do everything around the house and I just don't understand how they do it. I was drowning with just a p/t evening job. Cranky mom, cranky house. It's a hard call.
In the same note, I sort of resent being told that if I worked things we be so much better. How? My $100 a week isn't going to save the world, but it is going to make my productivity as a homeschool mom go way down and I already struggle with it as it is.
On a personal note, I know I need to take control over again because otherwise we'll keep eating top ramen. I'm very thankful for how hard he works. I am. He's a machine at work. He overfocuses on work, but I feel like it gets us nowhere. I don't know what he expects from me, but I'm trying to listen and improve, but I think he's very unrealistic sometimes. I can't me a manager of the home and have others doing things that mess up the goals of which we have.
My husband isn't doing anything around the house for the most part, unless he's annoyed at something I'm behind on. He's at work all day and I get that. However, my MIL didn't make sure he knew how to do laundry, sew, cook, manage bills, and take care of grown up things so he could expect someone else to do it all for him when. There are roles we have as SAHMs, yes. There are things we do extra because we love our husbands and want to do something nice. However, my husband is a grown man and regardless of whether I work or not, I'm not his slave and either are our kids. I do think he should do things around the house because he lives in it.
He won't even put his own dish into the dishwasher because "he works all day". Well, so do I and I don't like hearing, "and that's what the kid are for" either. JMHO though, but I don't see anywhere that women are to spend their lives cleaning up after grown men who are perfectly capable of doing it themselves unless that's what they really want to do.
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