Are mega hours ok if you have a SAHP?
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Are mega hours ok if you have a SAHP?
| Wed, 06-18-2003 - 11:00am |
This is kind a a spin off from the equalty and careers thread. I have been reading many posts from the thread about SAHPs who have spouses who work lots of hours. Is it OK for one spouse to work 80 hours a week (assuming it's his choice), as long as there is a SAHP with the kids? Is it OK to to be a workaholic or career driven and come home at 10pm and leave the house at dawn because you have career goals that require those kinds of hours? Is that fair to the kids and ultimately fair to the relationship between dad and the child to assume the position that as long as mom is home, dad can be gone all the time?
Personally, it would make me crazy to have my dh at work 100 hours a week, regardless of my employment status. Crazy because I wouldn't want to have to handle everything that pertains to home and kids and crazy worrying that the kids were not developing a close relationship with dad. There is something to be said, IMHO, for dad beng the one to show up at some of the parent meetings, events, etc.
My bro commutes to NYC daily. He leaves at 4:30am and doesn't get home til 8-9pm every night. He misses just about everything having to with his kids and does not even get to eat one meal with them during the week. That would make me nuts.
Is it ok to have an absent parent if the other parent is a SAHP?
Susan

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You have set yourself up as the one who gets to decide who is working for what - and THAT is the objection.
Although, even if it's not, you still haven't explained why it's OK for your dh to value his job over his child.
So you never disagree with your friends? Never discuss politics or religion or anything remotely inflammatory with them? Or do you prefer to do that only in the relative anonomy of the net?
I stand up for what I believe in IRL AND on the net. Some of the best conversations I've had with friends have been debating over controversial topics. Again, I didn't know I had to agree with someone all the time to be their friend...wow! That would be awfully boring, wouldn't it? C
What the flamers on this board fail to understand (and so keep calling ME a hypocrite) is that my husband isn't working 80 hrs a week now for material gain, he's doing it so he can spend more time with DS/future siblings/and me in a few years. I can not comprehend how you can equate time to a luxury vehicle. It's apples to oranges. C
Ummmm, ok...I didn't say anything about seperation anxiety which, as far as I know, is a developmental stage. But I would be quite surprised if your ped or parent educator believe that seperation anxiety is something related exclusively to children with relation to their mothers. I have, frankly, yet to read or hear (from my peds or anyone else for that matter) anything to the effect that at certain times of their lives children will automatically need one parent more than the other or prefer one parent to the other. Perhaps your ped is simply trying to help you make the best of your circumstances by confirming what you want to hear?
The fact that your experiences are different than mine in this regard would indicate that my idea that it is more personality based is likely to be correct. After all, if it were truly a developmental stage that all children go through, I wouldn't have seen so many children be very attached to their fathers at the baby or toddler stages. But the fact is, most of the children I know have spent a considerable amount of time with their fathers from birth (in very many cases with the father being SAH for several months at some point). Perhaps, just by spending the extra time with their fathers, those babies and toddlers have had a very different relationship with their fathers and found that they need and want them much more? I have been around children for a long time: ds and dd are the last of 15 grandkids and ds is over 8...meaning that I have been dealing with children on a daily basis for the last 8+ years, and from my experiences I would say that it has been about 50-50 split in babies and toddlers between preferring their mothers and preferring their fathers.
Laura
A. did NOT say DS wouldn't remember anything before the age of 10, but she agrees that DS will be fortunate to have both parents home by then. C
I realize you're telling me I can't tell who is working for the wrong reasons and who isn't. What you fail to see is that I OPed about a woman who I know for a fact IS working for the wrong reasons. So I'm not allowed to judge that? Y'all have had NO PROBLEM judging me and my DH based on my comments here, but I'm not supposed to judge a WOHM I know IRL? Yeah, that's not typocritical at all. C
Why is everyone making out like we must be discouraging a relationship between these children and their fathers? We're not. Perhaps our families are just comfortable with the more old-fashioned roles of 'mom takes care of the home and kids and dad provides for the family'. If it works for our families, who's it hurting? It didn't hurt the kids growing up anytime before the 70's when women 1st really started joining the workforce. A.
Andrea...
mom
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