Are mega hours ok if you have a SAHP?

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Registered: 03-26-2003
Are mega hours ok if you have a SAHP?
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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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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Sat, 07-05-2003 - 11:29am
Ok that wasn't what I was talking about. First of all, I don't think a child give's a rats patootie why their parents are working, they care about how much time you spend with them. Second of all, I was asking what's the difference between 2 dual working families who work the same exact hours with one working because she has to and the other working because she wants to.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Sat, 07-05-2003 - 11:33am
>>> I am curious how you can make claims about knowing what it takes to make a marriage work when you and your ex were never married though? That's like me saying I know how to what it takes to build a car well after looking in the window of a Honda factory. Whatever.

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Creative analogy, but not always right. Two people can be living together in a marriage, without having the legal part of it complete.

>>> Living together and marriage are two completely different things. My sister lived with her ex for six years before they married and 11 months into the marriage he knocked up a bartender (and yes, it was the first time he strayed). It could easily be argued that they knew how to make living together work and not marriage!

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They are not always two different things. Your BIL would have cheated on your sister, whether they were married, living together, or something else. They didn't know how to make their RELATIONSHIP work; their married/not married status had nothing to do with it.

>>> So you were together 13 years...DH and I have been together almost ten (how come you're only counting the six years we've been married and not the previous years?

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DH & I have been married for 2, together for 9. We do count all 9 years. You put the 6 years out there as time you were married.

>>> You're comparing our committed-before-God-years with your never-committed-before-God years--that makes a WHOLE lot of sense, not

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You're making a HUGE assumption that everyone considers "committed before god" as the only qualifier for being married to another person. I don't consider that any greater indicator of committment than two people agreeing that they are together for the long haul, monogamous, devoted to one another through thick & thin. You may need god to feel like your marriage is concrete. DH & I do not. We have been committed from day 1, and as such, I would hold our committment up as a 9-year marriage.

Avatar for cyndiluwho
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Sat, 07-05-2003 - 11:35am
Explain to me how it would be better if I worked 80 hours a week for the first 10 years of my children's lives and then retired as opposed to working 40 hours a week for the 18 years I'll be actively raising my children under my roof? I'm sorry but I'm just not getting the logic of being an absentee parent for 10 years of a child's life just so you can retire early and spend the next 8 with the child (actually more like 6 since most kids are getting jobs and off with friends a lot by 16). I just can't see the advantage here. Right about the time your dh finally has time for his kids, the kids will be spending a lot of time in extra curricular activities and with their friends and after 10 years of being an absentee parent, ds and dh will hardly know each other. How is this an advantage over working 40 hours a week during all the years a child is home and having time for them all those years?


Edited 7/5/2003 12:17:37 PM ET by cyndiluwho
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Sat, 07-05-2003 - 11:37am
>>>As for the rest of it, I quite honestly do not have any memories before two years of age--I don't know of anyone who does.

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You should check out the thread on this site regarding earliest memories...you'd be surprised! :)

Avatar for cyndiluwho
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Sat, 07-05-2003 - 11:40am
Good question. Personally, I think the early years are the years to work, precisely because kids don't remember them. If use of dc doesn't cause my kids to turn out differently and my kids won't even remember dc (I don't BTW and I attended dc from a very early age) what's the problem?
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Sat, 07-05-2003 - 11:40am
>>>NBut at 17 months? Nope. My DS isn't even going to remember anything about this stage in his life when he gets older anyway.

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You really don't know that.

Avatar for cyndiluwho
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Sat, 07-05-2003 - 11:41am
Unfortunately, her ds would be fortunate to have a dad around now.
iVillage Member
Registered: 12-29-1999
Sat, 07-05-2003 - 11:43am
What are you talking about? Her DS does have his dad around...he works 40 hr weeks! I'm totally confused...C
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Sat, 07-05-2003 - 11:52am
A heartfelt warning here ...

I'm not going to suggest that I know *anything* about your marriage or whether it will last. However, be careful of making such *sure* statements about your future. A year ago, I would have said the EXACT same thing about my marriage. Sometimes, no matter how sure you are, no matter how committed you are, life comes up and bites you in the ass.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't have confidence in your marraige ... but that *commitment* you have needs to be commitment without blinders. The more aware you are that things CAN go wrong, the easier it is to spot troubles before they start and live up to that committment. By being *blindly* committed, you close your eyes to any possibility of trouble .. and then the trouble is unsolvable before you realize its there.

I commend your confidence in and committment to your marriage. Just be sure that you aren't so confident that you stop working at making that committment work. I've been there and its not a pretty picture.

Hollie

Avatar for virgogirl914
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Sat, 07-05-2003 - 12:00pm
I don't recall saying that your dh and ds's relationship has or will be compromised by the absence. . .

As a military wife whose husband has been gone over 2 months of what is likely to be a 9-12 month absence (his second absence of that length in his son's life. . .ds will likely be over 3 yo when dh returns), it would be ASININE for me to say that. . .

What I do take issue with is your presumption that your dh is superfluous to your son. . .even on a day to day basis. Day to day tasks of child care do NOT constitute the basis of a relationship. . .your dh may not be 'needed' in the performance of day to day tasks of your son's care (and maybe that's what you mean by superfluous) but emotionally your dh is FAR from superfluous to your son.

Trust me. . .my children (remember that my son isn't that much older than your son) tell me every day that their dad is in Baghdad and that they can't wait til he comes home.

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