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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Susan
How do children of divorcees know what a good marriage looks like? How does anyone know what a good marriage looks like? Unless you're in the marriage, appearances can be deceiving! Isn't that what everyone keeps telling me, not to judge WOHP b/c the appearances of their lifestyle can be deceiving? Or does that argument only work under certain circumstances?
Is this the best you can come up with? C
Ds may never know what a good marriage looks like. But he sure won't have a bad marriage to emulate either.
Hollie
BTW, even with the 30% of your income being invested pretax and charitable contributions being tax deductable, that still leaves a large portion of salary that is taxed, your numbers still add up to more than 100%. Not possible.
Susan
And I don't care about them maybe being offended because I'm PC. And they don't care because of PCness either. I care because its wrong to falsely indicate that someone works less than they do. To falsely indicate that they are lazy, or lucky, or less committed, or work less than someone else. It gives an air of disrespect. And being disrespected becuase its "a common colloquialism" is offenseive.
Hollie
first, your combining work hours creates a fallacy. the child of the typical dual-income couple spends 40 hours a week more with both of his parents than your child spends with your dh (averaged over the year, my children spend about 60 hours a week more with their father than your dh, about 40 more with me, though closer to 50 over the past two years), and while what apparently matters to you is the number of hours a week put into *earning a family's support*, what matters to the posters who are so put off by you are the number of hours a week put into *spending time with family*. my children most certainly would be negatively affected were my dh to spend less, much less hardly any, time with them, and yet they are not at all negatively (in fact positively) affected by spending time with nonparents--whether that be spending the day with their grandparents, at a friend's house, at school, or at dc.
now i struggle with this angle of the debate, myself. i am personally pretty freaked-out by the thought of any parent working the kind of hours your dh does; i honestly don't understand how people can maintain a connection to their spouse and their kids when they spend very little time with them. but i've always been open to the idea that and believed people who have told me that this works for some people. certainly, even though i don't personally "get" this, i don't share your apparently psychotic need to lash out at people who live a life i wouldn't choose for myself.
second, you don't seem to grasp that even complaints to "friends" don't paint the entire picture of people's lives; for all i know, you might know with certainty that your "friend" works for "things"--not necessities (but earning enough to pay for "things" also), not for what you, yourself consider priorities (college savings, retirement, etc. but earning enough to pay for "things" also), not satisfaction (like your dh, but earning enough to pay for "things" also), etc.--but i seriously doubt it. i don't know many people whose lives are all that uncomplicated.
but above this, you seem to be willfully oblivious to the glaringly obvious point that because your dh is earning so much more than you need, by working so many more hours than he doubtless needs to, you DO know ONE PERSON who with certainty is working for "things" (in this case early retirement, rather than bmws and starbucks), and yet you rabidly defend him while equally rabidly throwing speculative and generalized criticisms in every other direction.
snarkiness aside, your posts here have been painfully hypocritical and stupidly mean spirited. that people are becoming more frustrated and less polite in responding to them seems only natural, and that someone would hesitate to come home to such mindless harping seems all but certain.
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