SAHM/WOHD Issue
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| Thu, 07-13-2006 - 4:35pm |
My husband came home the other day with this story:
His coworker, J and J's wife, K just had a set of twins born via in-vitro after 17 years of marriage and infertility. Anyway, the end of the pregnancy was difficult and K was on bedrest and the babies were born (I think) 6 weeks early - one of them had to stay in the hospital for 2 weeks after birth. OK - that's the background.
K got a lot of attention during pregnancy - not being able to move around on her own. Now the babies are 4 months old, but although she is a SAHM, she expects (yes, expects) J to leave work every day at 4. That's the normal time, but at times they are required to work overtime if something has broken and needs to be fixed before the next shift comes in. According to my husband, J comes home every night and fixes dinner, washes bottles, takes care of the babies, and then gets up with them in the middle of the night. The only time K is bothered with them is during the day when she's home alone. (I know, this account is how J related it to my husband, so the story is probably more one-sided than the situation really is.) And K may have post-partum depression and that can explain needing J so much....
K's mom and sister both lives within a halfmile of her and can come to help with the babies, but she expects J to leave work everyday at 4 to do it. She also calls a lot during the day. Anyway, the other day something had broken and J needed to stay past 4, but he tried to leave - my husband's and J's boss told J that he needed to decide what is more important - him taking care of those babies or him working to provide for those babies? Sounds to me like J's job is starting to be in jeopardy and he makes pretty good money for the area of the country we live in. Replacing that income would be very hard.
Just wanted to see what y'all thought about this.

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Everything but I wouldn't expect you to get that. Do some research on women's wages and what happens to them after they have kids vs. what happens to mens wages after they have kids.
The phrase "mommy track" was coined because this ia a real phenomena that happens frequently enough that they named it.
Every job in the country is required to give you a lunch break for a certain amount of hours worked. Most organizations I've worked for do not pay you for the hour - for 40 hours per week you do 8:30-5:30 w/ an hour lunch. It's a mandatory lunch, period.
The company I worked for was one of the largest medical software companies in the country and I had many, many clients. If a call came in while I was on lunch, it got transferred to someone else who could try to help them.
First of all, I see that as unlikely - I don't have twins, but have two friends with multiples and they never slept on the same schedule - even at night one would wake, the other would then wake, one would go down, the other wouldn't. It takes time to develop a pattern.
I personally found it very tough to "sleep when my baby slept". My pattern didn't work that way.
Also, there's nothing else that the mom wants to do while they slept - like eat, go to the bathroom, shower, clean, etc?
Jennie
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