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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Joint custody. The kids are only with him half the time. Instead of coming home every night and being on duty because she had the kids all day so he gets them all night, he has them every other night and every other weekend. And, as I pointed out above, he no longer has to put up with a nagging witch if he tries to catch a break. His girlfriend helps out too if he's working weekends. Given the nature of his job, sleep deprivation can be dangerous and, unlike his ex, she knows it.
If he has a rough night now, he knows he can, at least, get a good nights sleep tomorrow. Before, he could never look forward to a good nights sleep. Until he caught up to her in hours, he was the parent on duty. In her mind, if she had the kids for 10 hours while he was working, he had to have the kids for 10 hours before she'd do anything else. So if he got home at 7:00 PM, she wasn't lifting a finger until after 5:00 AM and then the time from then until he went to work was split. Basically, they each got 12 hours a day. Weekends were split every other feeing and every other bottle.
It's really sad to see her using the kids to try and get him back. I feel sorry for the kids. Once she figured out she wasn't going to get child support, suddenly it was in the children's best interest for them to get back together. I think she thought his child support payment would be so high he couldn't afford to leave. The court looked very kindly on his providing half the physical care for his kids in spite of holding down a 50 - 60 hour a week job and very unfavorably on her for her attitude that she's off duty when he comes home. I'm glad. Too many times the woman gets a big check from her ex just because she had stayed at home. She didn't get one. He has to pay the medical bills for the kids and the day care bill. They each are expected to buy what the kids need when they have them.
Edited 7/18/2006 10:35 pm ET by kbmammm
What? Just about everyone has an engineering degree or has apprenticed as an engineer? I don't think so. How do you get that just about everyone can refer to themselves as engineers? I believe it takes either a degree + experience or a lot of experience to earn the title.
Edited 7/18/2006 10:31 pm ET by kbmammm
Clarvoyant are we? And this is related to the post you're answering how?
I think you post just to post without much thought. There is nothing in my post that indicates a disrespect for women in general. I asked a question and I didn't ask you.
Don't you wonder how guys like this got that way? Is it the way they were born or a learned trait? It's like it's a game with a couple of them to see what they can get away with. The rest of us just take bets as to who gets caught first. Usually J. He rats himself out, lol. Doesn't seem to have the sense not go go home and start telling his wife what a great day he had, lol.
Maybe it's just easier to ask for forgiveness than permission in their households.
Degree plus experience? How much experience must one aquire to turn being a person with an engineering degree into an "engineer"?
And not sure why you try to make it sound so important. In my neck of the woods, you can't swing a cat without hitting an engineer.
Edited 7/18/2006 10:44 pm ET by taylormomma
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