In today's economy, how can U stay home?

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-29-2004
In today's economy, how can U stay home?
1500
Mon, 08-07-2006 - 2:46pm


I am 33 and am basically now sadly coming to the conclusion that we just can't have kids. I just don't know how people do it. In order to afford our mortgage, my husband and I both have to work full-time. And we bought a home in the least expensive market we could find in proximity to our jobs, so we commute up to four hours a day to make this work.

However, we both agreed, long long ago that we would only have kids if we could raise them ourselves. We just can't in good conscience reconcile the idea of having children and then handing them off to some stranger who is making close to minimum wages to rear them, and who can't possibly care about them as much as we do. And what would be the point? We would miss all their development and "firsts" and wouldn't be a close family, and they would grow up with attachment issues due to rapidly changing daycare staffing. No, if we can't do it the right way, we don't want to do it at all. We feel it's selfish to have them because WE WANT them; we decided long ago only to have them if we felt we could give them a wonderful life filled with love, hope, and opportunity.

So I am getting up there in age now, and I don't see things changing. The only people I see around me having children are people who 1) have family who live close by and can take care of their kids, 2) rich people, or women who marry rich men to be more specific, and 3) people whose families help them out financially.

Is there a chance for two people like us to have a family, when we don't have any of the above advantages? It doesn't seem like it should be THIS impossible! We're both hard workers who make decent money TOGETHER. Separately, it's not enough, but together, it's a good amount.

HOW could we make it happen? I have heard that having children after 34 the risks just go up and up and up, that they may not be healthy...

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iVillage Member
Registered: 08-16-2004
Sun, 08-27-2006 - 2:26am

That seems perfectly reasonable. Right now I wouldn't want my kid away for more than a day a week. However, when he's 3, I'd probably be comfortable with a few hours twice a week...and probably 3-4 times a week at age 4, too. I would never be comfortable with many hours a day, almost every weekday year-round though, not unless it was school or a few weeks of summercamp.

I'm not advocating spending 24/7 with your kid. That's about what I'm doing right now basically because I don't have a sitter, can't really afford that much anyway, because Corey is in Mississippi, and because my son will climb up the walls and hang off the cieling fan if I'm not watching him! Having him tethered to my hip is really not my ideal situation. I just want him supervised and not seperated from me for long hours a day, many days a week especially right now. I'm not saying because I spend nearly 24/7 with him, everyone should. I am saying that I get a lot more time with him than I would if he were at daycare while I went to work all the time, and that's important to me.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-27-2005
Sun, 08-27-2006 - 3:05am

"I feel it's better for our bond, for his developing personality, for his forming values, for his speech skills so that he can learn French as well as English,...."

This sentence struck me as my children are growing up trilingual. We found that using a combination of home and daycare was best for our children's language development in all three languages. May I ask why you feel that it will be better for your child's linguistic abilities in French and English to be with you at all times?

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-16-2004
Sun, 08-27-2006 - 3:27am
For one, I don't feel he should be with me at all times--just not seperated from me most of the day most of the week. ;) However, I think he's going to learn French better if he hears it, and he'll probably hear it from me if I make an effort more than he's going to hear it from the DCP. He can learn English anywhere since it's the predominant language spoken in our country. He doesn't need to go to daycare to learn English or any language. Unless they are a bunch of French-speaking kids there, I really don't think daycare is going to do as much for his learning a bit of French as would being around me speaking it. Now, it might help him learn more English vocabulary and even Spanish being that Spanish is another widely used languae here. However, regardless, he can pick up language going to the store with me, playing at the park with other kids, etc. as he can hearing it from kids/DCPs at daycare. I don't think being with me is going to be better for all if his linguistic abilities; however, I think being with me can be just as good for his language if I expose hiim to lots of words.
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-27-2005
Sun, 08-27-2006 - 4:13am

"For one, I don't feel he should be with me at all times--just not seperated from me most of the day most of the week. ;)"

I think you misunderstood me. I'm not talking about being separated for most of the day during the week, I'm really curious about why you think having your child at home with you all the time will be better for his acquisition of both French and English. What I (and pretty much all bi- and tri-lingual families I know) have found most effective for the acquisition of multiple language is having the parents speak the ml (minority language) only at home and using dc/preschool/school as the main opportunity for learning the ML (majority language, i.e. the language spoken most commonly in the world around us). This is know as a ml@h (i.e. minority language at home) pattern.

"However, regardless, he can pick up language going to the store with me, playing at the park with other kids, etc. as he can hearing it from kids/DCPs at daycare."

In my experience, playing with kids at the park and going to the store with mom really doesn't work for effective language acquisition. We lived in Sweden for 2 years before ds started school. He couldn't speak more than a few words of Swedish despite going to playgroups, playgrounds, stores etc frequently during those 2 years. He only really learned Swedish when he started kindergarten in a Swedish school. It was the same with dd. She couldn't speak or understand a word of Swedish, despite being born in Sweden, until she started in dc at the age of 2.5. This is the experience of every immigrant family I know.

I would have strongly preferred for ds to have had the opportunity to go to some kind of preschool/dc before starting school. It was a very challenging year for him having to learn Swedish while simultaneously starting a school routine. Dd had a much smoother transition to school as she was already fluent in Swedish when she started.

"I don't think being with me is going to be better for all if his linguistic abilities; however, I think being with me can be just as good for his language if I expose hiim to lots of words."

I absolutely agree. However, children who are in dc are also around their parents long enough to learn a language perfectly well from the parents, and have the added advantage of being able to acquire the ML simultaneously. A child doesn't have to be with his/her parents all the time in order for him/her to learn a language. Some studies seem to indicate that 20-30 hours per week is sufficient. In any case, my children can speak and read German despite the fact that their father has always worked full time (he's the only one who speaks German with them in our family).

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-16-2004
Sun, 08-27-2006 - 4:25am

I'll be using at home for learning the minority language and the whole US for learning the majority one. :) I don't think he needs daycare to learn a language. I didn't go to daycare, and I usually have few problems communicating. I do agree daycare can give it a boost, help you learn it faster. That is certainly true from the research I've seen. They learn quicker because of what they are exposed to there and because they need to express their needs. I don't think my son needs to learn it really fast, and I think he'll be just as well off learning it slowly as time goes by as he will if he learns it early--and have the bonus of not being away a whole lot while so young.

I think having a parent that speaks both would do just as well as being around parents 'long enough' and then at daycare, though, while not meaning being seperated from them. I have lots of reasons for my choices; the language thing is just one of them, and it's not important enough for me to want to send my kids to daycare. I think overall being with a parent most of the time is best.

And my, I can't believe it's this late! I need to get to bed. I've been up late researching methods for TTC a girl. We're going to start trying soon, well...if I can prompt the return of AF somehow, lol. And I'm reading up on the Shettles method and all of that... Well, keep your fingers crossed, eh? Goodnight. :)

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-27-2005
Sun, 08-27-2006 - 4:34am
Good luck with the girl and the language thing! I think you might want to do some more research on language acquisition, but what will work best depends a lot on what you are aiming to accomplish. Another possible method you could try is OPOL (one parent one language). With this method, you, for example, would speak French exclusively with your child, and your husband would speak English exclusively with him. But this works best if each parent has a solid amount of time alone with the kids so that they have better chances to communicate with each other without interjections in the other language from the other parent.
iVillage Member
Registered: 05-09-2006
Sun, 08-27-2006 - 5:00am

Because my husband and I made *this* choice for our family.

We used to believe as you do, that have a SAHP was the only correct choice. That was before we really took notice of the families around us that we admired most and realized that work status really seemed to be no indicator of whether or not they'd raised the kind of children we wanted our children to be like: kind, well-behaved, funny, interesting. When we began to seek out mentors for our own parenting in order to follow the dictates of our religious faith wrt Titus 2, we quickly learned that working status of the Mom didn't factor into which parents we found to be of greatest help and advice.

The fact that I SAH doesn't obligate me to mock working Moms or to pretend that my choice has no risks or consequences. Driving a car is one of the riskiest things a person can ever do, and yet millions of us accept those risks every day. It's silly to simply dismiss the risks as negligible; they're not. Driving is dangerous business. But I still do it.

And, we're not currently living in Canada, so working outside the home is less an option than it was in Toronto, as it would require a good bit of bureaucratic effort with not much hope of being approved for a foreign work visa...and for not much of a payoff. It would be easier to simply tap into my trust fund if we really needed money quickly, although we prefer not to do so, as my dh is uncomfortable about that. He prefers we live off of income we produce ourselves and right now, his income provides for our needs and then some.

In the event, I have to wonder, though why, even if I did work, you would suppose I'd be at work on a Saturday morning. The post I wrote, to which you asked why I wasn't working, was written at 7:50am Saturday morning where I live. And quite the middle of the night in the US. Why on earth would you suppose I should be working then?

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-30-2006
Sun, 08-27-2006 - 7:54am
Is that just your guess, or can you back that up somehow?

Sabina

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Sun, 08-27-2006 - 8:08am

Guess what.....My youngest daughter Maddie starts full day preschool in two weeks. I am so excited....HEHEHEH.

Sorry I just had to add on to your post about preschool cause we are so excited that she is going to school just like the other two kids at the same school for the same time that they are there. Its going to be such a great thing for her and heck I get a break and just get to be with the baby.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 05-14-2006
Sun, 08-27-2006 - 8:15am

Not all dual WOH families pay for childcare either, we never have. I have always found those numbers to be grossly inflated, even if that is for a typical office job, guess what not all WOHMs work in office. Many of us are in the blue collar world where working expences are minimal, (like your DH's). My working expences are gas (three miles each way) and about $200 for shoes each year.

(I know in the past that I have posted that I had no clothing expences for work, I wore the same thing at home that I do at work. I had forgotten about shoes. Since I am in a very physical job (on my feet all day, carrying heavy boxes, going up and down a ladder), I do buy shoes that are designated for work only and replace then about three times a year. So I do have a work clothing expence).

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