What would you give up to stay home?
Find a Conversation
| Sat, 08-05-2006 - 8:36am |
Hi everyone.
I have always said that staying home is so important to me that I would give up many things to be able to do that. We live in a very small home, I have no jewelry and we buy all our clothes at Walmart. I know that if I went back to work, we could afford more. But I would never trade being at home for a larger house or more luxuries.
However, after reading this board I have started to suspect that there are things I would not want to give up. If I couldn't send my kids to preschool a couple of hours a day, if I couldn't afford any after school activities like ballet lessons or if I could'nt afford any kind of summer program for them, I think I would have to find a way to go back to work. So basically, I'm perfectly happy to deny myself "things." But I would not want to take much away from the kids.
Of course I would probably have to find a new career becuase I could never work the 80 hours a week my old career entailed.

Pages
maybe that is the difference between you and me i dont necessarily care if my kids have the same ideals as i have. i see my job as a parent to provide them with the education and ability to think for themselves and adopt the ideals that they are comfortable with. i think there are basic ideals that most everyone wants for kids, be kind, share, use manners, etc... but i dont think parents are the only ones who model these behaviors for children. than there are ideals that i hold as an individual that if my kids choose to go in a different direction that will be their choice.
you know one thing that always interests me is while we rate daycares you never see us rating family homes. do you really think the number of kids living in mediocre to poor homes is less than 50%. have you ever looked at the standards for daycare/in home dcps? i assure you my home would fall into the mediocre to poor catagory. do you keep your children away from pets at all time? do you sanitize your hands each and every time you change a daiper? do you sanitize your childrens toys on a daily basis? do you completely nutrious meals and snacks every time they eat? i really think if you rated homes based on the same criteria used to rate daycares there would be alot that came up lacking, mine included.
as i said before i dont find aggression in children to be a bad thing. my oldest has a very outgoing agressive personality and it has served her well on her way to being an exceptional teen who is very involved in her school, church and community.
how much time is it that these child psychologists say needs to be put in? and as parents to you really want yourself to be the only people you children mimic? my children have learned alot of things from me, but they have also learned alot from the other people in their lives. and since i think my kids are turning out to be pretty neat people i have to assume the influence of those other people is helping to form who they are becoming - i owe them a big thanks.
Jennie
It disproved it by pointing out that there are many cases where a kid with SAHP may come home to an empty house."
Wrong. You mentioned 2 times in what you called 18 years of growing up. I can't recall any, though I'm sure there were quite a few (1/2 dozen or so maybe?).
The main difference, that you keep ignoring is this..WOHP X2 can mean the kid(s) know that there are big chunks of time where said kids are home, and parents are not. You random parent away from home is the *exception* and therein lies the big difference.
Jennie
Here again, is what I actually said:
To say that SAH doesnt benefit kids is like saying that one on one education doesnt benefit them. Is it imperitive? No. Does it help? You bet. Can it make a huge difference in a childs life well past childhood? Yep and yep."
Jennie
Actually, I said nothing at all about the U.S. having a huge problem with underage drinking that the rest of the world doesn't have. I said quite specifically that Sweden doesn't have a huge problem with teenage pregnancy and drug abuse. As far as I know, the U.K. does have a very big problem with teenage pregnancy, for example. I was simply asking for the consequences people would expect to see in a country where children are routinely on their own for a couple of hours after school. Most usually mention something about teen pregnancy, drinking etc. This isn't something that is a problem in Sweden, so what other consequences would you expect to see given the fact that a parent isn't waiting at home every day for their children to arrive?
"And if you have lived, traveled and worked outside of the US for a large % of your life as I have (EMEA, APAC, and yes bermuda) you'd know that."
I'm coming close to the point of having lived as long outside the U.S. as I have inside the U.S. I lived to 4 years in Mexico, 1 year in Spain, several months in the U.K., 2 years in Austria, 3 years in Switzerland and 8 years in Sweden. I'm curious...how old are you? Because if I recall correctly from your last post, you lived a total of 8 years outside the U.S. I didn't realise that would constitute "a large % of your life", but maybe you are much younger than I thought?
sorry, but you left out the first 2/3's of that post:
Are you serious? I had a SAHM. The positives were...I didnt come home to an empty house. A huge thing in the pre teen and teen years. I knew there was an adult whose job it was to keep me out of trouble. Another huge positive. I also never wanted for any attention, a huge positive.
Jennie
Pages