What would you give up to stay home?
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| 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.

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Jennie
Jennie
Jennie
I also own the book "Freakonomics", which is where she's getting all this from. What that books actually says is that the mere ownership of books- not the parents reading them- is correlated with better school test scores than bookless homes. So if the value that you want to pass on to your kids is "do well on the test", them merely buying the books will apparently do the trick.
But if you want to pass on the value that reading is an end in itself and not merely a way to study for tests, then you have to actually value reading. And people who don't read their own books don't value reading and so can't pass that value on to their kids.
Personally, I would have no problem leaving my 8 year old home alone for 10 or fifteen minutes. I would not be comfortable however, leaving her to watch my four year old. Maybe in a year or two.
I have very distinct memories of being 4 years old and walking a few suburban blocks by myself to visit my friend. It seemed completely natural then. I can't imagine letting my own four year old do that though.
Jennie
Jennie
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