Why should I support someone else?
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| Sat, 12-30-2006 - 1:24pm |
Let me start by saying that I"m new here so this may have already been discussed, but this has come up in my office several times and I wanted to get some other views of this.
I do payroll for a rather small company so I know most of the workers and their wives (most of the workers are men due to the nature of our business). There are two in particular who's wives SAH. These two are up to their eyeballs in debt. I have bill collectors constantly calling for them. That part is really their business, it is annoying but I enjoy being rude back to the bill collectors, lol.
The part that bothers me is that both wives have been in the office wanting copies of X amount of check stubs so that they can go and get public assistance (I know because they told me that is what it is for)! Why should my tax money go so that these women can SAH? I know that not all families that one parent stays at home are like this, but I know lots that are. Heck, growing up we were always broke because my mother refused to work, but we weren't on any public assistance.
So, why should I pay for a woman to SAH? Why can't she go and get a job to support her family just like anyone else?


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I will have kids at home for 21 years if my younger son goes to college the fall after graduating from high school.
Are you suggesting that I leave him home alone in the afternoons during high school?
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"But at least you could always go back to fulfil your career."
No, I couldn't.
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You misunderstand me.
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I cannot check my child's I-POD usage without physically taking the device from him and checking it. It feels, to him, like an invasion of privacy, which of course, it is. The music emanating from his room, the CDs left lying around, those are another matter. At the age of 14, there is not much that he cares to listen to that I would prohibit (he's not into racist/misogynistic stuff at all), but I do like hearing it and talking about it with him.
We have an extra cell line that I give the kids when they need it. For instance, on Tuesdays, my younger son goes over to the high school to take an orchestra class. He is only ten, and the school is in a rougher area of town. If his ride is late in coming (we carpool with another family), he takes the phone and can call. If we're shopping at the mall and the kids want to go to another section, they take the extra cell and we call each other to meet back up. I understand the usefulness of the cell. I just don't think my kids need it for social networking, which is what most of their friends use theirs for 90% of the time.
We don't have internet at home, either. Or cable TV.
Adult prerogatives?? This differs from the stereo and pink Princess rotary phone of decades past only in size and portability. The hearing damage from earbuds at high volume is a legitimate concern. But kids having their own "music delivery system" is as old as transistor radios. And the Princess phones for girls' bedrooms have been around long enough to originally be rotary (I don't know if they even exist anymore). Phones and music stopped being "adult prerogatives" in our generation and even earlier, not recently. All that's changed is the format.
If anything, kids are pushed into adulthood too late. Far later now than used to be the case. However much it seems that popular culture sexualizes them early, the fact is that they are actually closer to being infantilized- parents try to protect them from sex until an age when previous generations were already getting married (and then presumably having approved-of sex). You know your history. So you know that "pushed into adulthood" has been gradually getting later and later, rather than earlier and earlier. It is now later than it has ever been, with people pushing 30 considering themselves to still be too young to "settle down", too young to truly be adult. Not for nothing has the term "kidult" been coined to describe them. None of that has anything to do with ipods and cell phones, of course. But how much later do you want "adult prerogatives" to be? (Not that I think either of those are that.) We already have young people being adolescents for nearly 20 years (12-29). I think they're growing up too slowly, not too fast. And so did you in other threads, regarding PNJ acting 16 when she was actually 20 regarding relationships (romantic and parental). But hand the kid an ipod and suddenly they think they're 20 when they're actually 16? (If only, but those days are long gone.) Hearing damage and oblivion to ambient sound from earbuds? Yes. That's a problem. A problem of earbuds. But the rest. I'm not buying that kids are growing up too fast since what I actually see around me (admittedly skewed by Boston college population) is kids growing up too slow.
Gee, thanks for the tutorial. We do have a computer at home, and I obviously have internet access or I couldn't be in the conversation.
Looking at CDs laying around the room, when I am in the room, is NOT snooping. Particularly when it's a public room, like our den. That's silly. There's a difference between picking up a CD by something like "My Chemical Romance" that's lying on a table in front of me and asking a few questionsvs saying "Hand over the I-Pod. Time for the random check." One is part of natural interaction that occurs over the course of a week. The other is invading what would feel like private space to him.
I don't worry about what my kid is listening to at this point, but since his music is a part of who he is, I like knowing about it -- staying connected to him through something he's interested in. Music IS wonderful...even more wonderful when it's shared. Not that I care to listen to everything the kids like, but it's nice to know what it is they like and why.
The issues you have ipods and cell phones have honestly never occured to me and now I'm trying to figure out why. Hmmm...
With regard to ipods: I can't think of a way ds or dd would pick up music that I wouldn't know about for their ipods. The ipods never leave the house unless we are travelling and neither have our password for itunes and, thus, have no way to buy music (or anything else) without asking us first. Ds actually prefers to plug his ipod into speakers and listen to the music out loud. Dd almost exclusively listens to audiobooks and usually gives us a blow-by-blow description. Maybe this will change as they get older...
Ds has a cell phone, but his use of the cell phone is about the same as that of your son. The cell phone is an old one of mine that I couldn't use anymore, and it sits at home unless he will be going somewhere on his own. It wouldn't even occur to him to take it unless he knew he would have to be going somewhere or getting home from somewhere on his own. He's never used it for social networking and hasn't even figured out how to send an SMS yet (and has no interest in learning). That cell phone also works as an extra cell that we can lend overseas guests when they visit (much cheaper to have a local phone). It honestly never occurred to me that a cell phone would be used for social networking. Neither dh nor I used our cell phones for social purposes: it's either for business, or to get or deliver information that can't wait until we are at home or to make sure that we can find each other. All of ds's friends are at school and he rarely calls them to chat as he has plenty of time for chatting at school. If he calls friends at all, it's usually on the weekend and he uses the house phone.
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