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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Re: Have we talked about this Mommy War article?
I agree. I do less when DH is not around because I don't cook dinner and I tend to go to bed shortly after DS, so I don't find it problematic in the evenings. Now the mornings are another story...
I am a little scared of how this would work with two.
I can't either. DH works mainly from home now too and travels internationally maybe once a quarter, but during my oldest's first year of life he had a different job that required him to travel M-Th and he was doing his MBA on the weekends. DD was soooooo colicky and such a drama queen baby that I attribute the PPA from being at home and then when I was working doing the "second shift" completely by myself. By the time DH was finishing up his MBA program (she was 11 months old) I was crumbling...I told him there was no way a #2 would be in the picture if things continued the way they were. He eventually switched jobs, is home more, and DS is a much more laid back baby/toddler but I think I carry a lot of that anxiety with me still... Plus, I don't mind having my mom here :-)
Agreed. I'm comfortable with my choice to be a WM. If someone wants to have a problem with it, then they can have a problem with it. Not my problem to fix, so I won't engage by explaining to anybody.
Totally agree! Unhappy people are the ones that usually bash others.
If this tells you anything, Dh just called to say he isn't going to work tonight (a rarity to say the least). I am somewhat disappointed because I was excited to have a night to myself.
and this pretty much looks like my weekend (well, minus the nursing baby part-- I just have one screaming toddler).
From the description:
In this landmark study, sociologist Arlie Hochschild takes us into the homes of two-career parents to observe what really goes on at the end of the "work day." Overwhelmingly, she discovers, it's the working mother who takes on the second shift. Hochschild finds that men share housework equally with their wives in only twenty percent of dual-career families. While many women accept this inequity in order to keep peace, they tend to suffer from chronic exhaustion, low sex drive, and more frequent illness as a result. The ultimate cost is the forfeited health and happiness of both partners, and often the survival of the marriage itself.
If you do consider yourself in that category, honestly, why do you put up with it? Why marry, subsequently have kids, and continue to stay married to (and in many cases have more kids) with someone who's behaviors are leading to "chronic exhaustion, low sex drive, and more frequent illness"?
FWIW, I also have known SAH spouses whose husbands come home and become an additional baby to take care of, so I'm not seeing where they've got it that much easier than a WM with a spouse who doesn't pull their own weight.
I consider it a factual statement to say that two-income spouses have to take care of their housework responsibilities and evening/weekend child care in less time than they would if one of them was SAH (unless they opt to pay for things like housework). As I've said before, it's part of why DH stays home. However, when a SAHM says she's busy, that's not the WM response: it's "we do *all* of that!". Like I said to Helper, if a WM is really doing everything a good SAH parent is doing, you've got crap for a DCP and should find someone who concerns themselves more during the day with enriching activities for your child. It's the exaggeration and martyrdom nature of the response that makes it a Mommy War salvo and not just "true statement".
I wouldn't presume to answer for 80% of women.
As for "crap day care providers" I didn't see the SAHM in the OP engaging in too many "enriching activities." She took her kid to ballet, which I do every Tuesday night since I work during the day. And she took her kids on two play dates, which is something we do on the weekend since I work during the week. I saw a whole lot of focus on coffee. And then a lot of concern over the diaper genie.
I also think the notion of one's spouse "pulling his own weight" is a false comparison. Both SAHMs and WMs are equally likely to have a husband who comes home from work and thinks he should be done working. The only difference is that the WM is going to have to cram into 4 hours most of the activities that the SAHM had all day to do. So if you look at this SAHM's description of her day, it looks exactly like mine. But in the middle of her diatribe, I would add "Went to work/court/dep" and then some of the stuff she's doing (laundry) wouldn't get done till the weekend, and some of it would get done at 11:00 at night.
The reason "The Second Shift" becomes important is because the assumption is that when both parents work, both parents share household responsibilities, and that's not always (apparently, not even often) the case. Both women have the same "kind" of husbands coming home.
I didn't ask you to generalize, I asked if you consider this to be you, why you put up with it.
I also didn't say "SAHM's like the OP", I said good SAHMs.
There are a lot of reasons that in my house most of this stuff falls to me and the first is that my husband can't breastfeed my infant so walking up during the night to nurse is my responsibility. Another reason is that my husband's hours of work make it impossible for him to do the "enrichment activities" that "good SAHM's" would do. So I do them. For example, the ballet class, on Tuesdays, I leave work an hour early on Tuesdays to get PTS to her dance class. DH's job does not allow that kind of flexibility. Additionally, PTS is signed up for a swim class on Saturday mornings beginning next month. My husband sometimes works on Saturday so wouldn't be able to take her. He also covers various sporting events on Fridays and Saturdays and so play dates that would happen on those days will fall to me.
It's not always the case of "putting up with it." It's sometimes the case that the person who is available to do the work, does it. Even though they also have their own job. The assumption in the OP is that the working mom works all day and ignores her children in the evening. Who does the OP author think is doing that work (laundry, scheduling playdates, cleaning the diaper genie, breastfeeding the baby). In 80% of working households it's STILL the mom. AND she's working, too.
I guess I'd better give my DH a big ol' wet kiss tonight. He's a better mom than I am sometimes.
I work FT, go to school PT, and have twin toddlers who cause all kinds of mayhem. I ALWAYS have time for coffee. Sounds like this woman needs better time management.
Over he-re!
We're the ones whose youngest is in preschool. I'm pissed off because today I had to do the preschool pickup before my episode of sister wives had finished, and of course it had to be backyardigans when we got home, so I had to read instead.
LOL, more power to you. Personally I'm too damn goal-oriented and compulsive to spend what little free time I have just sitting around. I always tell myself that I'm going to do it but inevitably I notice something that needs to be cleaned or a phone call I need to make or a house project that needs attention. I just can't sit still.
Partly this is a function of who I am. But partly this is a function of my inability to behave like a normal human being after having two children very close together. It took me many, many months (if not years) to accept that I had zero control over my schedule with a newborn in the house, and in the meantime it drove me insane. So now, a few years later, I actually have a smidge of free time and I use it to do all the things around the house that I couldn't with back-to-back babies. I actually have a modicum of control over the things again, which warms the cockles of my Type A heart.
With all that said, I own the fact that I am compulsive and create my own insane schedule and, like Irish, this whole debate fills me with a raging case of the STFUs.
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I'll freely admit that I give the big old side eye to anyone on either side of the fence who bemoans how haaaaaaaaard it is to the point where they're saying the other side can't even begin to understand. Just put down the damned cross already and accept your own choices and personality in the matter.
I've been a working mom, a SAHM, and a single mom and I didn't find any of those situations harder than the other, just different. At this point, it's like a pissing match between cops, deployed soldiers, and ER docs.
Click me, click me!
Wrong. Those of us subjected to their whining have it the worst.
No, the one who has it the worst is the best friend of this mom because she's the one who has to listen to her crap all the time. Or her Facebook friends.
Nope. My vote is for the laid back mom at the playground listening to the two uptight heifers discuss how hard their lives are.
This is part of the reason I drop pinky off at dance class instead of sitting there, shooting the shiit until she's done.
Click me, click me!
Please. The absolute worst are those who Facebrag about their little geniuses all the time. Y'all just KNOW you want to punch that one.
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But it's just so hard having a child this brilliant! It's very exhausting having to always take her to the bookstore to buy another Tolstoy novel and I'm constantly having to scrub off the quadratic equations she writes all over the walls! I'm not bragging, just being honest! I wish she was a normal 2 year old! Like yours! Really!
Don't forget the incessant talking in full sentences. I just CANNOT take anymore of the "what is the true meaning of life, Mommy?," questions. Moms with kids with speech problems are SO LUCKY.
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LOL @ TTT & KateAggie.
SBP, I asked DH tonight what he thought about the idea that a WM does everything he does plus works. First he pointed out some of what he does to save us money so he can stay home that we wouldn't do if he didn't stay home (all the car maintenence and repair, all the home repair, cloth diaper, cook all meals from scratch, bake homemade bread, grow our own vegetables in summer, etc.). Then he stop and laughed, and asked how WM's manage to jam in an extra 45+ hours of child care nights and weekends.
I'm not arguing that some of the same sh!t gets done with fewer options of when to do it. Heck, I'm not even arguing that it doesn't free up time nights and weekends. Putting everything else aside, though, unless you don't actually consider caring for an infant/toddler/preschooler to be work, a WP doesn't "do it all" that a SAHP does plus work.
Brava, ladies. Brava. I'm perfectly happy with my kid who asks me to sing our version of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town," which just might incorporate words like "poop" and "fart."
I love the end of this thread.