Stay @ Home

In todays world, in the US at least, more families have two working parents. My question is: "What happened?"

When did it become wrong for the mother to stay at home and do the most important task of all: raise the kids?

Now I know that men can raise children too, and more and more men are doing it, but even today, a man that stays home is met with highly raised eyebrows by society. Yes, money is an issue here--of course--however it seems that as our need for material things increases the importance of staying home and raising the kids decreases. If you think about how much time a working family spends with their kids in a week you find that it can't be more than 32 hours: You work for 8 hours, come home at 5 (traditionally speaking), by that time you have only 3 hours with the kids--3 times 5 (a work week) equals 15. The weekend comes, and if the kids don't have something else to do, you can estimate about 16 hours with them for the entire weekend. Thats 31 hours a week!

Has our society become such that we now expect, even raise our kids to understand that there is no time for them? It's my opinion that one can live comfortably on a single income, especially if a family member has a college education. Just take away that extra car, get basic cable, buy in bulk, have no more than one child, buy a house in a nice inexpensive nieghborhood in a state that's not California.

And what about gay couples? Gay couples usually have no kids. Is there anything wrong with a member of a gay couple not working if the other partner makes alot of money?

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r66-The member who always asks WHY?

I dunno, kids go to school no matter how many parents they have. Say the kids get out at 3pm, parents work from 7-3pm, they go to school and pick up the kids and go home. Doesn't matter how many parents you have.

Let's say you are a latch key kid, you walk home and get there at 3:30, your parent works from 8-4pm, that's only 1/2 an hour less.

NO!!!


Yoohoo! Attention gay men who make a lot of money and agree with me -- send me a PM

I see where you're coming from R66... my life just isn't that way, though. We both do work 40 hours per week or more in my case. We do have a new house, pool, etc. but I don't think our working has really taken any time away from us. We alternate and have never once used a sitter.

I have integrated my family life and career. I don't know how wise it is, but it does work. For example, if I know I'm going to be working late I'll go pick one of my kids up (or both) and bring them to work with me. They hang out, do their homework, bum money from me for the snack machines, whatever. We get our work done and go home and have fun. Sometimes I work from home and that works too. Same deal.

Also, my day usually has us getting up and spending an hour two in the mornings getting ready. My kid's school also allows us to go get lunch with our kids. At least once per week I go grab some fast food and go eat with them.

Bottom line is I'm not sure quantity is better than quality. My wife stayed home for 8 years while the kids were little. She went back to work when they started school. One of us is always waiting for them when they get home.

I just don't think it's as black and white as either you work, or you spend time with your kids. it's a mix.

Toose, I am totally serious when I say you sound like an ace dad.



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What?? You think I can write an entire post without insulting you?? Think again.

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

Yeah, I agree with Toose. The relationship he has with his kids is very similar to how my dad worked it out with me. After school I would walk to his office, which was right down the street, and do my homework for a few hours, and then usually we would go to a movie or get some dinner or something. But I think that your kids' school's idea of letting parents take the kids to lunch is friggin awesome!

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personally i think this is a case of double vision. the propper question seems to me: when and why could most families ever afford to get by on only one income? this, given that for most of history [even in america], most people have had to work, man, woman and child. to illustrate what i'm saying, if you ask your grandparents what her family life was like when she was a kid, chances are her mom and dad both worked, unless she was pretty rich.

i'd also point out that raising kids is more expensive than ever now. whenever and wherever you look there were always plenty of families that were too poor for everyone not to work. this is one of the reasons given for the explosive birthrate of countries like india and parts of africa, where infant mortality is high and where kids are still a net asset to the family rather than financial burden. it seems to me that mothers working is actually the norm, and that we've got it backwards, one income families have always been an exception, rather than a rule except when and where people are rich enough to be able to get by otherwise. the overriding implication in this to me, is that maybe american wealth is declining, if so many families are switching from the "prevalent" one-income structure.