Stuart also expounded:
And don’t even get me started on working parents who push their kids away into nursery from six months old - I know I risk the wrath of the many but I think our primary duty is to provide a proper home life for kids which means being there for them not fitting them into our hectic lives as we can. What’s the point in having them if you aren’t going to be parents 24/7? So what if ends can’t meet does it matter? Keepcutting back till they do meet - that’s what we did………….
Of course that's very easy for a man to say who kept working, kept his income, kept his place on his career ladder, kept his wife, because for most men fatherhood (like being a husband) is something which happens outside working hours. Women on the other hand according to this view ought to give up their financial independance, give up their hard fought for foot on the career ladder, give up an independant social life, in fact give up everything which cannot be done with a whining child (or 2 or 3) in tow.
If a woman who has her children in her late 20s/early 30s as most do gives up her paid employment then she'd better pray that her husband doesn't leave her when she's 50, which is currently the commonest age for divorce in the UK. Men with 30 years continuous career advancement behind them can't find equivalent or even similar employment at 50 - or often even at 45 - so what chance does a women who, stellar tho she may have been when employed at 35, 20 years later is choosing between evening shift shelf stacking and..umm.... evening shift shelf stacking.
It always surprises me that men who are keen as mustard to see their daughters well educated to degree level if possible and with good jobs with career promotion prospects think it's a good idea that on the birth of the first child they should put themselves - and the grandchildren - on the list of potential welfare benefit claimants.
Being a good mother is about doing all you can to ensure that your children have a bright future much more than it's about wiping noses and potty training. Any uneducated low-aspirational teenager can do that adequately.
Perhaps we should leave motherhood to uneducated low-aspirational teenagers then? Well from the plummeting birthrate among Social Class A & B women, it would seem that we are doing exactly that.
2 comments:
big rattle like assumptions in this and a pretty gloomy view of the world and marriage. Marriage is a union of lives and souls and cannot be seen in terms of financial independence or careers or career ladders - you seem to have a strange view of children as whining objects and nappy training those are not the things which make good parents. That's not what parenting is about is it?
Income like all things in marriage ought to be shared.
Surely this is the Christian ideal?
Having said that I have of course to say that I have never been on a career ladder or worked for income and advnacement and I was at home a great deal of the time.
I guess it is about a view of marrieage and life and what is important and I don't think the material things of life matter two hoots compared to love and companionship.
I see nothing wrong with a mother going out to work if that is what she wants to do...Or a father staying at home whilst mother goes out to work if that is what he wants to do...With the ever increasing financial burdens on us all then we can't all live as our parents or grandparents did...There is only so far that you can cut back in order for one parent to stay at home...And that's without a career ladder type outlook...Also what if when the children come along the father decides that the mother is responsible for everything for them, emotionally and financially...That means despite possibly wishing to stay at home with them when they are small the mother HAS to go out to work...Sadly that is the position my best friend is in...And most of her wages ennd up going on the nursery fees...IMO you need a social life both with your children and without them...Surely by doing things as adults without the children you are teaching your children as well
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