patrick.net

I have met countless guys who view their wives as economic property; recently my wife told me two of her friends got the pump-out-another-kid-or-get-back-to-work threat.

I'd love to go on a "men are a**holes" rant after reading this. But not all men are, all you have to do is read the posts by Allah, Jack, Peter P, KurtS, Surfer-X --- do I need to go on to make my point? Lots of great guys out there who do value their wives.

There is that part of me that thinks the view described above is what us women get for demanding equality and somehow confusing going to work with being equal in the eyes of men. Obviously there are a lot of jerks out there who think that women should be responsible for the traditional housewifely duties and bringing home a paycheck. I've said it before and I'll say it again, are we really better off now that women work out of the home?

I know I've said it's great that women have choices, and some women really do benefit from the opportunities jobs afford them. But the SOB's mentioned here sound like bullies of the worst kind. I'd smack my husband upside the head if he tried to treat me like that. How's that for equal?

HZ says "Well I don’t give a rat’s ass about what you think."

Well I guess that settles who "is simply ignorant or short-sighted" then.

My goodness. What a thread.

For the record, all men are vile pigs. Some realize it, most don't.

Also, all women are utterly psychotic. Some hide it, most don't.

All in all, I'll take dogs...

Cheers,
prat

"Also, all women are utterly psychotic. Some hide it, most don’t."

Hiding it is entirely too tiresome an endeavor and leads to stomach ulcers anyway.

Hiding it is entirely too tiresome an endeavor and leads to stomach ulcers anyway.

_smile_

Fair enough.

Come here often?

Cheers,
prat

recently my wife told me two of her friends got the pump-out-another-kid-or-get-back-to-work threat.

What?

"Come here often?"

There's no polite way for me to answer that...

"recently my wife told me two of her friends got the pump-out-another-kid-or-get-back-to-work threat.

What?"

I believe he's actually talking about pimps who got too high and accidentally married their 'hos. So you see, if they're not birthing babies, they should be out there on the street earning their keep. Or something like that.

There's some shakey logic going on around here. (Mainly from me.)

There’s no polite way for me to answer that…

_smile_

Sure there is: Yes.

On that note, g'night all.

Cheers,
prat

Oh, by the way, housing is *way* overpriced right now...

"Sure there is: Yes"

Of course, straight-forward and honest! Why didn't I think of that?

Spoke to a realtor friend of mine that tells me her firm is refusing to list many homes because, in their opinion, the owners are asking for too much (and hence the home would most likely not sell).

I suppose that could explain why I'm seeing an increasing number of 'for sale by owner' signs in the nyc suburbs.

"Sunnyvale_Renter Says:

Aah, the boomers. I think the epitome of the boomers is that really fat guy who was in The Grateful Dead (we’ll be grateful when they’re dead lol). Sloppy, disgusting, self-indulgent, and unwilling to look past the next scoop of ice cream or cheap thrill..."

Yes! Exactly! That fat, self-indulgent, drug-addled, anti-establishment whore started his own Gerry Garcia ties and wine, etc. Not to mention the millions they made off those stupid skeleton and rose tee shirts, etc.

The Grateful Dead were a bunch of losers that laughed all the way to the bank while supposedly epitomizing the anti-establishment ethos of free love, transient lifestyle, smoke dope, etc.

Ben and Gerry are two other hippy-ass, hippie-turned-yuppie whores.

Silicon Vallley is full of them...Send all of their selfish asses to Chinese slave labor camps to see how the other half lives while they stuff their fat faces with food, dope, icecream, stocks, houses, cars, bicycles, etc.

You see that fat mound, the hairy, white beached whale out there in the sands of Santa Cruz? That's the average Boomer having "come of age"
enjoying the fruits of his fat pension. Meanwhile, back down Hwy 17, in the valley...the Gen-Xers languish, having been left to clean up the party after the music died, the disco ball rolled into space, and the lights came on.

Now I remember some of the stuff I've forgotten since I left the BA for Phoenix a few years ago. Some of the reasons why I was kinda happy to get away from the place I grew up in.

Update on that realtor friend... Just called to tell her I posted her news on this blog and she told me that one guy has threatened to sue her firm because they are refusing to list the home he bought through them only two years earilier for a profit of 10% when the average price has supposedly gone up nearly twice that since. lol.

recently my wife told me two of her friends got the pump-out-another-kid-or-get-back-to-work threat.

I have no idea how any rational person could feel they had to make such a choice. I mean, why not simply refuse, or leave, etc?

I don't mean to defend the troglodytes (generally, I'm with Prat on this one)...but...

The economic reality is that to maintain the lifestyle they have both chosen, it's often necessary for both parents to be working. And obviously birthing children gets the mother a pass for several months...but the burden ends up being borne by the father alone...

Which was more doable back when that was the standard. Wages were higher in terms of buying power, so it was reasonable to support three, four, five people on a single income. But that ain't the game no more.

Yes, it's a lifestyle choice (some would argue this is more driven by the female in the equation), but it's one they made together. Priorities change when babies are born, and that might be part of the woman's irritation at the "threat" (let's call it a request, or a reminder of mutual needs?), but there are often previous commitments (mortgage payments, car loans, etc etc) that don't change as quickly...

So maybe it's not as unreasonable as it sounds.

FWIW, this has zero resemblance to my personal circumstances, so I'm not rationalizing here. Doesn't mean it's true though.

Kids are like dogs, they need room to run around and stuff, not be all couped up in an apartment.

Some premium apartment complexes have acres of green space for kids to roam. Why does the space need to be private? A "private property" sign or a fence is not going to stop bad people anyway.

(overlapping seattledude, above)

And the right solution, in my mind, is a renegotiation of lifestyle choices which works for everyone.

But I've also met women who expect to be kept in the manner to which they are accustomed no matter what the externalities. Also men who depended for their material pleasures on the excess income created by sharing costs.

To Jamie's point: some people get married for truly mysterious reasons.

...and still other people just change.

"Why does the space need to be private?"

It doesn't. My kids barely even play in our back yard. They're always out at the public playground where there's a chance to play with other kids, even though we have a bunch of playground-like crap in our back yard.

I think we get trapped in narrow definitions of what we "need" to have kids. Yes, you can happily raise a child in an apartment (lots of people have done it), if you get over the idea that you have to have a SFH, and yes, you can take them to the park or the playground or just for a walk around the block to have fresh air. We've lived in a high-population-density townhouse complex with a kid, where we had only a tiny yard and always had to go to the playground or elsewhere to be outside, and we've lived in a regular suburban house. I think our bigger yard now mostly goes to waste. It's nice to have but not necessary. We still end up at the playground every day.

...

new thread! new thread!

do we really need a new topic? the threads have nothing to do with the topics anyway.

And Peter.. If the VP gets indicted on the 28th of Oct at 2PM EST (fingers crossed), will you rescind your concession? :-)

"And the right solution, in my mind, is a renegotiation of lifestyle choices which works for everyone."

Exactly.

And Peter.. If the VP gets indicted on the 28th of Oct at 2PM EST (fingers crossed), will you rescind your concession?

We will see... but I cannot take back a concession. It is so Al Gore. :)

Furthermore, his possible "indictment" was not even similar to what I had in mind.

"It is so Al Gore"

I (heart) Al. Am I the only one?

:-P

New thread: New thread

"This is frustrating for my generation because if I ever want kids, my poor wife would have to work not long after she had the baby because its so expensive now days to raise a family and a lot of families have 2 incomes."

Don't lose hope. Most families I know live on one income. Mind you, most of them do not live in the Bay Area, but it's not an impossibility. I know some families (who are have average incomes) living on one income in the BA too.

I (heart) Al. Am I the only one?

He is a likeable person. :)

“This is frustrating for my generation because if I ever want kids, my poor wife would have to work not long after she had the baby because its so expensive now days to raise a family and a lot of families have 2 incomes.”

You can always have kids later in life when you are more financially established. When we are too old to have kids biologically, there is always the adoption route. Blood has very little meaning to me. It is all about relationship.

Furthermore, his possible “indictment” was not even similar to what I had in mind.

True enough.

And maybe it would even be distracting from the real problems at hand.. But trigger events are often unrelated to the effects they cause.

Poor kids! Imagine being straddled with the responsibility of paying a mortgage at the age of 18! That has got to produce some very serious future psychological problems for that generation.

What kind of parents would risk their kid's financial future on a bet? That's despicable.

(Daycare - now daycare takes a real bite. Maybe those mothers who are being told to get back to work need to do some math.)

A lot of couples never really do all the math when it comes to kids and women going to work. Daycare, gas, lunch (unless you're smart enough to brown bag it), wardrobe/drycleaning and so on. You need to make sure at the end of the day you're taking home more than you're spending before the wife goes back to work. Once we had two kids it made no sense financially for me to work outside the home. Also, it's a lot less stressful on the whole family that we have the stability of a stay-at-home parent.

Yea babies are cheap, but wait until you get to car insurance and college. someone once quoted me $100,000 for raising a kid, good thing we didn’t about the cost when we created her.

I once did a discounted cashflow analysis, the net present value of raising a kid is close to -250K. (I forgot the assumptions.)

If you’re able to provide a warm bed and decent food and clothes and school books for a kid, that’s good enough. No McMansion required.

True enough.

"If you’re able to provide a warm bed and decent food and clothes and school books for a kid, that’s good enough. No McMansion required."

......and no cellphone, hummer, etc,....

It doesn't have to be black and white. There are lots of ways a person can actually parent a child and still work. But I don't think 2 parents can do an adequate job if both work full time. I used to be a schoolteacher, and I can tell you from experience that kids raised in daycare do not do as well. Despite all the "social interaction" they do not do as well socially as a group as the kids who spent more time with their parents. Daycares do not have a high enough adult-child ratio for the kids to get the attention they need and deserve.

And if the parents put the kid in daycare, they are more likely to put the child in a full time preschool. And once they reach elementary school, they will be more likely to spend significant amounts of time in the after-school programs. The parents will also probably sign the kid up for every sport imaginable because by this time they have no idea how to raise their own child.

I can't tell you how many times I have had to deal with kids raised like this. They behave as if raised by wolves. And before someone says "I did ok in daycare" I must remind you that times are different now. Teachers have to spend a whole lot of time teaching children how to interact socially and how to resolve conflicts because they are not being taught this at home. Or more acurately they are not at home long enough to pick up anything of value from the parents. And as a teacher, when I would try to talk to the parents about little Johnny and the knife he brought to school, I was told I must be mistaken becuase they "knew" their little Johnny wouldn't do that. Drove me nuts because I knew they didn't know their child at all.

Too many kids are at loose ends today, and if you don't believe me go spend some time in a classroom and watch how kids behave today. You will not believe how things have changed.

I took my daughter to mommy-and-me classes, and baby dance for socialization and she loved it. She went to part-time preschool and thrived. She is now in kindergarten and is doing very well. But she still spends most of her day with me. As her class days get longer I will volunteer to be in her classroom so she knows I care. My daughter is a very well adjusted child and I know daycare wouldn't have done her justice.

That said. I wouldn't call any woman who chooses to work a "dumb bitch." It isn't for me to judge someone else's choices. But I have had enough experience to form my own biases. I do think as the current daycare generation gets older, we're going to see more and more the value of stay-at-home parenting.

"I would try to talk to the parents about little Johnny and the knife he brought to school"

It's alway Johnny........that pesky little brat!

Some aspects of the bay area are truly great, but I am glad to have found a forum where people can see through the hype.

The "positive intangibles" of the Bay Area:

1. Weather - this is very difficult to replace.
2. Restaurants - not many other places has the same diversity and quality. Las Vegas is also very good, but super expensive. New York has excellent food, but housing is even more expensive.

Vancouver, BC has both. But you need to bring your own job (B. Y. O. J.)

Another thing about these daycares is the children that they have aren't all from the nice families you think they are. I used to date someone who ran a daycare....She had some kids from the Department of Social Services that were from broken homes. Some of these kids were taken from their Mothers because the Mother was arrested for Crack or Prostitution. She did not like to watch some of these kids (because they were troublesome), but she didn't have a choice. When there is a shortage of daycare for these types in the area that they lived in, she would get stuck with them even though they weren't from her area. I have seen some of these kids.....some of them I wouldn't want my kid around. Children are influenced from the environment they are subjected to....just another thing to consider when having your kids spend 5 days a week in daycare.

SQT,
I think you kick ass too, and I enjoy your posts. Especially the variety of housing tales you bring in from friends, relatives, and your own experience.

It would have been nice to have lots more time with both my parents, but that wasn’t in the plans. Being dropped off at preschool was certainly preferable to being left at the fire station in a cardboard box!

Why thank you!
I can relate to what you're saying. My mom was a single mom and had no choice but to work. Fortunately my grandparents were very present in our lives so we didn't have to spend time in daycare (which my mom wouldn't have been able to afford anyway). There really wasn't a father figure in our lives until my mom remarried. So you can imagine the stresses of raising 4 kids by herself. I have nothing but respect for my mom because she really tried to be there for us as much as she could in very difficult circumstances.

I count my blessings every day that I can choose to stay at home. The divorce rate in this country takes a lot of options away from people. The only time I feel that people do a disservice to their kids is if they can spend more time with the kids and choose not to.

Thanks for reminding me of anoher “intangible” that makes it a tough decision to leave the state: grandparents!

Now to convince one set of parents to cash out and move where we are going, or to form a national grandparent exchange program.

Grandparents! The intagible to beat all intangibles. We are blessed beyond words to have my parents and my husband's parents within 30 minutes driving distance. That keeps me in the state more than anything else. Ahhhhhhh, the babysitting.