Pre-Teen is resentful of how much I work

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you PP who described the path of big law to SAHM to returning to work with lop-sided incomes. My experience to a tee. And I am soooo happy working 20-30 hours a week and being the "default parent." DH is present and engaged but as PPs post makes clear, getting all the chores done during the week enables DH to parent and engage with family when he's not working.

My kids are teens/preteens now. I know A LOT of families. There are many other models that work for others. I really can't understand the poster who thinks he/she has stumbled on to "the answer." Do you not get out much? Do you not know other families and see and respect that their families work for them?. Perhaps you're just a "know it all." I find it baffling.

We don't know which PP you're referring to unless you quote their post in yours.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:SAH moms get bashed on DCUM all the time for being lazy, unmotivated, or worse. The reality is often much different.

Imagine that you met your spouse in grad school when you were both young and ambitious. You fell in love, got married, and decided to take the next step and have a family after a few years on the job. Baby arrives and Mom is instantly Mommy-tracked by her bosses. Dad's career takes off and he feels pressure to work more. Travels more, takes on more responsibility at work, and income continues to rise. Moms career gets stalled because she can't travel as much or work til 10 pm. Baby #2 arrives and Mom SAH because she makes a fraction of spouse and DH is working all the time. Add in taking care of aging parents. Life happens, and not always as we planned.

Allowing this model to continue is terrible for both the future of our sons and daughters.

Men need to raise their kids and stop using work as an excuse.

I think that's easy to say, but sometimes harder to put into practice. My situation pretty closely tracked what PP laid out, except that I was the big law associate who was very openly being groomed to make partner in a couple of years while my husband was struggling to find a place professionally. After baby #1, I was very explicitly mommy tracked no matter how hard I worked, while DH finally found a firm that looked promising. We were killing ourselves working, he started making headway while I continued to stall, and when baby #2 was on the way I looked at our lives and realized it wasn't worth killing myself for something that wasn't going to happen and that it would be better for everyone if I gave up, stayed home with the kids and supported DH's career instead. I don't think that's a decision I ever would have made if my career had continued on its pre-baby trajectory, it was directly the result of pretty blatant discrimination at work. Sure, we could have decided that DH would be the one to step back and I'd keep beating my head against a brick wall in the name of gender equality, but neither of us would have been all that happy.

It's not about gender equality at work, it's about your children having 2 parents at home.

You chose 1 huge income instead of 2 reasonable incomes that accommodate your children having 2 parents.

Again, things that are easy to say from the cheap seats. We got into those careers before kids were even an idea for us, and we didn't have a realistic understanding of what it would take to balance those careers and kids at the time. By the time reality hit us, we were in the thick of it and basically took the clearest route to sanity, which was for me to quit and DH to keep working. Trying to figure out two simultaneous career changes (that probably would have required a lot of extra work time on their own to make the transition) when no one was sleeping enough and we were stressed to the hilt just wasn't happening. Or smart.

Since then I've gone back to work, I run my own business from our home that lets me control my own schedule and be available to my kids when they're not in school (but I still don't do 7 pm Target runs). Now that he is a mid-level partner, DH has been able to reclaim some control over his professional schedule and has made adjustments so that he gets meaningful time with our kids every day. He puts the scout meetings and soccer games in his calendar and schedules work around them as best he can so he's there most of the time (and when he can't, I make sure I'm there). We have 1 big income, one significantly smaller income, and kids who know they can count on us because we've made it a priority and structured our lives around making sure they don't get the short end of our choices.

Your choices were exactly that choices. Your H chose to miss a huge chunk of his kids life for money, it was a choice nothing that was put upon you. I am glad he is finally engaging in his kids life, kids should have 2 parents when there are actually 2 parents.

You can color code it any way you want but you children missed out on a bond with their father for parts of their life. Nice to see he is making up for it.

You are reading a lot into my posts that isn't there. My DH has always been engaged, and they didn't miss out on a bond with their father for parts of their life. Even during the periods when he had less control over his schedule and less time at home during the week, I viewed part of my responsibility as SAHM as getting all of the household work and errands out of the way during the week so that when he was home with us, we were all present as a family and not distracted by yard maintenance or trips to Target. Through this whole discussion, I've never said that OP's kids weren't bonded to her and their dad, that's a separate issue from whether the kids have an adult who's present and engaged at any point during the week. We don't always get it right (no parent does), but we make a conscious effort to pay attention to what's happening in our household and to make changes when we realize things are off balance.

You are doing a lot of back peddling here. Your post was all about ambition and your H working long hours and traveling a lot, now you are trying to paint a different picture to feel better.

Here is the deal, tons of SAH moms have H that are engaged/don't travel/are home at 5. This is not a SAH/WOH issue.

Your issue is that your H decided to take a high pressure job with lots of travel and he is not around to raise his kids. He visits and that is nice, but that is not a good model going forward for most people, men/women/children.

Where did I back pedal? You are writing a fantasy about my life that simply isn't grounded in what I wrote. I'm very sorry for whatever's going on in your own life that's leading you to want to dump all over mine, but that's yours to deal with, not mine.

You posts state...

Dad's career takes off and he feels pressure to work more. Travels more, takes on more responsibility at work
DH is working all the time
By the time reality hit us, we were in the thick of it
no one was sleeping enough

You chose to keep your H on a path of travel, no sleep, more responsibility and working on the time.

The trade off was that you raised the kids alone and he financially supports that. That is your decision. Not something that just happened to you. It's fine, 1% of people take that path. The rest of us want to see our kids, both parents.

The bolded parts are not from one of my posts; I specifically distinguished myself from that poster when I first responded. When I said my experience tracked what that person who posted, I was referring to the broader idea of starting out with both people ambitious, mom's career getting mommy-tracked and eventually sidelined while husband's career took off. All of this was written in response to that poster's initial premise, which is that SAHMs are not all lazy and unmotivated. You took it in a different direction after my first post and I responded to you, but that doesn't change the context in which I first engaged in the discussion.

Contextual reading. It helps.

Your H and the OP work the same schedule. It does not matter their gender.

But you say OP is not engaged with her kids enough, then you say your H is totally engaged with his kids.

You can't have it both ways.

Either

OP is fine, she has the same schedule as your ambitious H and they are both totally engaged with their kids

or

OP and your H both need to scale back their work and engage in their children's lives.

Not the PP, but again and again you keep missing the point. Try reading slowly. It helps.

In OP's situation, both parents work extremely long hours, travel, etc. Neither parent sees much of the kids. Bad situation. Period.

In PP's case, the husband used to work long hours and traveled, but now that he's in a more senior position, he has much more flexibility and can be home earlier, participate in their activities, etc. But the biggest point of all that you have SERIOUSLY MISSED is this: the PP is a SAHP. There is a parent available to their kids. She is that parent. So not only is she spending lots of time with the kids, but she's able to get things done by the time her husband comes home so that HE can ALSO spend time with them.

What about this are you not getting? I think you just want to argue because you're envious.

Read slowly so you can understand.

Her children for a large majority of their life were raised by a single parent with an absentee dad. Just because he is working does not excuse that for years he was absent from their lives.

It is a bad model for raising kids. I would not model it. Stop using it as an example of how it should be done.

Stop acting like it is the golden standard. It is a horrible example of parenting.

Sorry, but your "golden standard" of having both parents work and NEITHER see their child much or at all, is truly the horrible example of parenting. But you do you.

Of course there is the option that one person SAH and the father/mother has a job where he/she is home at 5 (which is what most SAH families have).
or both parents work and they are both home at 4 or 5 and they have a flexible work place so they can volunteer (which is what most people have).

This world where you are willing to be a single parent for more and more and more material goods is a bad model.

You are 1%ers which means the rest of the 99% have figured out how to not miss our childrens' lives. This is not a SAH/WOH parent war. Most SAH/WOH parents see their kids.

What on earth are you talking about? Exactly who, in the PP's scenario (bolded), is missing out on their kids' lives? No one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP I haven't read all the replies but I want to say this to you: Time alone in the car with your DD is a godsend. I've got 12 y.o. and 14 y.o. DDs, and there is something about the car (with just ONE of them in it--just you and her) that brings out all sorts of bonding and chatter. It might be that you are both parallel-facing and "doing something" so it makes it safe for a kid to talk/confide/bond.

I'm a former attorney so I get where you are coming from but I have to tell you, OP, your life sounds seriously out of balance. Attorney-work is like a sponge; it sucks you dry and you'll never give enough. As a PP said, you will look up and your DD will be gone to college. Please get the f in the car with her and go buy poster board.

THIS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^^^ nobody goes to the store anymore for supplies.

Why are so many people saying 1 parent is better than 2 parents raising a child.

What planet are you on?

Umm... exactly who has said that? I've read posts from PPs saying both parents need to be engaged and available. Some PPs have pointed out that having a SAHP enables that parent to not only be engaged and available all day, but also gets errands and chores out of the way so that when the WOHP gets home, s/he only has to sit down and relax with the kids. See? Both parents engaged and available. No one is advocating that the WOHP work until all hours and never see their kids. Having a SAHP allows *both* parents to focus on their kids in the evenings and on weekends. This is not hard to understand.

[Anonymous]

Work less, spend more time with your kids. The people who chose their careers over their children (i.e., most of the angry posters on DCUM) won't be there for you when your kids want nothing to do with you as adults; they weren't there for their kids either, and admitting they made the wrong decision would destroy them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^^^ nobody goes to the store anymore for supplies.

Why are so many people saying 1 parent is better than 2 parents raising a child.

What planet are you on?

Umm... exactly who has said that? I've read posts from PPs saying both parents need to be engaged and available. Some PPs have pointed out that having a SAHP enables that parent to not only be engaged and available all day, but also gets errands and chores out of the way so that when the WOHP gets home, s/he only has to sit down and relax with the kids. See? Both parents engaged and available. No one is advocating that the WOHP work until all hours and never see their kids. Having a SAHP allows *both* parents to focus on their kids in the evenings and on weekends. This is not hard to understand.

No ... the PP bemoaned being mommy tracked and since her H career took off it made more sense for her to quit and for him to continue to tak promotions. Eventually, he worked late hours, traveled all the time and was never home.

She said that this was the best model for families.

I just said that was not a good model. One person working all the time and the other raising the kids alone.

Then the PP realized how horrible her home life sounded so she said... now after missing his kids life for a few years he has seniority and is home with the kids nightly. Not sure if that is 1 hour or 5.

I just said that a model where 1 parent has to work late, weekends and travel tons is not a good model.

Do you think it is a good model for 1 parent to work so much they hardly see their kids? I don't.

I know tons of SAHM who have a H who is involved. Some men are not. I don't think that is a good model.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You've set your priorities, and she knows where she falls. I'm also curious to know where the other parent is in this, and why that parent can't do these things for her. After all, if you're working those kinds of hours, you sure as hell had better be sufficiently well compensated to afford a second car so that everyone else in the family isn't held hostage to your work schedule.

This. I hope you start to recognize this.

Scale back the job.
That's what 99% of us did.
If one of us has the "BIG" job (long hours, stress, consistent evening work, and/or travel) the other one scales back to a 9-5.
I live in NW DC and almost everyone I know (about 100 families) has this arrangement.

I don't think this is all that easy for people who aren't great networkers. And one of the terrors of moving to a new job is that many employers are trying to replace someone who was doing the jobs of two or three ordinary people. The new job may require longer hours than the old job and bring new job stress.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:SAH moms get bashed on DCUM all the time for being lazy, unmotivated, or worse. The reality is often much different.

Imagine that you met your spouse in grad school when you were both young and ambitious. You fell in love, got married, and decided to take the next step and have a family after a few years on the job. Baby arrives and Mom is instantly Mommy-tracked by her bosses. Dad's career takes off and he feels pressure to work more. Travels more, takes on more responsibility at work, and income continues to rise. Moms career gets stalled because she can't travel as much or work til 10 pm. Baby #2 arrives and Mom SAH because she makes a fraction of spouse and DH is working all the time. Add in taking care of aging parents. Life happens, and not always as we planned.

Allowing this model to continue is terrible for both the future of our sons and daughters.

Men need to raise their kids and stop using work as an excuse.

I think that's easy to say, but sometimes harder to put into practice. My situation pretty closely tracked what PP laid out, except that I was the big law associate who was very openly being groomed to make partner in a couple of years while my husband was struggling to find a place professionally. After baby #1, I was very explicitly mommy tracked no matter how hard I worked, while DH finally found a firm that looked promising. We were killing ourselves working, he started making headway while I continued to stall, and when baby #2 was on the way I looked at our lives and realized it wasn't worth killing myself for something that wasn't going to happen and that it would be better for everyone if I gave up, stayed home with the kids and supported DH's career instead. I don't think that's a decision I ever would have made if my career had continued on its pre-baby trajectory, it was directly the result of pretty blatant discrimination at work. Sure, we could have decided that DH would be the one to step back and I'd keep beating my head against a brick wall in the name of gender equality, but neither of us would have been all that happy.

It's not about gender equality at work, it's about your children having 2 parents at home.

You chose 1 huge income instead of 2 reasonable incomes that accommodate your children having 2 parents.

Again, things that are easy to say from the cheap seats. We got into those careers before kids were even an idea for us, and we didn't have a realistic understanding of what it would take to balance those careers and kids at the time. By the time reality hit us, we were in the thick of it and basically took the clearest route to sanity, which was for me to quit and DH to keep working. Trying to figure out two simultaneous career changes (that probably would have required a lot of extra work time on their own to make the transition) when no one was sleeping enough and we were stressed to the hilt just wasn't happening. Or smart.

Since then I've gone back to work, I run my own business from our home that lets me control my own schedule and be available to my kids when they're not in school (but I still don't do 7 pm Target runs). Now that he is a mid-level partner, DH has been able to reclaim some control over his professional schedule and has made adjustments so that he gets meaningful time with our kids every day. He puts the scout meetings and soccer games in his calendar and schedules work around them as best he can so he's there most of the time (and when he can't, I make sure I'm there). We have 1 big income, one significantly smaller income, and kids who know they can count on us because we've made it a priority and structured our lives around making sure they don't get the short end of our choices.

Your choices were exactly that choices. Your H chose to miss a huge chunk of his kids life for money, it was a choice nothing that was put upon you. I am glad he is finally engaging in his kids life, kids should have 2 parents when there are actually 2 parents.

You can color code it any way you want but you children missed out on a bond with their father for parts of their life. Nice to see he is making up for it.

You are reading a lot into my posts that isn't there. My DH has always been engaged, and they didn't miss out on a bond with their father for parts of their life. Even during the periods when he had less control over his schedule and less time at home during the week, I viewed part of my responsibility as SAHM as getting all of the household work and errands out of the way during the week so that when he was home with us, we were all present as a family and not distracted by yard maintenance or trips to Target. Through this whole discussion, I've never said that OP's kids weren't bonded to her and their dad, that's a separate issue from whether the kids have an adult who's present and engaged at any point during the week. We don't always get it right (no parent does), but we make a conscious effort to pay attention to what's happening in our household and to make changes when we realize things are off balance.

You are doing a lot of back peddling here. Your post was all about ambition and your H working long hours and traveling a lot, now you are trying to paint a different picture to feel better.

Here is the deal, tons of SAH moms have H that are engaged/don't travel/are home at 5. This is not a SAH/WOH issue.

Your issue is that your H decided to take a high pressure job with lots of travel and he is not around to raise his kids. He visits and that is nice, but that is not a good model going forward for most people, men/women/children.

Where did I back pedal? You are writing a fantasy about my life that simply isn't grounded in what I wrote. I'm very sorry for whatever's going on in your own life that's leading you to want to dump all over mine, but that's yours to deal with, not mine.

You posts state...

Dad's career takes off and he feels pressure to work more. Travels more, takes on more responsibility at work
DH is working all the time
By the time reality hit us, we were in the thick of it
no one was sleeping enough

You chose to keep your H on a path of travel, no sleep, more responsibility and working on the time.

The trade off was that you raised the kids alone and he financially supports that. That is your decision. Not something that just happened to you. It's fine, 1% of people take that path. The rest of us want to see our kids, both parents.

The bolded parts are not from one of my posts; I specifically distinguished myself from that poster when I first responded. When I said my experience tracked what that person who posted, I was referring to the broader idea of starting out with both people ambitious, mom's career getting mommy-tracked and eventually sidelined while husband's career took off. All of this was written in response to that poster's initial premise, which is that SAHMs are not all lazy and unmotivated. You took it in a different direction after my first post and I responded to you, but that doesn't change the context in which I first engaged in the discussion.

Contextual reading. It helps.

Your H and the OP work the same schedule. It does not matter their gender.

But you say OP is not engaged with her kids enough, then you say your H is totally engaged with his kids.

You can't have it both ways.

Either

OP is fine, she has the same schedule as your ambitious H and they are both totally engaged with their kids

or

OP and your H both need to scale back their work and engage in their children's lives.

Not the PP, but again and again you keep missing the point. Try reading slowly. It helps.

In OP's situation, both parents work extremely long hours, travel, etc. Neither parent sees much of the kids. Bad situation. Period.

In PP's case, the husband used to work long hours and traveled, but now that he's in a more senior position, he has much more flexibility and can be home earlier, participate in their activities, etc. But the biggest point of all that you have SERIOUSLY MISSED is this: the PP is a SAHP. There is a parent available to their kids. She is that parent. So not only is she spending lots of time with the kids, but she's able to get things done by the time her husband comes home so that HE can ALSO spend time with them.

What about this are you not getting? I think you just want to argue because you're envious.

Read slowly so you can understand.

Her children for a large majority of their life were raised by a single parent with an absentee dad. Just because he is working does not excuse that for years he was absent from their lives.

It is a bad model for raising kids. I would not model it. Stop using it as an example of how it should be done.

Stop acting like it is the golden standard. It is a horrible example of parenting.

Smugly and insufferably judging the lives of strangers based on a couple of paragraph's worth of information doesn't exactly set a good example either. DP here, who has been horrified by your responses to PP, btw. You have absolutely no idea what her husband's relationship with his children is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You've set your priorities, and she knows where she falls. I'm also curious to know where the other parent is in this, and why that parent can't do these things for her. After all, if you're working those kinds of hours, you sure as hell had better be sufficiently well compensated to afford a second car so that everyone else in the family isn't held hostage to your work schedule.

This. I hope you start to recognize this.

Scale back the job.
That's what 99% of us did.
If one of us has the "BIG" job (long hours, stress, consistent evening work, and/or travel) the other one scales back to a 9-5.
I live in NW DC and almost everyone I know (about 100 families) has this arrangement.

I don't think this is all that easy for people who aren't great networkers. And one of the terrors of moving to a new job is that many employers are trying to replace someone who was doing the jobs of two or three ordinary people. The new job may require longer hours than the old job and bring new job stress.

You can rationalize this all you want, but it simply comes down to this: are these parents going to do what is necessary to properly parent their child, or not?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SAH moms get bashed on DCUM all the time for being lazy, unmotivated, or worse. The reality is often much different.

Imagine that you met your spouse in grad school when you were both young and ambitious. You fell in love, got married, and decided to take the next step and have a family after a few years on the job. Baby arrives and Mom is instantly Mommy-tracked by her bosses. Dad's career takes off and he feels pressure to work more. Travels more, takes on more responsibility at work, and income continues to rise. Moms career gets stalled because she can't travel as much or work til 10 pm. Baby #2 arrives and Mom SAH because she makes a fraction of spouse and DH is working all the time. Add in taking care of aging parents. Life happens, and not always as we planned.

Allowing this model to continue is terrible for both the future of our sons and daughters.

Men need to raise their kids and stop using work as an excuse.

I think that's easy to say, but sometimes harder to put into practice. My situation pretty closely tracked what PP laid out, except that I was the big law associate who was very openly being groomed to make partner in a couple of years while my husband was struggling to find a place professionally. After baby #1, I was very explicitly mommy tracked no matter how hard I worked, while DH finally found a firm that looked promising. We were killing ourselves working, he started making headway while I continued to stall, and when baby #2 was on the way I looked at our lives and realized it wasn't worth killing myself for something that wasn't going to happen and that it would be better for everyone if I gave up, stayed home with the kids and supported DH's career instead. I don't think that's a decision I ever would have made if my career had continued on its pre-baby trajectory, it was directly the result of pretty blatant discrimination at work. Sure, we could have decided that DH would be the one to step back and I'd keep beating my head against a brick wall in the name of gender equality, but neither of us would have been all that happy.

It's not about gender equality at work, it's about your children having 2 parents at home.

You chose 1 huge income instead of 2 reasonable incomes that accommodate your children having 2 parents.

Again, things that are easy to say from the cheap seats. We got into those careers before kids were even an idea for us, and we didn't have a realistic understanding of what it would take to balance those careers and kids at the time. By the time reality hit us, we were in the thick of it and basically took the clearest route to sanity, which was for me to quit and DH to keep working. Trying to figure out two simultaneous career changes (that probably would have required a lot of extra work time on their own to make the transition) when no one was sleeping enough and we were stressed to the hilt just wasn't happening. Or smart.

Since then I've gone back to work, I run my own business from our home that lets me control my own schedule and be available to my kids when they're not in school (but I still don't do 7 pm Target runs). Now that he is a mid-level partner, DH has been able to reclaim some control over his professional schedule and has made adjustments so that he gets meaningful time with our kids every day. He puts the scout meetings and soccer games in his calendar and schedules work around them as best he can so he's there most of the time (and when he can't, I make sure I'm there). We have 1 big income, one significantly smaller income, and kids who know they can count on us because we've made it a priority and structured our lives around making sure they don't get the short end of our choices.

Your choices were exactly that choices. Your H chose to miss a huge chunk of his kids life for money, it was a choice nothing that was put upon you. I am glad he is finally engaging in his kids life, kids should have 2 parents when there are actually 2 parents.

You can color code it any way you want but you children missed out on a bond with their father for parts of their life. Nice to see he is making up for it.

You are reading a lot into my posts that isn't there. My DH has always been engaged, and they didn't miss out on a bond with their father for parts of their life. Even during the periods when he had less control over his schedule and less time at home during the week, I viewed part of my responsibility as SAHM as getting all of the household work and errands out of the way during the week so that when he was home with us, we were all present as a family and not distracted by yard maintenance or trips to Target. Through this whole discussion, I've never said that OP's kids weren't bonded to her and their dad, that's a separate issue from whether the kids have an adult who's present and engaged at any point during the week. We don't always get it right (no parent does), but we make a conscious effort to pay attention to what's happening in our household and to make changes when we realize things are off balance.

You are doing a lot of back peddling here. Your post was all about ambition and your H working long hours and traveling a lot, now you are trying to paint a different picture to feel better.

Here is the deal, tons of SAH moms have H that are engaged/don't travel/are home at 5. This is not a SAH/WOH issue.

Your issue is that your H decided to take a high pressure job with lots of travel and he is not around to raise his kids. He visits and that is nice, but that is not a good model going forward for most people, men/women/children.

Where did I back pedal? You are writing a fantasy about my life that simply isn't grounded in what I wrote. I'm very sorry for whatever's going on in your own life that's leading you to want to dump all over mine, but that's yours to deal with, not mine.

You posts state...

Dad's career takes off and he feels pressure to work more. Travels more, takes on more responsibility at work
DH is working all the time
By the time reality hit us, we were in the thick of it
no one was sleeping enough

You chose to keep your H on a path of travel, no sleep, more responsibility and working on the time.

The trade off was that you raised the kids alone and he financially supports that. That is your decision. Not something that just happened to you. It's fine, 1% of people take that path. The rest of us want to see our kids, both parents.

The bolded parts are not from one of my posts; I specifically distinguished myself from that poster when I first responded. When I said my experience tracked what that person who posted, I was referring to the broader idea of starting out with both people ambitious, mom's career getting mommy-tracked and eventually sidelined while husband's career took off. All of this was written in response to that poster's initial premise, which is that SAHMs are not all lazy and unmotivated. You took it in a different direction after my first post and I responded to you, but that doesn't change the context in which I first engaged in the discussion.

Contextual reading. It helps.

Your H and the OP work the same schedule. It does not matter their gender.

But you say OP is not engaged with her kids enough, then you say your H is totally engaged with his kids.

You can't have it both ways.

Either

OP is fine, she has the same schedule as your ambitious H and they are both totally engaged with their kids

or

OP and your H both need to scale back their work and engage in their children's lives.

Not the PP, but again and again you keep missing the point. Try reading slowly. It helps.

In OP's situation, both parents work extremely long hours, travel, etc. Neither parent sees much of the kids. Bad situation. Period.

In PP's case, the husband used to work long hours and traveled, but now that he's in a more senior position, he has much more flexibility and can be home earlier, participate in their activities, etc. But the biggest point of all that you have SERIOUSLY MISSED is this: the PP is a SAHP. There is a parent available to their kids. She is that parent. So not only is she spending lots of time with the kids, but she's able to get things done by the time her husband comes home so that HE can ALSO spend time with them.

What about this are you not getting? I think you just want to argue because you're envious.

Read slowly so you can understand.

Her children for a large majority of their life were raised by a single parent with an absentee dad. Just because he is working does not excuse that for years he was absent from their lives.

It is a bad model for raising kids. I would not model it. Stop using it as an example of how it should be done.

Stop acting like it is the golden standard. It is a horrible example of parenting.

Smugly and insufferably judging the lives of strangers based on a couple of paragraph's worth of information doesn't exactly set a good example either. DP here, who has been horrified by your responses to PP, btw. You have absolutely no idea what her husband's relationship with his children is.

+100

[Anonymous]

Scale back the job.
That's what 99% of us did.
If one of us has the "BIG" job (long hours, stress, consistent evening work, and/or travel) the other one scales back to a 9-5.
I live in NW DC and almost everyone I know (about 100 families) has this arrangement.

I think it is best if both scale back a little and everybody be fully engaged in the raising and development of their children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, all teens want things last minute. That doesn't mean they should/need to get their way. I've seen families where the teens only do activities if they can get themselves there ... no sports teams unless they bike, learn themselves about the city bus schedule .. etc. I know families where teens don't see one of the parents for months. It happens. All families are different. Kids are very resilient. Let your preteen express themselves, to a point, but you do not have to put up with disrespect.

Kids aren't that resilient, it is more often it takes a few years to see the damage. There are an awful lot of people in therapy or who should be in therapy due to their childhood and adolescence.

I know a young women who tried to kill herself in her early twenties and the source of her distress was not feeling loved or enough to her parents. Both had high powered careers and had little time for her. During adolescence she tried to e perfect and get their attention and approval. She looked like she was resilient but she wasn't. By college, she started to accept the reality that she would always be down the list of her parent's priorities and she ended up very depressed.

It is common for kids to smile and just truck on until at some point they can't and fall apart.

[Anonymous]

"My 12yr old DD(who is a night owl as well) gets very upset if she asks me at 7pm last min to run to target for poster board and I tell her I can't"

Ummm, I'm a SAHM and I'm not doing that nonsense either. She needs to learn to get her act together and think ahead. Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.

[Anonymous]

Wow, I'm shocked at all the comments which blame the mom for working. How the hell are they suppose to support 3 kids if they don't work and you have no right to judge how many kids they have. I feel like kids of this age and this "class" are a bit too entitled. When my child tells me they need something last minute I tell them no. Learn to plan ahead, I'm not your maid or your nanny. Even if I do have the time I refuse to do anything last minute and I don't like to buy them stuff even though I do tend to give in. I grew up poor and I never saw my mom because she worked constantly to put me through private school. I never questioned why she had to work or asked her for anything other than what was necessary.. and most times not even that. I knew we just didn't have the money. To be honest, my kids piss me off sometimes with everything that they have. They don't know how good they have it and they are not grateful when you give them everything they ask for.

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Anonymous wrote:SAH moms get bashed on DCUM all the time for being lazy, unmotivated, or worse. The reality is often much different.

Imagine that you met your spouse in grad school when you were both young and ambitious. You fell in love, got married, and decided to take the next step and have a family after a few years on the job. Baby arrives and Mom is instantly Mommy-tracked by her bosses. Dad's career takes off and he feels pressure to work more. Travels more, takes on more responsibility at work, and income continues to rise. Moms career gets stalled because she can't travel as much or work til 10 pm. Baby #2 arrives and Mom SAH because she makes a fraction of spouse and DH is working all the time. Add in taking care of aging parents. Life happens, and not always as we planned.

Allowing this model to continue is terrible for both the future of our sons and daughters.

Men need to raise their kids and stop using work as an excuse.

I think that's easy to say, but sometimes harder to put into practice. My situation pretty closely tracked what PP laid out, except that I was the big law associate who was very openly being groomed to make partner in a couple of years while my husband was struggling to find a place professionally. After baby #1, I was very explicitly mommy tracked no matter how hard I worked, while DH finally found a firm that looked promising. We were killing ourselves working, he started making headway while I continued to stall, and when baby #2 was on the way I looked at our lives and realized it wasn't worth killing myself for something that wasn't going to happen and that it would be better for everyone if I gave up, stayed home with the kids and supported DH's career instead. I don't think that's a decision I ever would have made if my career had continued on its pre-baby trajectory, it was directly the result of pretty blatant discrimination at work. Sure, we could have decided that DH would be the one to step back and I'd keep beating my head against a brick wall in the name of gender equality, but neither of us would have been all that happy.

It's not about gender equality at work, it's about your children having 2 parents at home.

You chose 1 huge income instead of 2 reasonable incomes that accommodate your children having 2 parents.

Again, things that are easy to say from the cheap seats. We got into those careers before kids were even an idea for us, and we didn't have a realistic understanding of what it would take to balance those careers and kids at the time. By the time reality hit us, we were in the thick of it and basically took the clearest route to sanity, which was for me to quit and DH to keep working. Trying to figure out two simultaneous career changes (that probably would have required a lot of extra work time on their own to make the transition) when no one was sleeping enough and we were stressed to the hilt just wasn't happening. Or smart.

Since then I've gone back to work, I run my own business from our home that lets me control my own schedule and be available to my kids when they're not in school (but I still don't do 7 pm Target runs). Now that he is a mid-level partner, DH has been able to reclaim some control over his professional schedule and has made adjustments so that he gets meaningful time with our kids every day. He puts the scout meetings and soccer games in his calendar and schedules work around them as best he can so he's there most of the time (and when he can't, I make sure I'm there). We have 1 big income, one significantly smaller income, and kids who know they can count on us because we've made it a priority and structured our lives around making sure they don't get the short end of our choices.

Your choices were exactly that choices. Your H chose to miss a huge chunk of his kids life for money, it was a choice nothing that was put upon you. I am glad he is finally engaging in his kids life, kids should have 2 parents when there are actually 2 parents.

You can color code it any way you want but you children missed out on a bond with their father for parts of their life. Nice to see he is making up for it.

You are reading a lot into my posts that isn't there. My DH has always been engaged, and they didn't miss out on a bond with their father for parts of their life. Even during the periods when he had less control over his schedule and less time at home during the week, I viewed part of my responsibility as SAHM as getting all of the household work and errands out of the way during the week so that when he was home with us, we were all present as a family and not distracted by yard maintenance or trips to Target. Through this whole discussion, I've never said that OP's kids weren't bonded to her and their dad, that's a separate issue from whether the kids have an adult who's present and engaged at any point during the week. We don't always get it right (no parent does), but we make a conscious effort to pay attention to what's happening in our household and to make changes when we realize things are off balance.

You are doing a lot of back peddling here. Your post was all about ambition and your H working long hours and traveling a lot, now you are trying to paint a different picture to feel better.

Here is the deal, tons of SAH moms have H that are engaged/don't travel/are home at 5. This is not a SAH/WOH issue.

Your issue is that your H decided to take a high pressure job with lots of travel and he is not around to raise his kids. He visits and that is nice, but that is not a good model going forward for most people, men/women/children.

Where did I back pedal? You are writing a fantasy about my life that simply isn't grounded in what I wrote. I'm very sorry for whatever's going on in your own life that's leading you to want to dump all over mine, but that's yours to deal with, not mine.

You posts state...

Dad's career takes off and he feels pressure to work more. Travels more, takes on more responsibility at work
DH is working all the time
By the time reality hit us, we were in the thick of it
no one was sleeping enough

You chose to keep your H on a path of travel, no sleep, more responsibility and working on the time.

The trade off was that you raised the kids alone and he financially supports that. That is your decision. Not something that just happened to you. It's fine, 1% of people take that path. The rest of us want to see our kids, both parents.

The bolded parts are not from one of my posts; I specifically distinguished myself from that poster when I first responded. When I said my experience tracked what that person who posted, I was referring to the broader idea of starting out with both people ambitious, mom's career getting mommy-tracked and eventually sidelined while husband's career took off. All of this was written in response to that poster's initial premise, which is that SAHMs are not all lazy and unmotivated. You took it in a different direction after my first post and I responded to you, but that doesn't change the context in which I first engaged in the discussion.

Contextual reading. It helps.

Your H and the OP work the same schedule. It does not matter their gender.

But you say OP is not engaged with her kids enough, then you say your H is totally engaged with his kids.

You can't have it both ways.

Either

OP is fine, she has the same schedule as your ambitious H and they are both totally engaged with their kids

or

OP and your H both need to scale back their work and engage in their children's lives.

Not the PP, but again and again you keep missing the point. Try reading slowly. It helps.

In OP's situation, both parents work extremely long hours, travel, etc. Neither parent sees much of the kids. Bad situation. Period.

In PP's case, the husband used to work long hours and traveled, but now that he's in a more senior position, he has much more flexibility and can be home earlier, participate in their activities, etc. But the biggest point of all that you have SERIOUSLY MISSED is this: the PP is a SAHP. There is a parent available to their kids. She is that parent. So not only is she spending lots of time with the kids, but she's able to get things done by the time her husband comes home so that HE can ALSO spend time with them.

What about this are you not getting? I think you just want to argue because you're envious.

Read slowly so you can understand.

Her children for a large majority of their life were raised by a single parent with an absentee dad. Just because he is working does not excuse that for years he was absent from their lives.

It is a bad model for raising kids. I would not model it. Stop using it as an example of how it should be done.

Stop acting like it is the golden standard. It is a horrible example of parenting.

Smugly and insufferably judging the lives of strangers based on a couple of paragraph's worth of information doesn't exactly set a good example either. DP here, who has been horrified by your responses to PP, btw. You have absolutely no idea what her husband's relationship with his children is.

At the moment, his relationship with his kids is that he's almost home from work, having picked up the kids' favorite take-out as a Friday treat. After dinner, we're having a family movie night.