A question for you "gender traditionalist" women

[Anonymous]

OK, maybe it isn't easy to find. My deal is:

I am very good at my job
I have zero ambition
I don't care about pleasing the boss/fitting in with the corporate culture.

This combination makes it easy for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OK, maybe it isn't easy to find. My deal is:

I am very good at my job
I have zero ambition
I don't care about pleasing the boss/fitting in with the corporate culture.

This combination makes it easy for me.

Easy for you to do what? Stay in your current job forever?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem with your thinking is that you are assuming that everyone involved in your husband's work situation has kids. I was a childless working adult for almost twenty years and I did get tired of parents (both men and women) taking the attitude (and it was usually only a small subset that did this) that their family needs trump everyone else's. Sure sometimes we all need personal time and flexibility, but why should I have to work until 7 every night so that you can get home to have dinner with your kids or make a daycare pick up. I don't care if you want to leave early and then work those extra three hours in the evening, nut I don't want to do 60 hours of work to your 40 if we are going to be paid the same salary. Everybody makes their own choices, but you can't make other people responsible for your choices. If your husband is routinely leaving early because of sick kids, he should also be routinely staying late to pull his weight.

Furthermore, I just have to say that one of the many problems with YOUR thinking is that work can only be done in the office. It's the 21st century, dude, and we have this amazing advancement called technology that allows me to do my job anywhere.

I'm not thinking that work can only be done in the office and I said that one solution is that her husband can work at home to make up the time. To the PP who said that it is about eager beavers. It sometimes isn't. If there is 100 hours of work a week to be done by two people, then why isn't it reasonable for each person to be expected to do 50 hours regardless of their other obligations? I don't know what fields you all work in, but I have had professional jobs in several related fields and none of them have had a strict 40 hour a week limit. There is always bleed over work when you are a professional who earns a salary and doesn't get paid by the hour. My problem with the OP is that she seems to think that the problem in the workforce is men with SAHWs who have children. The problem is much bigger than that, especially since many people in the work don't have spouses or children. I do think that we work too much in this country. However, if you take a job that has X about of responsibility, you have to be prepared to do X amount of work. Your other choices are your choices.

Then you are obviously assuming that parents who request time off to take care of a sick child or the like aren't actually doing this. And you'd be wrong. So are you just pissed that they are not chained to the office and you are? Or what? Because if you are okay with people making up work at home, and they are in fact doing this, then your beef is. . . . .what, exactly?

Thanks, BTW, for being part of the problem I was pointing out. Should the parents in your office make you feel like an ass when you request time off to take care of a dying parent, or get treatment for cancer, or whatever life throws at you?

The issue is about all workers needing flexibility to take care of the things they need to take care of in their lives. The problem with the OP's framing of the issue is that she is making it about pitting one set of parents against another set of differently situated parents. When parents make these kind of arguments - how parents need to be cut some slack so they can take care of their kids - they are actually undermining the effort for making the work culture more balanced in this country because they are alienating a huge part of the workforce who might get behind work/life balance efforts but are not interested in supporting a system that safeguards only the rights and needs of working parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem with your thinking is that you are assuming that everyone involved in your husband's work situation has kids. I was a childless working adult for almost twenty years and I did get tired of parents (both men and women) taking the attitude (and it was usually only a small subset that did this) that their family needs trump everyone else's. Sure sometimes we all need personal time and flexibility, but why should I have to work until 7 every night so that you can get home to have dinner with your kids or make a daycare pick up. I don't care if you want to leave early and then work those extra three hours in the evening, nut I don't want to do 60 hours of work to your 40 if we are going to be paid the same salary. Everybody makes their own choices, but you can't make other people responsible for your choices. If your husband is routinely leaving early because of sick kids, he should also be routinely staying late to pull his weight.

Furthermore, I just have to say that one of the many problems with YOUR thinking is that work can only be done in the office. It's the 21st century, dude, and we have this amazing advancement called technology that allows me to do my job anywhere.

I'm not thinking that work can only be done in the office and I said that one solution is that her husband can work at home to make up the time. To the PP who said that it is about eager beavers. It sometimes isn't. If there is 100 hours of work a week to be done by two people, then why isn't it reasonable for each person to be expected to do 50 hours regardless of their other obligations? I don't know what fields you all work in, but I have had professional jobs in several related fields and none of them have had a strict 40 hour a week limit. There is always bleed over work when you are a professional who earns a salary and doesn't get paid by the hour. My problem with the OP is that she seems to think that the problem in the workforce is men with SAHWs who have children. The problem is much bigger than that, especially since many people in the work don't have spouses or children. I do think that we work too much in this country. However, if you take a job that has X about of responsibility, you have to be prepared to do X amount of work. Your other choices are your choices.

Then you are obviously assuming that parents who request time off to take care of a sick child or the like aren't actually doing this. And you'd be wrong. So are you just pissed that they are not chained to the office and you are? Or what? Because if you are okay with people making up work at home, and they are in fact doing this, then your beef is. . . . .what, exactly?

Thanks, BTW, for being part of the problem I was pointing out. Should the parents in your office make you feel like an ass when you request time off to take care of a dying parent, or get treatment for cancer, or whatever life throws at you?

The issue is about all workers needing flexibility to take care of the things they need to take care of in their lives. The problem with the OP's framing of the issue is that she is making it about pitting one set of parents against another set of differently situated parents. When parents make these kind of arguments - how parents need to be cut some slack so they can take care of their kids - they are actually undermining the effort for making the work culture more balanced in this country because they are alienating a huge part of the workforce who might get behind work/life balance efforts but are not interested in supporting a system that safeguards only the rights and needs of working parents.

I am OP and WTF? I had a question in my original post, posed to a specific set of people that didn't include you, and now you are in a pissing contest b/c I didn't frame the debate the way you thought I should?

I agree that all workers need flexibility. I've state that several times here. Inherent in my original premise was that fathers actually have their own set of challenges with achieving flexibility and work-life balance, and that the fact of it and the causes of it are largely ignored. Yes, I made an assumption and I do believe that traditional gender attitudes that are entrenched in our culture are a part of that. And yes, I was goading the self-righteous SAHM's. I fail to see how my goading SAHM's and discussing the issue of work-life balance for parents is alienating to the childless, but if you need to believe that, go for it. You were the one who brought this subject into the debate, and in a completely smartass and martyred way. Nowhere did I ever say that the childless should just STFU and pick up our so-called slack. Nowhere did I suggest that people without children do not deserve the same flexibility That was YOUR false assumption and your false premise. I called you out on the inconsistencies of your arguments and now you are engaging in a pissing contest. YOU have made this a parents vs. the childless debate, not me. If you want to bitch, take it elsewhere. I can't for the life of me figure out why you are up on this soapbox in this particular thread, or why you are attributing points to me that I never made. You are arguing with the air, pal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I do agree that a gender traditionalist wife and mom sort of puts her DH in a box if he wants to be more flexible, share the income-earning, and share the time with the kids:

Wife: "No, no, really, honey, I got it, you just go to work. I'll do everythign else."

DH: "Umm, but I want to see the kids more than just late at night and on weekends? Can I chaperone some field trips? Maybe we can go 1/2 and 1/2?"

Wife: "NO! I don't want to work outside the home! You just go to work and stay there until I tell you it's time to come home for your hot dinner!"

DH: (Sad) "Oh. . okay. . ."

I just spit my coffee out laughing. Come on, no dad or mom is every going to have that conversation. I don't care whether you work our of the home or one parent stays at home. No one is every angling for more kid care or field trip duty time. This doesn't mean that parents don't want to spend time with kids or do things but the reality is that most parents feel overwhelmed with the amount of kid, work, and housework that they already are doing.

I have to disagree with this. I think that this dynamic prevails in some situations. What I am about to say is inflammatory, but I believe it happens in some families some of the time. SAHM develops the parenting aspect of her identity and loses the professional ambition aspect. Because of other factors, perhaps she becomes even more "mom" and less "friend," "wife," etc. When WOHD tries to take responsibility at home, SAHM protects her identity by insisting she is the best or only person to take responsibility at home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I do agree that a gender traditionalist wife and mom sort of puts her DH in a box if he wants to be more flexible, share the income-earning, and share the time with the kids:

Wife: "No, no, really, honey, I got it, you just go to work. I'll do everythign else."

DH: "Umm, but I want to see the kids more than just late at night and on weekends? Can I chaperone some field trips? Maybe we can go 1/2 and 1/2?"

Wife: "NO! I don't want to work outside the home! You just go to work and stay there until I tell you it's time to come home for your hot dinner!"

DH: (Sad) "Oh. . okay. . ."

I just spit my coffee out laughing. Come on, no dad or mom is every going to have that conversation. I don't care whether you work our of the home or one parent stays at home. No one is every angling for more kid care or field trip duty time. This doesn't mean that parents don't want to spend time with kids or do things but the reality is that most parents feel overwhelmed with the amount of kid, work, and housework that they already are doing.

I have to disagree with this. I think that this dynamic prevails in some situations. What I am about to say is inflammatory, but I believe it happens in some families some of the time. SAHM develops the parenting aspect of her identity and loses the professional ambition aspect. Because of other factors, perhaps she becomes even more "mom" and less "friend," "wife," etc. When WOHD tries to take responsibility at home, SAHM protects her identity by insisting she is the best or only person to take responsibility at home.

I'm sure you're right that does happen in some homes with some SAHM's. But let's be honest it isn't just SAHM's that sometimes treat dad's like they don't know what they're doing around the house and with the kids. And it isn't just mom's either...many men are content to let the world believe that while they seem to manage to do some incredible job they can't manage to cook dinner or clean a toilet or dress a little kid.

[Anonymous]

OP, what in the world got you so spun up today?

You have so many other rational posters on this thread (including the single/childless worker) but you don't seem like you want a rational discussion.

You are just stirring the pot and picking a fight with no purpose whatsoever.

It is Friday night, pop open a bottle of wine and quit being so resentful towards others for their life choices.

[Anonymous]

Seriously...OP seems soooo angry...