Reply to Anyone else here struggle with your feelings about ppl who don’t work?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think that focusing on whether or not that SAHMs of school-aged kids are making a bad choice is the wrong way to think about OP’s issue.  It actually doesn’t matter. The issue is that OP is apparently having an outsized reaction to things that don’t impact her and that she can’t do anything about. People make terrible decisions all the time, and it’s important to notice when our reaction to those decisions are having a negative impact on our lives. Those reactions tell us about ourselves and might point to something in our life that we could actually change and make better.

I have had to work through this with a therapist. I used to ruminate in the shower about the way that some husbands treated their wives and this sort of got me down, even though my husband is amazing! And I didnt have this intense reaction to hearing about things that were objectively worse. Talking with my therapist, I realized that when I heard about men treating their wives badly, it subconsciously reminded me of my mom complaining of my dad treating her badly and sort of got me in that same headspace. I think I was ultimately a little unsure about my husband’s love and commitment for me. I worked on how to feel more secure in my marriage and on accepting the fact that life is always uncertain. Just thinking “well maybe these wives are exaggerating how bad it was” wouldn’t have helped. [/quote]

Op - this is maybe it. 
I think I was brought up and educated to believe that everyone should be contributing to society and that doing ‘nothing’ all day is inherently ‘less than’. So I have worked SO hard to fulfil that ‘destiny’ - and done work in politics and ngos and news and on campaigns etc. but I’m also tired so it’s like my trigger is my exhaustion and stress fighting with what my parents and very expensive private school raised me to think was ‘correct’ [/quote]

I’m one of the PPs, and newly SAH with school age kids. This was it for me, too. My parents revere and respect work and really imparted that to us. I get contributing to society. I worked almost continuously from 15-40 and also had some kids! You have contributed. You are still contributing if you’re bringing up kids and I bet you have decades left of useful healthy life in front of you and will do more work for the benefit of society, however you define it. It’s ok to be at leisure, too. If you think about it, so much human endeavor is about making life easier, more efficient, and more comfortable for people so that in theory we CAN enjoy leisure. But for some reason, instead of taking advantage of all those efficiencies and labor saving technology, we make ourselves work more.

You don’t owe society or capitalism your labor. Nothing wrong with taking some time to enjoy if you can afford it (which all that working and saving allowed me to do).[/quote]

Capitalism?  No.  Society?  Yes.  O[b]therwise you're just a parasite.[/b]  [/quote]

Arbeit macht frei, baby.
[/quote]

Idk if the sign they had on concentration camps next to the word ‘baby’ is achieving what you want it to here [/quote]

But what PP is alluding to is accurate: the theory that you're a parasite if you're not contributing with your labor was the justification for putting disabled people in camps. Obviously nobody is suggesting that we should do something like that, but the idea that people who don't labor are threats to society definitely has a chokehold on us. [/quote]

I'm the PP who used the term parasite.  I should have been more specific.

IMO, if you're able to contribute and choose not to - consistently over the course of your life - you're a parasite.  This obviously doesn't apply to those can't contribute, those who have but have retired, or those who need to take a pause during their top productivity years for whatever reason.

And, again, "contributing" does not necessarily mean having a job.  Maybe you're supporting others in need, maybe you're volunteering, maybe you're creating art for broad consumption rather than for profit, maybe you're planting trees... the possibilities are endless.  Just something that contributes rather than sitting there and consuming resources without any useful output.[/quote]

Yeah that’s still really bad, thinking of people in terms of their “useful outputs” and calling them parasites if they don’t meet your standards. That’s dehumanizing.  Maybe just say work and community and helping others are good things in and of themselves? [/quote]

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