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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]Why would an immigrant making minimum wage have 3 kids?  That is poor family planning[/b][i], not something we should turn her into a martyr for.

At the end of the day, there are only 24 hours in a day.  Your value is whatever you choose to do during those 24 hours.  Also, keep in mind that once children are school-aged, they are gone from the house generally at least 40 hours per week.  So if you want to do a purely mathmatical calculation of the value of a SAHM, I would have to say the value is much less once your kids are in school.

Most parents who work full time also do grocery shopping, laundry, house cleaning etc.  If you outsource then your value is your salary minus what you pay to outsource.  If you SAH and do those things, then you are worth the value of a cleaning service and someone to run errands.  I think that is a stupid way to look at it though because most parents add much more than financial value to their families regardless of whether they do it in the home or by earning a paycheck.  Stop with the pissing contest ladies.  [/quote]

Previous poster, I am sure that you did not intend to be condescending, but your post comes across that way.  Perhaps, living in this privileged area, people sometimes forget about the everyday trials of so many people living and laboring in most of the rest of the world.

An immigrant mother might have started out her family years in the relative safety of her own town, surrounded and supported by extended family and lifelong friends.  But then disease, or famine, or extreme poverty, or war, or political turmoil, or criminal violence made it impossible to continue to live safely there, just as her children were old enough to be recruited by gangs, or used to fight wars.  And so she left to find a better life for her family.

To criticize people in these circumstances for "poor family planning" reflects your own privileged and sheltered, even provincial world view.  If the economy caused your job to be eliminated, or your spouse's salary to be cut, such that you could no longer afford everything you currently provide for your family -- would you appreciate someone telling you that you planned your family poorly by having more children than you could, under the new circumstances, afford?   No, you would not.  Try walking in someone else's shoes before you criticize their "family planning".

In any case, this is just to say that there is always someone who works just as hard as you, but who has it so much harder.  The SAHMs say they have it so hard, and the WOHMs say they have it even harder.  But the WOHM parent, without the means to "outsource" the help for their children, who is working two or more jobs for minimum pay, probably has everyone beat in this contest. [/quote]

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