Reply to S/O maximum number of kids to ensure dual working couple

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Amy Coney Barrett and her husband both work with 7 kids.[/quote]

Didn't they have a family member living with them to help with the kids?   Someone like that can make a huge difference.  It's basically a SAHP who's not actually a parent. [/quote]

I actually hate examples like her. She always talks with pride about balancing kids and a career but it’s all a lie. They have an aunt come daily to “help” with the kids. It sounds more like the aunt functions as a SAHM for Amy abd her husband. I’ve seen this work with live-in grandparents too.

People like Amy are basically relying on another person’s unpaid labor and further undervaluing that labor by pretending they can do it all. [/quote]

Yup.

And it particularly annoys me when you point out that having family support like this obviously helps make it all work, and people will dismiss it out of hand, like "Oh, we don't rely on my mom that much, just a couple afternoons a week and when we have date nights." Which, one, is a TON of help (equivalent to several hundred dollars worth of childcare per week)l. And two, it's never just that. It's also having someone who can spend the night with the kids in an emergency. It's having a childcare option for whom you never have to worry about a background check or whether your kid is going to freak out about them. It's having wiggle room in everything from school drop off to having someone around to watch your older kid when you go into labor to having someone to call if someone is running a fever and you are debating the ER. People dismiss this kind of help as minimal because it makes them feel good about themselves. But for those of us who don't have it, it's like a cheat code. Sure, we're both "working parents" but our circumstances are not really even comparable. It's like pretending you and someone who makes half your salary are in roughly equivalent economic situations. You're not.[/quote]
I know that it's just piling on at this point, but ACB bugs me to no end about her parenting. What particularly irked me was this line: "While I am a judge, I’m better known back home as a room parent, carpool driver and birthday party planner." Um, either you i) own a time machine (in which case, why are you a judge?), ii) are a terrible judge and spend no time doing your job, or iii) are not as involved of a parent with your 7 kids are you want people to think. There are a limited number of hours in a day, and writing opinions takes time...as does driving a carpool and being a room parent. Especially for 7 kids!

If you're going to have a lot of kids and rely on family for help, at least own it. That's why I always respected the PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi. At least she was honest about the sacrifices: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/07/why-pepsico-ceo-indra-k-nooyi-cant-have-it-all/373750/
[quote]I don't think women can have it all. I just don't think so. We pretend we have it all. We pretend we can have it all. My husband and I have been married for 34 years. And we have two daughters. And every day you have to make a decision about whether you are going to be a wife or a mother, in fact many times during the day you have to make those decisions. And you have to co-opt a lot of people to help you. We co-opted our families to help us. We plan our lives meticulously so we can be decent parents. But if you ask our daughters, I'm not sure they will say that I've been a good mom. I'm not sure. And I try all kinds of coping mechanisms.[/quote][/quote]

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