Am I a chauvinist pig?

[Charlotte1776]

I think teenager need their parents more than infants.

CM

If you know anything about child development and child psychology, you would know that is completely and utterly wrong. The year from birth to around the age of 5 is the single most critical stage of emotional, physical, and social development of a person’s entire life. Without proper nurturing during that time, a person can become severely damaged. You should read about orphans coming out of orphanages in places like Russia and Romania a couple decades ago. They were not given the love and attention children need. Babies were fed and clothed but they were left in cribs all day, and even just a few months of that left them pyschologically damaged for the rest of their lives. Mothers in the US often drop their kids off at daycare starting when they are 6 weeks old. Many, but not all, daycares in the US are not far off from those orphanages. Although I have a degree in elementary education, I still had to visit many daycares and highschools to have an understanding of where my students will come from and where they will go after their time with me. Let me tell you, I decided right then and there no child of mine would ever go to a daycare after what I saw. It just broke my heart. The tales my friends who work at daycares tell me only reinforced it. Don’t get me wrong, I know many women don’t have a choice but to send their children to daycares, but I don’t think anyone who knows the facts could honestly say that’s ideal.

 

[LilyM]

People often forget that the American worker in the 1950s made, on average, four times what his/her closest foreign counterpart made

And that the average house in the 50s cost 4 times the average worker’s yearly salary, whereas now it’s more like 8 times, if not more.

So wages well and truly aren’t keeping up with cost of living, considering that housing is a necessity of life, and both the cost of the average house (which is no more a super-large luxe mansion than it ever was) and average rent have gone up way out of proportion.

 

[Saint_wannabe]

Greetings fellow Christians!

I work for a company that is 80% women and in a building that is full of young, professional women. At times in the elevator and in the office, I overhear discussions between women on day-care issues, both positive and negative. I can’t help but think to myself - shouldn’t you be at home raising your young children?

Now I know that sounds judgemental, and ofcourse, I know that every person’s situation is different (I believe single mom’s are more likely to NEED day care services). But is it wrong for me to believe that, in general, married women, who are not the sole providers for their family, should be at home raising their children, instead of relying on day care services?

I have 5 children and in the early years of marriage we had to use day care services for three years. But once # 3 came along, my wife was able to stay at home with #3 and then 4. For #5,my wife worked part-time and then we utilized grandmas to stay at home with #5. Now #5 is in an MDO, much to my chagrin (my wife wants to work full time).

I still believe that, IN GENERAL, married mothers should stay at home and raise children directly, until the chldren hit school age. So I ask - Am I a chauvinist? Am I behind-the-times, old-fashioned, and terribly mis-informed?

Thank you for your opinions!

Sincerely in Christ,
Corrgc

I don’t think your a chauvinist pig. The old saying that comes to mind instantly though is the Indian saying about walking a mile in another persons moccasins before judging them. You don’t know what the situation is. Maybe there are women who just say they are married, because they aren’t interested in a relationship at work. Maybe the husband is unemployed and they are the only ones bringing in a paycheck. There are a million others reasons that you may not be aware of, but I still don’t think that makes you a chauvinist pig.

 

[EasterJoy]

Some people are in professions that require continuous employment in order to remain employable. Particularly now, I think it is obvious that most families cannot assume the man will always be able to find and hold on to a family-wage job. So sometimes the family does not immediately need the mother’s wages, but they do need her to remain highly employable. It is a safety net they cannot prudently do without. (Women who have been at home but are trying to re-enter the workforce right now can tell you what I mean.)

Mothers are very important, I am a stay-at-home mom with an advanced degree myself, but I wish people would stress so strongly how important it is that a father be an active parent and an attentive husband, as well. Some talk as if his only function in the family is to provide money, as if he could live in another house or could ignore the human needs of his wife and children with no ill effects. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

I think there is a insidious thing happening in these days of “leaner and meaner” workforces, down-sizing, and home access to work via laptops and the internet.** Parents, fathers in particular, are being taken away from home, even when they are physically there.** Employers are taking larger and larger portions of the time and attention of spouses and parents. For some reason, we have decided that virtual contacts on Facebook are more deserving of our time than real human contact that could be going on our own homes. Marriages and families are suffering because of it.

How many times have you heard someone praise a vacation destination because it has no internet access and no cell phone coverage? It is as if the only way we can plead legitimate inaccessibility is when it is physically impossible to be available to our employers and others who think they have some claim to our time and attention! We even have teens who routinely send 100 text messags a day. Tell me their real-time human contacts aren’t suffering from that “accessibility”.

I wonder when our society is going to get a grip on what our priorities are in life, and tell the employers and “virtual” pursuits that take up real time: “enough is enough.”

Speaking of which, I am afraid, I need to get off this forum and get back to my housework.

 

[Kat127]

If you know anything about child development and child psychology, you would know that is completely and utterly wrong. The year from birth to around the age of 5 is the single most critical stage of emotional, physical, and social development of a person’s entire life. Without proper nurturing during that time, a person can become severely damaged. You should read about orphans coming out of orphanages in places like Russia and Romania a couple decades ago. They were not given the love and attention children need. Babies were fed and clothed but they were left in cribs all day, and even just a few months of that left them pyschologically damaged for the rest of their lives. Mothers in the US often drop their kids off at daycare starting when they are 6 weeks old. Many, but not all, daycares in the US are not far off from those orphanages. Although I have a degree in elementary education, I still had to visit many daycares and highschools to have an understanding of where my students will come from and where they will go after their time with me. Let me tell you, I decided right then and there no child of mine would ever go to a daycare after what I saw. It just broke my heart. The tales my friends who work at daycares tell me only reinforced it. Don’t get me wrong, I know many women don’t have a choice but to send their children to daycares, but I don’t think anyone who knows the facts could honestly say that’s ideal.

Well it is the best idea to research and make sure you are putting your child in a “good” day care. But we didn’t always have the society structure we do now. In days gone by, the children would be put together and raised collectively by several different women- not all that unusual to modern day care. Also we are social creatures. I have yet to figure out how a woman at home with a baby all day is better than the child spending time with various other children and adults. It seems to me that such an environment would be very stimulating for a baby’s brain.

I worried for years about putting my child in day care because I heard all the horror stories. Then my cousin had a baby boy that went to daycare two/three days a week. I watched him at Christmas with his older cousins with their sahm. Wow! What a difference! The day care baby was happy and friendly in groups, knew how to share his toys, interacted with the adults and children. The older cousins- sullen, very very quiet with those that weren’t their nuclear family (and it isn’t like we are strangers, they see us about once a week!), had huge problems whenever their parents paid attention to someone other than them for more than 5 minutes.

At that point I decided whether someone was a good or bad parent had very little to do with whether their children are in daycare.

 

[faithfully]

Some people are in professions that require continuous employment in order to remain employable. Particularly now, I think it is obvious that most families cannot assume the man will always be able to find and hold on to a family-wage job. So sometimes the family does not immediately need the mother’s wages, but they do need her to remain highly employable. It is a safety net they cannot prudently do without. (Women who have been at home but are trying to re-enter the workforce right now can tell you what I mean.)

Mothers are very important, I am a stay-at-home mom with an advanced degree myself, but I wish people would stress so strongly how important it is that a father be an active parent and an attentive husband, as well. Some talk as if his only function in the family is to provide money, as if he could live in another house or could ignore the human needs of his wife and children with no ill effects. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

I think there is a insidious thing happening in these days of “leaner and meaner” workforces, down-sizing, and home access to work via laptops and the internet.** Parents, fathers in particular, are being taken away from home, even when they are physically there.** Employers are taking larger and larger portions of the time and attention of spouses and parents. For some reason, we have decided that virtual contacts on Facebook are more deserving of our time than real human contact that could be going on our own homes. Marriages and families are suffering because of it.

How many times have you heard someone praise a vacation destination because it has no internet access and no cell phone coverage? It is as if the only way we can plead legitimate inaccessibility is when it is physically impossible to be available to our employers and others who think they have some claim to our time and attention! We even have teens who routinely send 100 text messags a day. Tell me their real-time human contacts aren’t suffering from that “accessibility”.

I wonder when our society is going to get a grip on what our priorities are in life, and tell the employers and “virtual” pursuits that take up real time: “enough is enough.”

Speaking of which, I am afraid, I need to get off this forum and get back to my housework.

 

[Serap]

Women have been working mothers for centuries…look at the Old Testament and New Testament. Women have been working full-time jobs on the farm, doing laundry by hand, baking bread etc. even before the 1950’s SAHM was even labelled that.

You are very misinformed to think that SAHM is a new thing. Women have been working all their lives and instead of daycare, us women had our mothers, sisters, older siblings to care for our younger ones. Now, we are isolated and have no one to help us. We turn to daycare settings instead of our mothers, sisters, etc.

Nothing has changed at all; the only thing that has changed is that women don’t have the support that they used to have. Now we sit in front of computers for work instead of working on fields.

So, my answer is that you are being judgmental and are very misinformed. Are you a sexist? I don’t know, but you are definitely being judgmental and your attitude is a bit ignorant.

 

[JamesPrentice]

I think that the root of the problem is that we have raised our standards of living much higher than they need to be. Big homes, extra cars, etc. I remember growing up in the '50’s. We had what I then considered a nice, comfortable, wood-framed home. My grandparents and relatives had similar homes. Not grandiose, but sufficient, and comfortable. And we only had one car in the family. Some of my mother’s relatives didn’t have cars. They walked to go to church, get groceries, etc. We also didn’t have TV. My dad bought the first one in town eventually. But before that, everyone gathered at the end of their day (work/school) at my great grandmother’s house. All the kids played outside (big games of hide-n-go-seek, etc.), while the adults chatted inside. There was much more family interaction than we have these days, sitting in front of the TV for hours on end. We’re missing something. It seems we’ve traded “luxuries” of big brick homes, lots of toys, etc., for peace and family time. Bad trade. Now, as a society, we’ve become slaves to our possessions. Gotta have a good job to afford all this stuff, then instead of spending time with the family, we spend time maintaining it all and resting from earning money to pay for it all. That’s upside down and a big contributing factor to single-parent families, divorce, drugs, etc.

 

[JamesPrentice]

I tend to agree with much of what “Scooby” said. I too grew up in the 1950’s. I also think that we (as a society) have become much too materialistic. The undying quest for material items, in my opinion, have destroyed the family structure.

 

[cmscms]

I think you are 100% wrong. The most important personality formative years are the first 2-3. A mom belongs home with their infants during this period. The man of the house should be able to sustain the family for a few years on is own income and family savings if necessary. The working mom thing does not work. Most kids I grew up with who’s moms worked turned out pretty badly. Some working moms tried to compensate by buying gifts and spoiled them.

BF

I am not saying infants DON"T need their moms, I am saying that teenagers need them just as much and society refuses to acknowledge that. On friend told me that as soon as a kid can make their own lunch they don’t need their mom at home. I disagree. Teenagers have jsut as much emotional needs as infants. After all, it is the last chancde for them to get what they need before being thrown into an adult world

 

[cmscms]

While I think you are right about teenagers, infants need mommy, not some anonymous daycare worker.

And mommy needs baby. Sometimes it seems like an entire generation has not learned how to parent.

The mommy-baby bond is necessary, and God Himself put it there. Who knows what problems arise if an infant gets handed over to a new set of strangers every day?

I agree infants NEED mommy, but it is not to do the mechanical things as feeding and changing diapers. Infants need mommy so they can receive mommy love. Teenagers need just as much of this mommy love

 

[EasterJoy]

I am not saying infants DON"T need their moms, I am saying that teenagers need them just as much and society refuses to acknowledge that. On friend told me that as soon as a kid can make their own lunch they don’t need their mom at home. I disagree. Teenagers have jsut as much emotional needs as infants. After all, it is the last chancde for them to get what they need before being thrown into an adult world

I think teens need a lot of time when you’re just there because they are important to you. You listen to their opinions, you are willing to recognize their ability to think, you treat them more and more like adults. They learn that you don’t think that having questions is the same as lacking maturity or the ability to make good decisions. They learn that you don’t expect them to think exactly the same way you do in every way. If you don’t have time to do that, you’re not going to be someone they want to talk to when they have decisions to make in their own lives. That is a big loss.

Younger people used to have lots of time with older people, because trades and skills were learned by doing them alongside an adult with a lot of knowledge on the subject. Now teens are learning skills that their parents have never learned, and may never have the time to learn as well as their children have. To get a job, the teens have to be skillful in things that their parents may not begin to understand. It gives the teens a skewed idea of how much they have to learn from their parents.

IOW, I think these are the years to turn the parent-child relationship into a parent-child relationship that is between adults, from dependence to a kind of interdependence. It takes time to learn to appreciate someone as an adult. It takes time to lay the groundwork for the day when they will be the guardians of your autonomy and the ones who see to it that your thoughts and wishes are given respect they might not otherwise have. That relationship is worth quite an investment.

 

[PatriceA]

I am not saying infants DON"T need their moms, I am saying that teenagers need them just as much and society refuses to acknowledge that. On friend told me that as soon as a kid can make their own lunch they don’t need their mom at home. I disagree. Teenagers have jsut as much emotional needs as infants. After all, it is the last chancde for them to get what they need before being thrown into an adult world

I agree with you. And I can remember ABC news doing a report on the very subject of teens’ needs for a stay at home mom being overlooked, I think about a year ago or so. I think the needs of teens are generally swept under the rug, its time to reexamine the issue of lack of stay at home parents at that age.

 

[Nanny_PK]

I do not think you’re a chauvanist pig. I happen to agree with your opinion – and it’s just that, an opinion. They are not right or wrong. They just are. Now, if you act out on that, that could be wrong – by that I mean bashing women for working, et cetera – that, in my opinion, would be wrong.