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Post by Warkitty on Apr 1, 2007 7:56:18 GMT -5
Not sure Copperhead, but I've known a few men that prove the rule on that. One good friend of mine has turned down oppportunities for far better paying/prestige jobs so he could stay close to his daughter. He consistently tries to arrange his schedule so he can help his ex-wife with things like getting their daughter to her swim meets and other after-school activities.
Then again, there are plenty of women who choose to chase the career or other things over and above time with their children. As a result I dont' think its a man/woman thing as much as it is an individuals thing.
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osrb
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Post by osrb on Apr 1, 2007 16:56:50 GMT -5
I would like to see the true questions and numbers not numbers filtered through some type of personal view of what he/she is trying to prove.
I did have a stay at home mom until I started school at which time my mom got a part time job. Neither of my parents a capable of being close. Children were more of a must to continue blood line. Until my 30's I had a difficult time dealing with people because I never learned how to properly interact. Until my mid 20's I really thought it was OK to call someone a dumb #$*% no matter who they were or where you were. I literally did not know what the word tacked meant. That is just how my home life growing up was. It took a long time for me to learn how to talk to someone not at them.
Just to state my point it does not matter if you have one parent stay home during the formative years it is the quality of the parent. If a parent takes the time to be with the child to show that they are trying to be part of there life not just a status symbol the child will stand a lot better chance in life.
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Copperhead
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Post by Copperhead on Apr 2, 2007 8:11:56 GMT -5
As a result I dont' think its a man/woman thing as much as it is an individuals thing. Point taken. I suppose that I've just usually witnessed women making such decisions.
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Post by bluckarma on Apr 2, 2007 10:32:15 GMT -5
My friends that stayed home with mom during their early formative years are by far less socially-equipped (even in their 20s) than those of us who attended preschool and afterschool care programs.
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Kordax
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Post by Kordax on Apr 2, 2007 11:10:21 GMT -5
Anyone here raised by a Mr. Mom & a working mother?
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Post by bluckarma on Apr 2, 2007 11:18:58 GMT -5
If my wife were willing and had the right job I'd definitely do it.
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whimdriven
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Post by whimdriven on Apr 2, 2007 11:26:55 GMT -5
My friends that stayed home with mom during their early formative years are by far less socially-equipped (even in their 20s) than those of us who attended preschool and afterschool care programs. Roll your eyes all you like ...
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Post by bluckarma on Apr 2, 2007 12:19:05 GMT -5
I think your anecdotal account of kids with a stay at home parent who grow up to be "less socially-equipped" is ridiculous and shaded by your own experience growing up. To say what works for you should work for everyone else is conceited. I think programs like preschool and extracurricular activities are extremely important, but to say that a child with a stay at home parent is predestined to be socially inept is condescending to people that choose to do it. I'd rather my son learn social queues from me rather than a high school kid with a technical school certificate at a day care center. From my observation children behave like their parents for better or worse.
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Post by whimdriven on Apr 2, 2007 12:37:30 GMT -5
Ha ha ha ha ha It's funny how the pendulum swings both ways, of course. Women who stay at home frown on those that don't. Those of us who desire to be personally successful OUTSIDE the home and still be mothers find staying-at-home to be oppressing, suffocating, limiting, and potentially damaging to children. I made absolutely NO generalization about kids who stay at home with parents. I made a specific statement about some kids with which I grew up. My personal opinion, which you don't agree with and that's fine, is that a mother's "love" is not enough to properly socialize a child. Sorry!
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Post by bluckarma on Apr 2, 2007 13:00:22 GMT -5
I am not saying a mother's love is enough to socialize a child. I am taking umbrage at your assertion that kids with stay at home parents are less socially equipped than day care children. Don't twist my words. Sorry! Also, I find it oddly telling that you quote "love".
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whimdriven
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Post by whimdriven on Apr 2, 2007 13:12:38 GMT -5
There are plenty of mothers on this planet that ruin their children, that's all. Of course, it's under the guise of "love," thus the quotations.
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Post by bluckarma on Apr 2, 2007 13:31:07 GMT -5
I think you have a negative attitude towards parents who have made a decision to have a parent stay at home.
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Post by whimdriven on Apr 2, 2007 14:16:20 GMT -5
I think I've seen a lot of women get lazy being "stay-at-home moms" and they never return to gainful employment. They're always home to coddle the kids, effectively deterring their children's natural desires to become independent. No father or otherwise breadwinning spouse should be expected to pull in every single dollar from now until retirement if he or she has an able-bodied spouse at home who isn't taking care of kids.
How many kids are still at home, mooching off their parents at 25 or 30 years old these days? I believe a lot of this is due to overprotective, obsessive, and codependent parents unwilling to send the flock out of the nest. These tendencies begin at birth.
I think I don't understand women who still subscribe to the "let's be barefoot and pregnant at home where our accomplishments will be recognized only by a fading glance from our husband or a child's spit-up on our blouse."
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Copperhead
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Post by Copperhead on Apr 2, 2007 14:24:20 GMT -5
It's funny how the pendulum swings both ways, of course. Women who stay at home frown on those that don't. Those of us who desire to be personally successful OUTSIDE the home and still be mothers find staying-at-home to be oppressing, suffocating, limiting, and potentially damaging to children. Gosh, I have yet to find a woman who works outside the home to hold such an attitude about women who don't work outside the home. As far as I'm concerned, every woman is a working woman. Being a stay-at-home mom, when done properly, is hard work! Of course, there are those notable exceptions of women who get so depressed with their lives that they abandon their responsibilities and do nothing at home all day, scream at their kids all evening & stay up half the night watching television. Now that's the kind of woman I'd have issues with...and have had issues with, as I just described my own mother. I am so grateful for therapy.
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Post by el Gusano on Apr 2, 2007 15:01:28 GMT -5
Up until I injured my ankle, my wife and I both worked, but we worked schedules that still permitted us to spend time together and to spend time with our son. I would work a second and even a third job at night to bring in more money. (Thanks to the courts that take half of your take home pay so your ex-wife can take Bahama vacations, two jobs often are not enough any more. I know it was my decision to marry the first time, but there's a reason that there are so many "deadbeat" dads.)
After I broke my ankle, I was out of work for a year and a half, having several surgeries. I did manage to make a little money from the computer, and did a few stained glass jobs that did not require physical stamina, but nothing much to speak of. After the doctor permitted me to return to work (I started the day he signed the permission slip), my wife was in a job making more money than either of us had ever made, and I started driving the bus and started getting my stained glass business back on course. But, I was able to land the gig doing the football radio show, so I was the only parent that got to travel to every game. (When we travel for football, we travel!)
My wife and I have both made it a point that one or both of us were involved in all our son's activities.
A few months back, my wife was offered a job back in Tennessee making about the same money, but with better benefits. So, she took it. I stayed behind to finish a big job. Just before I finished it, a local company called my wife and offered her a 40% raise to come back here.
So, thanks to an injury, she makes almost as much as both of us together have ever made, with outstanding benefits, I'm driving a bus, running a business, teaching classes, and yet, one (or usually both) of us is able to go to all the games, chaperon dances, etc.
Stay at home moms are the best idea, and to think that outside employment is necessary for "fulfillment" is denigrating to those moms who are capable of doing the best thing and raising the kids.
However, even with both parents working, it doesn't mean that one parent is absent. It just means that the parents aren't running all over town going to parties, etc., and the school system isn't raising the kids and teaching them that every sort of perversion is normal and that there is no right and wrong.
My hat's off to stay-at-home moms.
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Post by daworm on Apr 2, 2007 15:59:02 GMT -5
Before tempers get too heated, you have to make sure you keep things in perspective...
There will always be examples of kids who turn out bad _________ (fill in blank with "with stay at home moms", "with stay at home dads", "who spend time in day care", etc). And likewise, kids who turn out great.
Sometimes you can fight nature and win. Sometimes you can change nature entirely. But you can't reliably do either unless you understand nature and work hard at it. Our biology drives the mother as child care giver, and going against that will cause some issues. They may be easy to overcome or they may be hard, but if you ignore them entirely you shouldn't be surprised when they come up.
Perhaps what this study really says isn't that daycare is bad, but that parents (women and men both) are more often dumping their kids at daycare without any of the work required to keep that situation from becoming bad. With our disposable society, and our quick fix in a pill attitude about all aspects of life, I can easily see that being the case. "Just drop the kids off at daycare, they'll be fine." That kind of attitude will carry over to when they are with the kids, and that can't be good for them. Daycare in that case probably doesn't matter. They'd have that attitude with or without, maybe worse.
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Jay
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Post by Jay on Apr 2, 2007 17:38:55 GMT -5
Ack! The old nature versus nurture debate..... My guess is a little of both on how you turn out. There are no rules just tons of exceptions
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Kordax
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Post by Kordax on Apr 2, 2007 17:50:20 GMT -5
When & where I grew up, there wasn't one single mom who worked & left their kids in a childcare facility -- all moms were stay-at-homers....
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snarkalicious
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Post by snarkalicious on Apr 2, 2007 17:59:57 GMT -5
Anyone here raised by a Mr. Mom & a working mother? I have a 19 year old and a 17 year that have been raised basically by a stay-at-home Dad and a working Mom for the past 10 years or so.... And Whim, you need to add the fact that you are NOT a parent yourself....
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Milk
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Post by Milk on Apr 2, 2007 19:08:52 GMT -5
Anyone here raised by a Mr. Mom & a working mother? Yeah. Until I was 8, my dad stayed at home and my mom taught in the pubplic schools in Brooklyn, NY, New Jersey(I dunno the town name), and Memphis, TN. Then dad went to further his education out of state and mom still worked. I was a latchkey kid. Although I still have problems (and who doesn't), I feel I am pretty well adjusted socially and have a pretty good perspective on life. But that's just me.
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whimdriven
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Post by whimdriven on Apr 3, 2007 7:11:20 GMT -5
Nope, but a fastidious planner ... It's always good to have strategies before you're dropped in the fire. It's the parents that either a) don't have a plan or b) don't stick to an effective plan that don't succeed.
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Post by Warkitty on Apr 3, 2007 7:17:03 GMT -5
When & where I grew up, there wasn't one single mom who worked & left their kids in a childcare facility -- all moms were stay-at-homers.... Yeah, but the rest of us didn't grow up needing to worry about the short-faced bear eating us or mammoths trampling us.
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Post by ScarlettP on Apr 3, 2007 7:51:52 GMT -5
LOL! Touche Kitty.
Actually, my mom 'stayed home' most of the time. When I (the youngest) went to kindergarten, she went back to college. She spent a lot time with her books. THEN she went to work when I went to school.
I think I'm mostly OK. The stuff that screwed me up happened when I was teen to twenty-ish.
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Oh, and BTW - EVERYONE'S oppinion is tainted by their own experiance. That's the way life works.
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Post by snarkalicious on Apr 3, 2007 16:37:11 GMT -5
Nope, but a fastidious planner ... It's always good to have strategies before you're dropped in the fire. It's the parents that either a) don't have a plan or b) don't stick to an effective plan that don't succeed.
That SOUNDS good, in theory-but I found all my plans and expectations flew out the window once I actually gave birth. AND- each child brought a new set of changes.
My husband does a great job of being the primary caregiver. Does he do it the way I would do it? Nope-but the kids have grown up despite their 2 bumbling, inept excuses for parents to be pretty incredible young adults....
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Jay
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Post by Jay on Apr 3, 2007 18:24:38 GMT -5
Nah, Snarkalicious, I bet you guys were wonderful parents Not perfect and I'm sure you learned a lot along the way... No one's perfect...
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