My sister suggested I published this riddle based on a completely real story. N. guessed the answer before I finished telling it.
“Oh, I’ve had the most horrible day,” my sister says. “One of my employees quit her job today. And the problem is not that she quit as much as why she quit and what she is planning to do after quitting. I would have preferred she left the company for any other reason than this. ANY other reason.”
When she told me the reason, I agreed with her assessment completely.
Question: why did my sister’s employee quit?
Clarissa's Blog 
She’s pregnant?
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You mean, we hate pregnant women? š At this particular moment in time, that would be just a tad hypocritical. š
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I knew I should’ve explained my logic more… when you said “any other reason”, I was wondering if she had decided to leave work to become a full-time parent. But actually, I might revise my guess – does she want to homeschool an existing child?
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Wow, you actually came up with something even worse than what happened! Quitting to homeschool would have been even worse.
This just goes to show that there are always worse-case scenarios. š
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And also, I don’t like it when people who work are referred to as “part-time parents”. It isn’t like one stops being a parent while at work. I know it’s just a phrase of common usage but I believe it is unfair to everybody who is not a housewife.
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Fair – I didn’t mean it in that way, sorry! I more meant non-external-working parent? I’ve never actually heard the term “part time parent” – though I do suppose it follows from “full time parent” – so I wouldn’t use it, just because it’s never occurred to me as a possibility before… plus, as you said, it makes no sense!
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You actually guessed right: she left to be a housewife. š You know me well. š
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Graduate school.
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We don’t hate graduate students either! š
My sister would have probably paid for grad school of an employee because she is pro-education. š
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She is quitting to be a full time right-wing antiabortion activist.
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Almost as bad as what happened but still not really as bad. š
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To start a rival company?
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Enter a convent?
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Become a fulltime anti-immigration activist?
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Join military? Work for immigration police? Fox news?
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As my sister said, “Id even mind it less if she left to join Al Qaeda.” š
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Now I am curious. š
Has she quit to promote various drugs to people against real and not disorders?
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May be “cure the gay” organization?
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Move to kibbutz, join Likud.
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Likud is the party with most capable people in Israeli politics today. Without connection to agreeing with its’ specific policies.
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Join OQLF?
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What’s OQLF?
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Office quƩbƩcois de la langue franƧaise
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Homemaker?
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Another word I don’t get. How does one “make homes”? Especially by doing nothing all day long. (This is a woman with a rich husband.)
But yes, a housewife.
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Housewives of poor husbands work very hard generally.
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Yes, heating up a TV dinner in a microwave is so very hard.
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Most people have a job (or two) and manage to feed themselves and clean their space. I fail to see how simple cleaning and cooking – and not even the kind of gourmet cooking I do, but dishing out the basic crapola out of a box – can be considered hard.
Do you feed yourself and clean your own apartment? Is that so very exhausting?
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or lazy husbands.
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“Yes, heating up a TV dinner in a microwave is so very hard.”
This is not what housewifes do generally (except for some lazy ones with rich husbands). Housewifes are generally slaves.
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No, the real slaves are their miserable family members. A housewife has zero accountability for anything that she does. In the meanwhile, you and I are constantly accountable for everything we do at work and can be fired. Who’s going to fire a housewife for making a crappy pot of soup?
And the biggest consumers of TV dinners, boxed cake mixes and frozen pizzas are, indeed, housewives.
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“Do you feed yourself and clean your own apartment? Is that so very exhausting?”
The answer would be no for the second question if you have only yourself to cater. But if N would do nothing like those men housewife’s pimps, and if your kids would never do anything, the answer to this question would change. Housewifery is generally like to be a slave, except for some lazy women with rich husbands.
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“But if N would do nothing like those men housewifeās pimps, and if your kids would never do anything, the answer to this question would change6”
– No, it wouldn’t. There is absolutely no discernible difference between cooking for 1 people and cooking for 3 or 4. You just get a bigger pan, that’s all. Or get a bigger takeout pizza.
“Housewifery is generally like to be a slave, except for some lazy women with rich husbands.”
– I think this is very offensive to slaves who are forced to work. Housewives are people who force others to work and service them.
I lived in a country where I had to wash everything – including the bedsheets – by hand and iron it all on my own. For several months out of the year, this was all done with no hot water and intermittent electricity. And I had to prepare food that didn’t come all nicely cleaned and cut up for me. For instance, if I wanted to eat a chicken, I had to hold it over the fire to burn off the feathers, then remove the feathers, then remove the entrails, then butcher it, etc. In the meanwhile, I was working in a very harsh economy to feed two people. And I was a university student, full-time. Still, it would never occur to me to call that slavery.
This is why I find it completely ridiculous that spoiled American housewives have created this ridiculous drama of their completely faked suffering and “hard work.” They cannot even begin to imagine what hard work is really about. And these stupid creatures have the gall to compare their idiotic drama to the real hardship of knowing that you are the only person standing between your family and indigence, that it is 100% on you whether the bills get paid and the food gets bought.
These abusive hysterics do nothing but exploit people. They exploit people financially, emotionally, socially, and psychologically. They are leeches who suck up the life out of you and then demand in boring, whiny voices that you entertain them while you are dropping off with exhaustion. They present you with a list of debts they made to alleviate their boredom and get all pouty when you tell them you have no idea how to pay them. They create an environment where you come home in terror, not knowing what new bout of hysteria they have prepared for you today.
And then, after they have used you up and you have no more money and attention to give them, they kick you out into the street, penniless. So who’s the slave here?
In case I’m not making myself clear, this was my experience of living with a househusband. And unless you have had the misfortune of living with one of these abusers, please don’t tell me how horribly exploited they are. I was just 19 years old when this happened to me. Can somebody explain to me how this was my fault and how come I’m the slave-owner here? I worked 16-hour days with no weekends for 3 years while somebody else snoozed on the couch and felt he was a huge victim of the horrible evil me. And then he spent all my money and I landed in the street. And I’m the bad person here?
And please don’t tell me this has anything to do with gender. In every story of housewifery / househusbandry I have ever seen, this is always, without an exception, the scenario that unfolds.
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“No, the real slaves are their miserable family members.”
The real slave are the wife, but the most affected are children (this is an unhealthy thing for them, clearly, but they are not slaves generally). The husband is the slave’s boss, even worse than the average prostitute’s pimp (at least she’s paid generously for it). But there are many real slave children in families with both parents at work, you know. Parenting is rarely a Santa Claus thing. Ideally, we should have an equilibrium between working and leisure.
“A housewife has zero accountability for anything that she does.”
She must accept to have PIV sex (because PIV in the only sex, nothing else) and to be beaten up by the husband, generally.
“In the meanwhile, you and I are constantly accountable for everything we do at work and can be fired. Whoās going to fire a housewife for making a crappy pot of soup?”
The husband if sex is bad or if she tries too much to refuse to be beaten up by him to compensate for this crappy pot of soup.
“And the biggest consumers of TV dinners, boxed cake mixes and frozen pizzas are, indeed, housewives.”
Maybe students? For the lunch’s purpose, I agree. But this is not for the husband and kids dinner, generally.
Oh, something out of topic to complete. I declared myself as a Creationist yesterday: Humans created God.
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“No, it wouldnāt. There is absolutely no discernible difference between cooking for 1 people and cooking for 3 or 4. You just get a bigger pan, thatās all. Or get a bigger takeout pizza.”
This is not only about cooking.
“Housewives are people who force others to work and service them. ”
In North America, housewifes are (generally) there to replace illegal black slaves, and the woman-hating Right applauds this.
“I lived in a country where I had to wash everything ā including the bedsheets ā by hand and iron it all on my own. For several months out of the year, this was all done with no hot water and intermittent electricity. And I had to prepare food that didnāt come all nicely cleaned and cut up for me. For instance, if I wanted to eat a chicken, I had to hold it over the fire to burn off the feathers, then remove the feathers, then remove the entrails, then butcher it, etc. In the meanwhile, I was working in a very harsh economy to feed two people. And I was a university student, full-time. Still, it would never occur to me to call that slavery.”
This is not slavery if you have just yourself to cater or at least, if those two people do their own part in the process. Unless you were acting like a housewife and working and studying in the same time, so this would be even “slaveryer” than the average housewife. (I think this is your case)
“This is why I find it completely ridiculous that spoiled American housewives have created this ridiculous drama of their completely faked suffering and āhard work.ā They cannot even begin to imagine what hard work is really about.”
America is not a FSU country, okay. You talked about conditions that are analogous to the 1950’s QuĆ©bec (and housewifery was mandatory in this Grande Noirceur’s QuĆ©bec), this is something else.
“And these stupid creatures have the gall to compare their idiotic drama to the real hardship of knowing that you are the only person standing between your family and indigence, that it is 100% on you whether the bills get paid and the food gets bought.
“These abusive hysterics do nothing but exploit people.”
The abusive testerics are men who use them as their legal rapist trash can, their sex toy and their free homemaid.
“They exploit people financially, emotionally, socially, and psychologically. They are leeches who suck up the life out of you and then demand in boring, whiny voices that you entertain them while you are dropping off with exhaustion. They present you with a list of debts they made to alleviate their boredom and get all pouty when you tell them you have no idea how to pay them. They create an environment where you come home in terror, not knowing what new bout of hysteria they have prepared for you today.
And then, after they have used you up and you have no more money and attention to give them, they kick you out into the street, penniless. So whoās the slave here?”
That’s the case for a bunch of rich husband’s housewifes but this is not the average housewifery experience.
“In case Iām not making myself clear, this was my experience of living with a househusband.”
Okay, that’s YOUR expercience, not the America’s average experience. And there’s almost no full-time househusband who’s working hard, I agree with you on this. This is maybe not a gender thing in FSU countries but this is a gender thing here.
“I was just 19 years old when this happened to me. Can somebody explain to me how this was my fault and how come Iām the slave-owner here? I worked 16-hour days with no weekends for 3 years while somebody else snoozed on the couch and felt he was a huge victim of the horrible evil me. And then he spent all my money and I landed in the street. And Iām the bad person here?”
No, of course, not. This was not your fault and you were the slave, after all. (even though I wonder why you’ve fallen in love with this trash can, but the same question applies to housewifes and regularly beaten up women…)
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“America is not a FSU country, okay.”
– Housewifery only came to our countries when capitalism did. Before that, 100% of women were gainfully employed for 3 generations.
“The abusive testerics are men who use them as their legal rapist trash can, their sex toy and their free homemaid.”
– The thing is, you don’t know much about this phenomenon at all. Housewives and househusbands are all frigid and impotent. this is the result of their depression that severely impacts the libido. Given that most of them are on anti-depressants, anti-anxiety meds and diet pills, they barely ever have sex at all. How many housewives do you know closely?
“āThey exploit people financially, emotionally, socially, and psychologically. They are leeches who suck up the life out of you and then demand in boring, whiny voices that you entertain them while you are dropping off with exhaustion. They present you with a list of debts they made to alleviate their boredom and get all pouty when you tell them you have no idea how to pay them. They create an environment where you come home in terror, not knowing what new bout of hysteria they have prepared for you today.
And then, after they have used you up and you have no more money and attention to give them, they kick you out into the street, penniless. So whoās the slave here?ā
Thatās the case for a bunch of rich husbandās housewifes but this is not the average housewifery experience.”
– You are 100% mistaken. A rich housewife can at least invest some energy into charity and entertaining. A poor one only has her family members to eat all day long.
“Okay, thatās YOUR expercience, not the Americaās average experience. And thereās almost no full-time househusband whoās working hard, I agree with you on this. This is maybe not a gender thing in FSU countries but this is a gender thing here.”
– No, this works exactly the same in all countries and for either gender. You are talking about something that you have not experienced and are dismissing the lived experience of somebody who has suffered from this. What you are doing is just repeating the ultra-patriarchal discourse of housewifery as a difficult “job.”
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The reason why a housespouse can never be the abused partner and is always, invariably, the abuser is simply the level of energy. If you work, you will never be able to match the housespouse in the energy level. Again, I know this from personal experience. Somebody who expends some energy at work will never be able to maintain the same aggression and staying power during fights as a person who has been sitting on their ass, yawning all day long. In the end, they will win every fight simply by exhausting you. For a working person, a fight is painful and tiresome. For a bored housespouse it is welcome entertainment.
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Very enlightning!
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“These abusive hysterics do nothing but exploit people… (etc)”
The exploit goes way beyond the family. Wait until your child goes to preschool and you will be bamboozled into volunteering at and attending some silent auctions and all kinds of other “parent bonding events”. It’s like the whole community is dragged into keeping some airheads entertained. The preparation of those events is of course left to the most self-indulgent idiot who gets the biggest “thank you” at the end of the event. Meanwhile you donate money to the event itself, bring food and drink, and if you are stupid enough, you buy something at the auction. At the end you spend close to $100 on the event itself, but then, when they add up the actual gain that goes to the school it’s something like $30 dollars per head. Yes, this is the housewife logic. Plus at the end you have to listen how tired they are organizing the event. Grrrr…
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Oh God. Parent bonding events sound like a nightmare. It is beyond annoying to participate in stupid activities organized by people who need to justify their own empty existence.
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Housewife? (I should’ve said)
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Ok, it’s housewife, I just red the comment.
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Ok, if a couple has a great relationship and the economic ability for one of them to be home with the children and the wife decides that she would like to do that would you still not agree with that scenario?
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“Ok, if a couple has a great relationship and the economic ability for one of them to be home with the children and the wife decides that she would like to do that would you still not agree with that scenario?”
– I don’t know how many times I have posted the bibliography on this blog where every single study in existence in any culture and socio-economic group demonstrates that:
1. Housewives suffer from depression and psychosis more than any other group of population, including the unemployed.
2. The children of housewives in every single aspect of development lag behind the children of non-housewives.
In any psychology 101 course, the very first thing you hear is that the human psyche needs to stand on two equally important pillars to maintain psychological health and balance: the private (meaning your personal life) and the public (meaning your professional / social life). If any of these pillars of your emotional well-being is compromised or absent, forget about psychological health. If we accept as a given that women are human, then I’m sure you can draw your own conclusions as to what it does to a person to have one of these pillars of psychological health completely removed.
My househusband did not become an abusive freakzoid because he was evil or anything. He is actually a great guy. But he was so infantilized and undermined by househusbandry that his personality eroded. I was not dealing with him any longer but, rather, with his wounded psyche, with his constant depression. It was a very traumatic experience for me, an adult. How much more traumatic this is for a small child who is locked up with the severely depressed person who has nothing better to do with her life than to manage the kid’s life all day long? At least, the housewife’s spouse is out of the house during the day and can breathe in peace. A child doesn’t have that luxury. Mommy eats him (or her) all day long.
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\\ the human psyche needs to stand on two equally important pillars to maintain psychological health and balance: the private (meaning your personal life)
Does it have to be a spouse? Or relatives with or without one’s own children are enough too?
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Personal life includes sexual and romantic realization. This is why sexually unsatisfied parents are so dangerous to their children. Children can’t constitute their parents’ personal life. they will have a personal life of their own.
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I said one’s *relatives* / family (with or without one’s own children).
And aren’t people capable of channeling sexual energy to other uses and, in general, being satisfied without a partner?
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It depends on the duration of the situation. For certain periods of time, people can sublimate very well. As the time progresses, it becomes harder. It’s the same as with unemployment, for instance. At first, one can actually enjoy not having to get up early every morning. Then one gets antsy. Then a depression begins. And in a few years, the psyche suffers permanent / near permanent damage that might be extremely hard to reverse.
The psyche tends to compensate in a variety of ways. For instance, an individual whose personal life is non-existent is very likely to begin to turn his or her colleagues into a source of emotions that one normally gets from one’s personal life. This is where we get people who create these very emotionally intense relationships at work, for instance. Other people generate very intense closeness with friends, etc. And, of course, there is the saddest case of all when all of this sexual energy gets addressed towards the children.
Of course, a very self-aware intelligent person can realize what is happening and substitute sex with masturbation, fulfill the tactile needs by getting a pet (this is where cat ladies and gentleman come from, for instance), pursue a very creative hobby, and do a lot of physical activity. Just like a person who is out of work can become a volunteer, start atking online courses, etc. There are ways to obviate problems but one has to be aware that the problems might happen and why. Psychological hygiene is key.
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In any psychology 101 course, the very first thing you hear is that the human psyche needs to stand on two equally important pillars to maintain psychological health and balance: the private (meaning your personal life) and the public (meaning your professional / social life).(Clarissa)
Damn, there must have been a lot of depression that didn’t get treated before the industrial age. Considering for the vast majority of people the public and private life pretty much intertwined all day long.
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There were no housewives before the industrial revolution. Only in the XIXth century did a tiny group of men get an opportunity to purchase women who just sat there doing nothing all day long. One of the positive consequences of this phenomenon was the explosion of the novelistic production. The bored wives needed something to do, so they read a lot. This is why the entire XIXth century Western literature is written about women and for women.
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So if my wife had the opportunity to be home with our kids when they got home from school. She spent more time with them when they were younger, but, she also helped run our business and maintained a small clientele also. Would she fall into your housewifery idea at all?
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If she had a job and made money, then obviously she isn’t a housewife. Housewives are people who are completely financially dependent and don’t have a job.
This semester, I was at home all the time except for 5 hours on Tuesdays. But I wasn’t a housewife. š The physical location of an individual is not important. š
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Or let’s take a person who doesn’t work and lives on the income from her investments. That’s not a housewife. That’s a rentier.
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\\ And, of course, there is the saddest case of all when all of this sexual energy gets addressed towards the children.
You don’t mean excessive touching and kissing one’s kids only?
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Sexual energy that is not expended through sex can transform into excessive aggression, control, nagging, scolding, setting endless rules, yelling, etc. There might be zero physical contact but the children still feel completely invaded because their lives are policed 24:7. Parents would walk naked or half-naked around children, they would be very attentive to the children’s underwear and physiological processes. What is especially hard for many people to process is that later these children behave and feel like victims of sexual assault. Since they know nobody touched them, they begin to wonder if they are going crazy.
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So a stay-at-home mom–just without the children part of it. That’s what threw me off, because people mentioned stay-at-home parent at the beginning of the thread, and it never occurred to me that there would be a stay at homer without the kids.
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No, she has children. But they are not small. This is the case where one leaves her job after the kids grow up. And this is actually quite a wide-spread phenomenon.
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“This is the case where one leaves her job after the kids grow up.”
This is even worse than I thought. Are you sure this is housewifery? It’s more like a “pre-retirement because my husband is too stupid to stop to pay me”. In this case, this is not slavery.
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“Are you sure this is housewifery? Itās more like a āpre-retirement because my husband is too stupid to stop to pay meā. In this case, this is not slavery.’
– And the moment the kids start making money, they will begin paying, too.
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My post suggestions always result in a lively discussion!
My former employee has three kids, but they are all in high school. She is in her 40’s and actually worked when her children were young (as a legal counsel). Now that her husband is making a lot of money, her personal motivation has clearly declined. This has nothing to do with desire to be more available for her kids – she also employs a full-time house keeper.
@Ol: I would have been more paranoid than anything if she left my very Anglo office and went to work at OLFQ. In this case, however, I was just shocked and disgusted that I had missed all the signs of her being lazy and unmotivated..
Oh and she worked for me for only three weeks so the change of heart was rapid.
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If I know anything about teenagers it is that the very last thing they want is a constantly available mother. š š
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As a parent of two teenagers I can confidently say that neither do they want a mother who is continually away do to work constraints. That goes for the father too. š
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Depends on the mother and father. When parents are abusive or narcissistic, a child prays for them to be away as much as possible.
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// The exploit goes way beyond the family. Wait until your child goes to preschool and you will be bamboozled into volunteering at and attending some silent auctions and all kinds of other āparent bonding eventsā.
Haven’t heard anything of the sort in Israel, but I am sure that nobody forces one to participate in those events. If a parent has free time and guilts herself into coming, it’s 100% her problem of not being capable of saying “No”. I trust Clarissa won’t miss her lecture for that and, in general, no normal working parent would endanger her job to participate in all kinds of similar activities.
One also can always lie and say “I am working a lot, so unfortunately won’t be able to come. Ever.” May be, one is preparing for lectures or doing research at home, f.e., so not even a full lie. No need to explain what one is doing in any case.
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“Havenāt heard anything of the sort in Israel, but I am sure that nobody forces one to participate in those events. If a parent has free time and guilts herself into coming, itās 100% her problem of not being capable of saying āNoā.”
It’s was coop school, so you were supposed to help out. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind if parents help out at school, I volunteer myself a lot. It’s the lack of logic when it comes to this kind of events that drives me crazy. I could have written a check for $100 to the school itself, and it would make more sense mathematically, rather than my $100 dollars being reduced to some $30 that actually go to school.
And yes, one busy year, I just said “no, I can’t help out or attend” and donated a check for $50 thinking I’m donating to school. Guess what the idiots did? They bought a gift card to Target that auctioned for $35. Those events are clearly there so some women can feel important and have something to do other than picking her noses, since most of them had cleaning people, and many had nannies to help out.
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“And yes, one busy year, I just said āno, I canāt help out or attendā and donated a check for $50 thinking Iām donating to school. Guess what the idiots did? They bought a gift card to Target that auctioned for $35.”
– š š This is the best. God, idiots abound.
“Those events are clearly there so some women can feel important and have something to do other than picking her noses, since most of them had cleaning people, and many had nannies to help out.”
– Exactly.
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“Havenāt heard anything of the sort in Israel, but I am sure that nobody forces one to participate in those events. If a parent has free time and guilts herself into coming, itās 100% her problem of not being capable of saying āNoā.”
– You don’t do it for yourself, you do it for the kid. Imagine being the only kid whose parents didn’t show up.
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Why a kid should care? It’s parents’ gathering, not kids’ school play.
Will you miss a lecture to go?
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Of course, I can’t be absent from work. But I am preparing myself for lots and lots of unwelcome socialization. On the positive side, though, imagine how many fun posts I will write!
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“titfortat on May 4, 2013 at 10:37 am
As a parent of two teenagers I can confidently say that neither do they want a mother who is continually away do to work constraints. That goes for the father too.”
We gave this woman flex hours. When people cannot openly admit to their laziness, they use their kids as justification.
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