Trainwrecks and SAHM's

I’ve been reading Trainwrecks lately, I can’t remember for sure where I first found the link, but Contrary has listed it, so we’ll credit her (thanks Contrary). It’s a sometimes very interesting and sometimes very boring site that finds heated disputes (a.k.a. idiots spouting off insane ideas while other idiots rebutt them). Mommy bloggers appear to be Trainwrecks favorite group to laugh at, and after reading some of these items I have to agree with that.

What got me today was the group of people discussing whether or not being a SAHM is a right or a priveledge, and one person actually wrote that it was a right even though her husband doesn’t work either and they live on welfare and food stamps. Unfortunately, you can’t respond on the original sites without registering, and since I’m not a Mom, and I really don’t plan on visiting again, I didn’t get a chance to weigh in with my opinion. Right my ass.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem at all with SAHM’s. Sandie’s one, well, I guess she’s a SAHGM, but still. If your family can afford for you to stay home with the kids, more power to you. A lot of families can’t afford that though, and my issue is when these people say that the government (meaning me and you) should have to pay them for staying at home to take care of their children. One woman was so fanatical about the idea that she said that even though she’s pro-Life, she voted for an abortion bill because if a woman can’t stay home with her kids she shouldn’t have any. Apparently it’s child abuse to put your child in day care!

Monday I go back to Ada to find out if we can start trying to get pregnant. I hope we find out Monday, but they’ll probably do a pap and I’ll have to wait a couple weeks to get the results back before I find out for sure. I’ve been supposed to be tracking my ovulation to make sure that I am ovulating, but the test strips I picked up say that you should test between 10am and 12pm, and that you shouldn’t have gone to the bathroom for the last 4 hours. I’ve had a couple of problems with that. First, I’m at work during those times and usually I’m not thinking “Oh, I’ve got to go see if I’m ovulating” and second, I haven’t been able to hold it for 4 hours in a couple years now! I know – TMI. So I don’t know if I’ve been ovulating or not. Which is really going to make it difficult to get pregnant since we’re not supposed to have unprotected sex for another 6 months EXCEPT for when I’m ovulating.

What a pain in the ass it all is. The point of the above is that Chris and I have talked a lot about what we expect from each other when we do have kids. He’s always wanted me to be a SAHM, his mother was until her death. My mother was until I was a teenager, and then she started her business. We both agree that there are definate advantages to that. Unfortunately, there are definate disadvantages as well, money being the biggest one. And I’ve always said that I want to work at least part time. I have these issues about earning my own money and paying my own way. Chris and I had some fairly serious discussions shortly after we first got together – I was unemployed for a month (with no savings) and refused to accept any money from him to pay any bills. I let him feed me of course, but I wouldn’t take money to make the car payment or insurance or anything. He got pretty pissed about it. I have a hard time asking for help, and I really hate to ask for money, and it would just bug the shit out of me if I had to go to him every time I wanted to go buy a book or whatever.

Then, the more we’ve talked about it, we’ve decided that we really don’t want our kids to be in public school. Neither of us feels like it’s a safe place, and we don’t feel that our kids would get a quality education in public schools. Yes, there are some wonderful teachers out there. There are also those teachers out there who can barely read themselves, and I really don’t want those types of teachers around my children. And in public schools, I don’t have any say about who teaches my children. So, we would have to either have the money to put the kids in private school (which a lot of those are religious schools, a whole different issue), or we would have to home-school our children.

My attitude has also changed since I’ve been back in school myself. I’m enjoying my college years and being active in my club. I find myself wanting to be more involved, and work just keeps getting in the way of that! So maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to be a SAHM, assuming that I could still go to school and do those things that interest me.

I’ll tell you this much though, you’ll never hear me say that everyone else needs to pay so that I can stay home with my kids and teach them that it’s the government’s job (which makes it MY job as a taxpayer) to take care of them.