Preparing sibling for birth process?

" he hardly ever helps out with household chores,...


So what! He works long hours and he is expected to do household
chores?? If you loved your spouse, and he/she was the main bread
winner, then you wouldn't let them do anything around the house. By
keeping the house clean, having home cooked meals and making sure
your
spouse can unwind in a relaxed environment, you are showing love and
respect to them. "

Does earning money exempt a person from the chores of daily
life? Earning money is pretty vital, no question. Parenting is
pretty vital, also. Imagine hearing a woman say, "I take care of the
kids and the errands and the meals, and I'm expected to do household
chores on top of that?"
What.. pitching in with supper clean-up and children's bedtime
is too wearying? The money-earner might not be well-rested enough to
do his best at work the next day, so the mom does it all? Huh. Tough
luck for the kids in THAT house, because their mom is exausted and
cranky.
"Making sure your spouse can unwind in a relaxed
environment"........this is a loving gesture, and it works great as
long as both spouses take turns being the relaxed un-winder.




When I turn up with my best (male) friend
they
talk to me differently, and I can get my points across differently than
I can when I go alone. But I'm not sure if that's because a) he's male
and the teachers are women (one main teacher one who's nearly a
teacher*) b) because he's a potential witness to unfairness or c)
because then it's 2 "vs." 2.


"That poor guy has to deal with you and your issues? You must be good
looking or he must be desperate. Maybe you get better results because
they are talking to a logical calm person instead of an emotional
wacko who puts the blame of her son's behavior on everything else,
except for herself. "

She doesn't seem like an emotional wacko to me. She actually
sounds clever, for noticing what a difference it makes if she brings a
token male to conferences.





cu
nicole


Regards...

agsf_57 schrieb:
On Apr 23, 10:04 am, NL wrote:
Yep. My best (female) friend complains about her husband a lot.

Your best friend is an idiot. You should never complain or talk
negatively about your spouse to anyone. It only makes you look bad.

He's
working longer and longer hours,

I'm sure he's not doing it for himself. He's doing it so that his wife
and family can live a comfortable life.

He's got what's called a fixed income. Overtime is not payed and can not
be taken as time off later. So no, he's not doing it for the family.

he's not really participating in the
family,

Maybe he has no time?

Oh yeah? Maybe he should make time. Maybe spending his time home playing
on the computer would be better spent playing with his children?

snip
he hardly ever helps out with household chores,...

So what! He works long hours and he is expected to do household
chores?? If you loved your spouse, and he/she was the main bread
winner, then you wouldn't let them do anything around the house. By
keeping the house clean, having home cooked meals and making sure your
spouse can unwind in a relaxed environment, you are showing love and
respect to them.

Yes, in a family of 5 everyone's expected to help with the chores. And
by not lifting a finger around your home you're showing your spouse how
much you don't care for her wellbeing.

That's when I think
"thank god I don't have to deal with that",

Your sad outlook on life probably made you into a single mom. Based on
your replies, I wouldn't want to be married to you either.

And thank god for that. Because I'd sure as hell not put up with a prick
like you.

but you know, there's great
things, too, for them, like going away on holiday, or the house they
bought,...

You mean living as a family and working together to give the means and
happiness to their children? Wow interesting concept there!

Working together? No. They're not working together. He does not take
part in day to day family life. That's what I was describing above.
Holidays don't make up the majority of family life.

What I do think of as harder is negotiations with teachers/offices/etc.
when they see me as a single mum of two you can see them mentally
putting me into the "totally overwhelmed, unable to deal" drawer. So my
son acting out at school is because I'm the worst parent on the planet

Probably a true assessment. You know what they say about kids who do
not have fathers in their lives.

That they don't get beat by their fathers as much? Yeah, I know.

and not because of his sensory/speech problems or because his class is
too large (28 kids, 18 of which are boys, please imaging the noise level
and now think about how that's working for a kid who's unable to filter
out background noise).

You have excuses for everything.

No, I have reasons. I also have doctors records and Therapists records,
and they all state the same. My son is special needs. From birth.
Without a known cause.

When I turn up with my best (male) friend
they
talk to me differently, and I can get my points across differently than
I can when I go alone. But I'm not sure if that's because a) he's male
and the teachers are women (one main teacher one who's nearly a
teacher*) b) because he's a potential witness to unfairness or c)
because then it's 2 "vs." 2.

That poor guy has to deal with you and your issues? You must be good
looking or he must be desperate. Maybe you get better results because
they are talking to a logical calm person instead of an emotional
wacko who puts the blame of her son's behavior on everything else,
except for herself.

No, you see, not every guy is as self centered as you. I'd suggest you
grow up some more because you're acting very much like a 24 year old
single child who hasn't learned that women are not second class human
beings.
As long as all school counselors, judges, Jugendamt and Kinderschutzbund
professionals tell me I'm doing an excellent job, I'm inclined to
believe them. Trust me, if I was doing a crap job raising my children
they would not be living with me. (Yes, both fathers drag me and the
children around from lawsuit to caseworker and they get knocked down
every time, I'd love to see you deal with this kind of stress ;-) )

cu
nicole

In article ,
agsf_57 says...

On Apr 25, 4:09 pm, "
wrote:

Please snip properly. The above is by Beliavsky, not me.

--Helen

Better?

Regards...

Oh don't be snarky about it. Helen informed you of a point of netiquette, and
asked your consideration.

Banty

In article , NL wrote:

Chookie schrieb:
In article
,
" wrote:

I can't think of a reason why choosing *responsibly* to be a single
mother would be a problem either (not that I think that's what you
meant). I know one woman who adopted a child as a single woman, one
who has twice had babies by artificial insemination, etc. And that's
just in real life -- on the internet I know far more examples.

Actually, I think it's extremely foolish to choose single motherhood.

snip

Well, I think it depend on what you compare it with. My choice was to
stay in an abusive relationship, risk my and my child health and
wellbeing or leave, and I would always, _always_ leave an abusive
relationship behind.

If you read the post again, you will see that we were not talking about *that*
kind of choice (*). We were considering women without partners who choose to
have a child on their own.

As I said, I know single motherhood (even omitting any emotional fallout from
a broken relationship) is very demanding physically, logistically, financially
and mentally, even with relatives handy. I know parenting can be hard even
with a good partner, and I know it's hard without one. If you're up on the
high wire, someone might come by and remove your safety net, and then you have
to deal with it. That's not the same thing as going onto the high wire when
you *already know* there is no safety net.


(*) I don't really see leaving an abusive marriage as a choice; I'd say it
was a necessity. I am also aware that in practice, it's a difficult decision,
as so many women put up with domestic violence for a long time.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/

In article
,
Beliavsky wrote:

Wow, Chookie and I agree on something . One caveat, though. Although
I think married couples should be given preference over unmarried
couples and single people in adoption, if there are not enough such
couples to adopt the children available, single people should be
considered. A single woman who has the resources, financial and
otherwise, to provide a good home for a child who would otherwise be
in an institution or in foster care should be applauded for doing so,
IMO.

I had better put in my caveat: I do not know how I would approach this
legislatively.

Artificial insemination of single women, is different IMO. Here the
woman is deliberately creating a child who will never know his or her
father and his relatives, and that is wrong.

But I believe I know a lesbian couple whose children do know their bio-father;
he's a gay friend of theirs. Secondly, because of the risk of incest, I
understand that my state government is looking into registration of sperm
donors. In the area of adoption (and I see AI as a kind of adoption) I think
it is very important for children and parents to have the chance to know who
their bio-parents are, not only to prevent incest and deal with medical issues
(I have a friend in this situation), but to deal with the emotional issues.
OTOH I don't know how pleasant it would be to know that my bio-dad had been
short of cash one day so he decided to get paid for spending a few minutes
with a girly magazine and a jam-jar!

From the societal point of view, male sperm donors should not be able
revoke their responsibility to financially support the children they
father. If the mother dies, for example, the father, not the taxpayer,
ought to be first means of support, and he ought to be given the
chance to adopt the child.

I'd agree that he should be given a right of refusal, but it would depend on
whether there were really no other relatives capable of looking after the
child. He should be counted as a relative, but not a very close one. More
like the kind you get in old stories, where the girl is orphaned and goes to
live with an elderly relative (who she has never previously met) on the other
side of the country!

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/

agsf_57 wrote:

On Apr 21, 8:25 am, Beliavsky wrote:
On Apr 20, 3:45 pm, agsf_57 wrote:

It's the same concept. Women want to marry rich men so they can spend
their days watching Oprah and go shopping.

You are trolling. There do exist lazy women and lazy men, but that is
an insulting generalization.

The inverse of the woman who marries a rich man so that she doesn't
have to work is the man with the trophy wife - he has made his money
and he discards the wife who raised his children and kept his home for
some bimbo that is young enough to be his daughter. I've seen that
happen, but it isn't really common. Most men are better than that
(IMHO)

My widowed BIL was tricked into such a marriage by a girl who wanted
him to bankroll her, but he naively thought she was going to make him
a loving wife. His daughters saw what was going on, but what could
they do?

I never used the word "lazy". If they could (assuming if they are not
fat and fugly), they would rather marry rich and stay home. If the
generalization has truth behind it, why do you find it insulting?? Did
you grow up thinking that you'll marry a rich woman and stay home and
play poker with your friends? Neither did I. However, the majority of
girls grow up aspiring to marry a rich man and to stay home and go to
the mall everyday with their girlfriends.

Call it trolling if you want, but what I state is the truth for the
majority of women.

You must know some pretty awful women if you think that. (In the
sense of awful meaning terrible not in the sense of inspiring awe)

Although I do know that opinion is out there. When my daughter went
for an interview (for a job as an airline pilot), she was asked
whether- when her dh finished school - that she wouldn't want to just
stay home with the children. And when the pilots at the airline she
ended up working for (not the one of that interview) were on strike,
she was manning the phones for the strikers and someone from the news
media came down to interview pilots and talked to her, and they asked
her basically the same question.

Once when I was inspecting a bacon plant (they took rashers of bacon
and sliced and cooked them and packed them for places like Wendy's), I
told the manager that he had to do some specific job related training
for all the employees, and his response was "Even the women?" He did
not 'get' that I, as a woman, might find that offensive.

Chookie schrieb:
In article
,
Beliavsky wrote:
snip
From the societal point of view, male sperm donors should not be able
revoke their responsibility to financially support the children they
father. If the mother dies, for example, the father, not the taxpayer,
ought to be first means of support, and he ought to be given the
chance to adopt the child.

I'd agree that he should be given a right of refusal, but it would depend on
whether there were really no other relatives capable of looking after the
child. He should be counted as a relative, but not a very close one. More
like the kind you get in old stories, where the girl is orphaned and goes to
live with an elderly relative (who she has never previously met) on the other
side of the country!


The problem with this approach is that the sperm donor then has to also
be given the right to meet his children, theoretically even if the
mother/parents of the children do not consent to this.
And how would you feel if your children were pushed over to some guy
they never met, some guy _you_ never met? And who has not had a
homestudy done and who might not be an even remotely ideal father?

You're treating sperm donors like mothers/parents in an open adoption
and I don't really see those two things as the same, which they are not.

cu
nicole

Rosalie B. schrieb:
snip
Once when I was inspecting a bacon plant (they took rashers of bacon
and sliced and cooked them and packed them for places like Wendy's), I
told the manager that he had to do some specific job related training
for all the employees, and his response was "Even the women?" He did
not 'get' that I, as a woman, might find that offensive.


Yeah, I was in IT before turning into a single parent and when I was at
a job fair some old fat guy put his arm around me and declared "You know
girl, we'll even hire women." Guess where I didn't apply for a job ;-)

cu
nicole

Chookie schrieb:
In article , NL wrote:

Chookie schrieb:
In article
,
" wrote:

I can't think of a reason why choosing *responsibly* to be a single
mother would be a problem either (not that I think that's what you
meant). I know one woman who adopted a child as a single woman, one
who has twice had babies by artificial insemination, etc. And that's
just in real life -- on the internet I know far more examples.
Actually, I think it's extremely foolish to choose single motherhood.
snip

Well, I think it depend on what you compare it with. My choice was to
stay in an abusive relationship, risk my and my child health and
wellbeing or leave, and I would always, _always_ leave an abusive
relationship behind.

If you read the post again, you will see that we were not talking about *that*
kind of choice (*). We were considering women without partners who choose to
have a child on their own.

Yes, but if you look further up in the thread it had been about single
parents in general, specifically about your mother leaving your father
to live with your grandmother....

As I said, I know single motherhood (even omitting any emotional fallout from
a broken relationship) is very demanding physically, logistically, financially
and mentally, even with relatives handy. I know parenting can be hard even
with a good partner, and I know it's hard without one. If you're up on the
high wire, someone might come by and remove your safety net, and then you have
to deal with it. That's not the same thing as going onto the high wire when
you *already know* there is no safety net.

But maybe those single mothers who choose to become single mothers (by
adopting, etc.) have a good safety net? Maybe they're living close to
their parents, maybe they have a lot of friends who can and want to help
them.

(*) I don't really see leaving an abusive marriage as a choice; I'd say it
was a necessity. I am also aware that in practice, it's a difficult decision,
as so many women put up with domestic violence for a long time.

I think you've pretty much put your finger on why some women don't leave
abusive relationships. Because they don't have a safety net. Or because
they feel they don't have one that's better than the relationship
they're in.

cu
nicole

agsf_57 wrote:

It's the same concept. Women want to marry rich men so they can spend
their days watching Oprah and go [sic] shopping.

However, the majority of
girls grow up aspiring to marry a rich man and to stay home and go to
the mall everyday with their girlfriends.

Call it trolling if you want, but what I state is the truth for the
majority of women.

Because you state it, that makes it the truth for the majority
of women, eh? You've met them all? Perhaps it's a large
percentage of the women YOU HAVE MET which doesn't
say much for the kind of places you meet them or the kind
of people you hang out with.

I never wanted to ?marry a rich man and stay home and go
to the mall everyday". Marry a rich man - might have been nice
but stay home or go to the mall every day, no thank you!
I like my work and don't much care for shopping.

-- Zip