Posted on 07/23/2004 8:50:51 AM PDT by qam1
Actually, you're lucky. There is no more ideal job vis-a-vis children than teaching!
Pretty early home, often before the kids. Summer off, just like the kids.
My mom was a teacher and got back into "full teaching" once I went to school. (Prior, she did home teaching for special people, either at our house or theirs. I was often along for the ride.) Yes, I survived not always having my parents home when I got back from elementary school (sometimes my older siblings were), but Mom generally got there soon.
Never mind that Summer was completely supervised by Mom.
Primary teaching is the ideal situation if you have to have a job.
Good article.
Here's my anecdotal evidence, but what the heck --> The private college I attended has turned out a goodly number of traditional couples - father works and mother stays at home with a trend toward families with over two children - 3, 4 and 5 being common. It was a mainstream evangelical school. It was a surprising trend to see develop, but it occured nonetheless.
My wife homeschools and stays at home with our 9 year old, 5 year old and 2 mo. old (granted the 2 mo. old has not started on algebra yet). Being a minister and living next door to the church - I am able to spend alot of time with the family.
As others have noted on this thread - money can be a bit tight, but I think the benefits of X'ers raising a generation (gen z?) of family oriented, stable adults, future oriented and not dumbed down by the system will be immense.
For what it's worth too, the X'ers I've known who have gotten divorced, haven't seen many, typically have gone to great lengths to make the children a true priority - parents living near to one another, genuinely trying to maintain or create a sense of stability and connectedness.
My wife is the same way. I think that is the duty and destiny of our generation.
I was born in '84. What the hell am I?
I think you're on to something. It certainly applies to my wife and most of our friends as we think about starting a family in our early thirties.
As a generation (myself included) we got married in our mid-late twenties instead of late teens early twenties. I don't hear about near as much cheating as what seemed to go on in the seventies with my father's friends. I would guess that we will see the rate of infidelity and divorce drop significantly.
I'm an older X-er ('67). My parents were not boomers! My mother was born in '36!! Other than that, good article. What is my kids' generation called? They were all born in the 90's.
Married, traditional, conservative generation X bump.
Your kids are Gen Y.
These demographic lines are very arbitrary. I was born in 1961, which makes me a boomer. But Vietnam, the defining event of the Baby Boom, is only a hazy memory of my early childhood. I have much more in common with Gen X than I do the Boomers.
That was Hugh Hefner's influence -- his magazine really took off at the end of the 60's and stayed big......he was married to Barbie Benton, but not so's you'd notice, not with a mansion full of Playmates, and not for long. But Hef wasn't a Boomer. He was Silent Generation, launched his magazine in the early 50's. Between them, he and Betty Friedan damn near killed off marriage. Friedan was same generation as Hef and Gloria Steinem (who's about 64 now).......Friedan chose her boyfriend over staying in college, moved to another city to follow him -- then he dropped her. Made her bitter. She's the Angry Old Woman of feminism, real piece of work. Steinem was Queen of the One-Liners ("A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle"), finally got married at age 61! Has actually smiled 6-1/2 times since she turned 20.
Sounds like how the War Generation (the "Greatest Generation") did it. Only dads had to work -- staying at home during the day wasn't socially acceptable for them unless they had some kind of really good reason (like night work, home office, etc.). Later, when kids were all in school and accounted for during the day, Mom would take part-time work (very strong trend), maybe later fulltime.
As needed, d/o their income-earning ability, one or the other would take a second, part-time job, but they always pushed the kids to stay in school, do well in school, and absolutely not leave school early or take part-time work while still in school unless it was really short hours.
And they drove one car -- a second after she started work, usu. a VW Beetle. In the 60's, with the kids in high school, the iconic garageful was a station wagon like a Ford Country Sedan or an Olds Vista Cruiser, and a Beetle for grocery runs, work commutes, and dates.
Is there a coherent message there somewhere?
X'ers tweak so damn much you can never tell.
Geesh, I'm old.
A mere hatchling.
I'm a 76er and my parents were also wonderful, but that was not the norm for our generation. I remember being ina Sunday school class for high schollers and the teacher asking each person there whether they'd be a better parent than their own. I was the only one to say "no". The biggest complaint was that the parents didn't have time for them and left their raising to the schools and church.
I thought I was Gen X being born in 1983....I guess I am actually Gen Y.
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