is she being unreasonable about marriage?

[spillyobeans]

Dont fully know where i stand on this but:

Mutual friends of me and dh have been together for 8 years, they live together, share financial responcability etc and have no kids. She keeps saying she wants a ring/to be asked to be married etc where he is adament he doesnt want to but obviously wants to stay together.

I think she is getting quite down about it, but is she being unreasonable to keep pushing him?

Im married to dh and it was a nice thing we both wanted - didnt need, as personally for us nothing 'changed' but just something we wanted to do.

So whos if any is unreasonable?

I take your point, but I think people often assume that women will be the primary carer everything being equal.

Would lotus have to defend having a demanding job alongside children if she was a bloke? I think not.

Still waiting to hear your evidence for your claims about fitness to work after 6 weeks and malingering preggos, Lotus. I'm starting to think you just pulled both claims out of your arse...

Of course not. Look around any group of people - at work, at home and there are some who are lazy. There will also be some who are ill and some who are hard workers. You don't need statistics to know there is a core group of malingers in the UK and everywhere on the planet.

Why would someone who h ad no pregnancy illness not be fit enough to sit at a desk at work after 6 weeks but be fit enough to do the housework and run around literally after a baby and toddler?

What do you want me to find - a study that proves some workers and some housewives are lazy and one that 6 weeks after birth people can sit on trains and at desks? I think we all know who might be likely to be right and it's bound to be me. There is a lazy person in the UK probably about round every corner which is great news for women and men who are non lazy active stay at home parents and non lazy full time workers as it means they shine.

As Woody Allen said when asked once why he did well with work. I show up. Loads of people don't - your average tradesman often doesn't turn up on time or at all and ditto in offices throughout the land and your housewife girl friend who is unreliable. The ones who don't show up might have a relaxed life but they tend to reap what they sow.

Why would someone who h ad no pregnancy illness not be fit enough to sit at a desk at work after 6 weeks but be fit enough to do the housework and run around literally after a baby and toddler?

I dunno maybe they might have had some horrific birth injury that completely tore their vagina and anus into one, needed surgery, have CBeebies on loop, lots of kind friends and relatives to get through every excruciating hour of every day. Maybe they don't want to tell their employer all about it and hope that by the time ML is over it will all heal and they can go back to work and no one be any wiser. Certainly i know of 2 women who suffered this and I doubt it is uncommon either.

I just want you to provide some actual evidence lotus, something more than the ramblings of someone with no medical expertise whatsoever. For your view about the time most women are capable of going back as well as these shirking bitches around every corner.

As captain points out, there are plenty of pregnancy and birth related conditions that wouldn't necessarily be immediately visible. You were clearly talking about specific individuals you know upthread, so how exactly do you imagine you can be sure whether they're really ill or not? Additionally, how do you know all these malingerers are doing all the housework and literally running around after a baby and a toddler after 6 weeks? You don't! You haven't got the foggiest what goes on behind closed doors in someone's home.

tobysmum certainly I would extend the question to her husband too.

The only women I know who have gone back to work pretty much straight away have had husbands/partners who stayed with the baby instead. I only know one 'full' SAHD, the others have done some combo of 6/9m at home with baby, then go part time. Still, there is a parent with the baby for a significant proportion of it's early years so I would never question the mother working, the baby is still getting to build a 'main carer' bond with a parent - their dad.

If I knew someone going back very quickly, whose husband also worked full time, who were high earners (or Gods) who didn't have to both work, and was going go use a nanny for most of the childcare I would ask - why so many kids?

It's not me being sexist, I'm just questioning the idea of having multiple children when neither partner appears to want to spend any substantial amount of time with them. Seems an odd standard to hold up to the rest of us as the way to do it.

I find the argument "why have children if you aren't going to look after them yourself" shortsighted, prim, and usually sexist.

Nobody ever asks a man with long working hours and a SAHM why he bothered having children.

In any case, I didn't procreate to have babies but to add more people to my family. If they are well cared for by someone else while they're tiny and boring then that's what they need, and judging someone's motives based on whether that other person is your wife, your mother, or a professional is splitting hairs. Even a child in full time nursery will be with its primary carers for around forty waking hours each week which is plenty of time to glue macaroni to card or play peekaboo or sing Twinkle Twinkle.

Yes, it's very sexist. We both worked (and work) full time and that can be very good for children. Are those who say a parent at home is fine but someone else not going to explain that? Is it the blood that works so do you object to adoptive parents? Are you happy if it's a granny or is your objection that someone might be paid to do it but then surely a housewife in a sense is paid to do it by her husband so the money cannot be the objection and what suddenly changes when the child is at 3 at nursery school that you're happy to let others share a child?

Love is infinite and children benefit as much from a very involved mother, father and daily nanny or granny as they do from just mother/child 24/7. Indeed I would argue my children's lives have been enhanced by additional stable influences on them not damaged by it. Also look at my 3 in their 20s - I doubt anyone could take a group of their peers and say ah this one had mother or father at home so is psychologically superior or earns more or is better at love than this one where the parents worked.

So by all means stay home as a mother because you are too ill to work or because you prefer it or because you cannot earn more than childcare would cost but don't con yourself it's better for the children.

It's the main carer / person you live with aspect, not deriding adoptive parents or non-parents that are the guardian. The idea that working full time leaves you tired and with quite severe demands on your time, and weekends just disappear to housework/other necessary chores (unless you have a cleaner or staff). Babies do so much in such a short period, and they look to their carer for reward/recognition/support (e.g. first roll, sitting up etc). It's nothing to do with whether that carer is man/woman/blood and all to do with how invested that carer is in the child and the emotional support that comes from that connection - from being family, however your family set up works.
I do appreciate though that many children form deep bonds with their nanny so a top class nanny may be capable of replicating that.

I find 'Why did you have your children?' Is invariably a judgey, offensive and/or nasty enquiry.

I'm surprised someone had a nanny for ten years. Having been a nanny myself, and knowing plenty, and now knowing parents who have them - it's pretty rare they stay two years, let alone ten.

Someone I know recently bought three hens and let their four year old child name them. He named after his three most recent nannies.

If you treat people well they stay. She did stay 10 years and that was in part because when she had her first child we let her bring it to work. When she had her second we let her bring that one to work too. We also spent hours giving her driving practice and helping her pass her driving test etc etc. If you are good to people who work for you they tend to stay. I certainly agree that the stability was nice for all of us. However I don't think the twins who were born later and whose nanny left to have a baby so had a second nanny were damaged. Those babies had two very involved parents, 3 10 - 13 year old siblings and all their friends plus the nanny to look after them. The good care and attention small children gain in large busy families is in my view much better than mother at home 24/7 usually depressed and taking it out on the child at home which is so often the case and so unnatural. It can take a village to build a child and if both parents work full time there is more likely to be that variety of influences on the child.

I expect however we can all agree that if anyone in a child's life is branding it with an iron, smacking it, punishing it all the time, shouting at it or if it has a constant churn of different carers day in day out or 2 years evacuated because of a war or whatever, that tends not to be good for them.