Another Dear Prudence trainwreck

Dear Prudence is rife with women who become shadows of the women they once were before sprogging. From this week's column:


Dear Prudence,
I am in my late 20s, and my husband is a caring and attentive man. He has happily supported me for several years while I attended graduate school and now while I am a stay-at-home mom. My problem is, I feel completely overwhelmed by our daily life. Sometimes I feel resentful that he gets to go to an office all day while I am stuck at home with an autistic preschooler and a six-month-old baby, and other times I feel horribly guilty that he works hard all day and I still ask him to help with the housework at night. I'm at the point where it's difficult to shower three times a week. My husband says my standards are too high and that I expect too much of myself. I do a lot of therapeutic "floor time" with my special-needs child, which I consider vital. I use cloth diapers and make all my own baby food. I just don't understand how a mother can justify cutting corners when it comes to her kids. My husband is worried about my inability to hold things together and says I need more "time off," which is problematic with a nursing baby and would put me even further behind with my housework. He and I have not been on a date in months. It's hard to find a babysitter able to watch an autistic child. My husband has also suggested having a maid in once a week, but I don't believe that we can afford it. He says he doesn't care if the house is messy, as long as the kids are taken care of, but I know the constant chaos of our lives bothers him. Sometimes I feel like I'd be doing my family a favor by leaving and letting someone more capable take my place, but I know I could never do that because it would break my heart.

—Lady Sisyphus

Prudie's advice was so-so. She urges Lady Sissyfits to seek counseling/autism support groups. I agree with her that the cloth diapering and ho-made baby food should stop.

As a woman also in my late twenties, I find it mind boggling that someone would actually CHOOSE this life. Granted, I doubt this woman knew what she was getting into when she decided to make babies. But how does one go from graduate school to SAHM?!? WTF? I don't get it.

This woman is CLEARLY a perfectionist over achiever type who would have probably done extremely well and thrived in a career of her choice. She is obviously a closet childfree who succumbed to societal pressures. Her husband sounds like a good guy and is probably sick to his stomach that she ruined their lives with this babymaking nonsense. The fact that she has desires to leave and let someone else do it just re-enforces my idea that she was NOT cut out for this mind numbing bullshit. She probably feels like a failure because this Polly home maker and Donna Reed act do not satisfy or fulfill her and she has been told for decades it's The Most Important Job In The World.

If only she had the foresight to realize that being a Stepford Wife isn't for everyone. She is the type who might either suicide, or take the kids down with her because she has NO HOPE, what so ever of being happy in this environment. This one is sad and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. She has literally wasted her life, education, ruined her marriage, (and likely her body) and any chance of real happiness she might ever have, short of those kids going away.

"I'm at the point where it's difficult to shower three times a week."

She does sound like a perfectionist as kidlesskim said, but if Dad's home at night, I see no reason she can't hop in there. Takes me 5-10 minutes for a good, scrubby shower. She should give at least that much of a break to herself.

Cloth diapers are better (cheaper, more environmentally friendly) than disposable ones, and we are always ragging on moos who feed their kids ONLY chicken nuggets and mac and cheese, so why the sudden about face and "The ho-made food has got to stop?"

Seems we have hypocrites among our own ranks.

That being said (and I'll be gone all weekend so flame away on me), it seems that this woman has it all and has NOTHINg to complain about, so she's inventing things.

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"I have learned that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everyone off is easy and fun as hell"

:eatu

I think she's making excuses for some sort of weird martyrdom/self-gratification. "See how hard I'm working?" If the husband says they can get a maid, get a fucking maid.

she is deliberately making everything way too hard as a way of avoiding something else. Saying it's exclusively for the best for the ccchhhhiilllddrreeen is a lie. Period.

Rose Red Wrote:
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> she is deliberately making everything way too hard
> as a way of avoiding something else. Saying it's
> exclusively for the best for the
> ccchhhhiilllddrreeen is a lie. Period.


This.

Ok, she's got 16 conscious hours in a day just like the rest of us. Even if each of three meals a day took an hour each, she still has 13 hours left. Even if cleaning and dressing the two lumps twice a day takes 2 hours total, she still has 11 hours left. A trip to one store a day is an hour. If she goes to the bathroom for 7 pees and one crap a day, that's still 9.5 hours left. Bedtime story takes 10 minutes, a chat on the phone with grandma takes 20 minutes. Hmm.

What the FUCK is she DOING cleaning her house for 9 hours a day?!

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"The death of creativity is a pram in the hallway"
- Cyril Connolly

It puzzles me how ANYONE who has sprogged can even begin to pretend that they are "green" or that they give a SHIT about the environment in any shape form or fashion. They can wash cloth diapers for 10 years, using extra energy and creating waste while doing so, wash out and recycle coke cans the greater part of their adult lives, have a yard full of goats rather than run a lawn mower, sweat like pigs in the summer rather than use air conditioning, ride bicyles to work, and carpool with the neighbors to shop every week, and they STILL won't counter act the waste that one human sprog will create or change the fact that ONE sprog (and of course many have multiples) will use more energy in their lifetime than any amount of conservation on their parts can balance.

The BEST way to help "save the planet" is not to have babies. No babies= no waste and no energy used. That woman is wasting personal time and energy doing all of that shit because she has already created WAY more of an ecological problem (s) than anything she could ever do will fix.