Build a Life Before Making More Life

Most of us no longer live our entire lives on a small family farm, or in the family shop. It is a different matter now to build a nest to raise a family. ANONYMOUS MOTHER IN NORTH CAROLINA wrote in to Dear Abby:

I am a young mother in my early 20s with two young children and another on the way.

LDS in an LDS community? Otherwise this usually doesn't go so well.

I have been married to my high school sweetheart for three years. We have been together since we were young teenagers.

Hmmm.

Both of us come from single-parent families, and our marriage has been less than perfect.

Well, yeah, the odds of marital survival are slim. My guess is you're not LDS. (I'm not, either.)

I work a full-time swing shift.

With what time?

My husband works only a part-time swing shift job.

Ah. Well, if he changed his shift, he could be there more for the kids.

I have asked him to take on another part-time job so we can be more comfortable financially, but he refuses.

Good thinking on your part. Let's make sure your kids never see either of you. Why don't you change your lifestyle so that you can get by on one full-time job? It is because you were both so busy making babies that you (plural) didn't get educated/trained for a career?

He says if I want more money in the household, I will have to get a second job.

Sounds reasonable to me. Look at that! He's bought into the feminist idea of "respecting" you as a career woman.

If it wasn't for our families' free baby-sitting, I don't know how we could afford child care.

So you're letting your parents/siblings raise your kids?

We have no money in the bank, and we are deep in debt.

Yeah, that tends to happen when you get married so young to your high school sweetheart and make three babies.

I feel overwhelmed with too much responsibility and don't know what to do about it.

Change your life around so that you can get by with one person going out of the home to earn the income. The other person can work from home. Other than that, you're pretty much stuck and you can be a good warning to others.

Dear Abby responded:

Start by telling your husband that with a third child on the way, you are in no position to take on another job -- but he is.

So Dear Abby isn't into gender equality?

If he refuses -- and he very well may -- then you will need to think seriously about your and your children's future, and to what degree it includes him.

Oh yeah, because divorce would do such great things for her finances and the kids.

This is who she chose to marry. She chose to make babies. She could have gone off to college, prepared herself to earn, met man with higher earning potential, or waited until this guy started his career. She could have done so many other things. But I know – she loved him. He loved her. And that meant they just had to get married and start having kids when they did.