Comments on: I Have It All

By: Amy@UWM

Amy@UWM — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 13:43:30 +0000

It’s a really interesting question — what does “having it all” really mean? There’s the conventional/societal definition which is essentially to hold down a full time job of your dreams while deftly balancing your family life. But when the women of my generation were told we could “have it all,” it was assumed that we would be happy and fulfilled while balancing everything. But we quickly realized that the reality of “having it all” didn’t quite match that assumption. It takes alot of work and frankly money to achieve some semblance of sanity, much less happiness.

By: daisyfae

daisyfae — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:39:28 +0000

it always struck me that men generally don’t feel compelled to defend their choice to work – but seem more inclined to defend a decision to be a ‘stay home dad’… any role outside ‘traditional’ must trigger that response.

By: anniegirl1138

anniegirl1138 — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:23:35 +0000

That’s interesting. I was just me for so long that I didn’t delegate much in my first marriage and that is not the case now. Maturity and the ability to trust are great things.

By: Dawn

Dawn — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:25:05 +0000

Your trouble with the built-in vac and the way you handled it really struck me. I found myself more and more often not making decisions, but handing them off. Ever since I realized that I was doing this (not because anyone asked me to relinquish my decision-making abilities! was I just getting lazy? complacent? doubting my abilities?), I’ve been super-diligent about solving problems myself whenever possible (and, yes, sometimes solving a problem does mean calling a repair person.)

By: silverstar98121

silverstar98121 — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:14:52 +0000

I never did the mommy thing, worked my whole married life, and had a husband who was useless with tools and finances. I would have loved some help. I still have to mostly do it myself, but at least now I have The Boyo to do some of the mechanical stuff that’s beyond me.

The car salesman only pulled that “hubby” crap on me once. My income was separate, and I was relying on my income to buy the car. My husband had nothing to say about it. And he wasn’t going to drive it either. I have gone into a dealership, and spent considerable time looking at cars, kicking tires, climbing in, etc., and had three salesMEN who were shooting the bull completely ignore me. Fortunately I wasn’t ready to buy, but I probably wouldn’t buy from that dealership, anyway. I actually had a car salesman want to drive when I went on a test drive. Had to point out to him that it was a test DRIVE, not a test RIDE. That was twenty years ago, I would have thought they would have evolved by now.