Posted on 01/10/2005 2:10:56 AM PST by kattracks
I would like to give my inlaws some grandkids, but that alone just isn't enough of a reason to have em, given that, as you say, we'd have to raise em and pay for em and all that. My grandma actually advised me personally not to have kids, because my own homelife was such a mess, she said I'd have no basis for correct child rearing. Maybe that's harsh and negative, but I actually took it to heart. Heck, I was such a mess, it took me an extra 7-10 years after high school just to get my own act together (to the extent it is.) Now I'm trying to take care of my financial needs for the future, plus trying to be ready to provide for my inlaws when they get older. Paying off a house, saving for retirement. I'm in decent shape right now. No debt except for 15 yr mortgage. We hope to have the house paid for by age 50. Both of us are savers, so we have emergency cash on hand, plus investments which we pay into monthly for later use. We drive used cars, we shop at Wal Mart, we don't go out very much. If we had a kid, I think we'd be financially stressed, and I'm sorry, I don't want to live like that. As it is, health or other catastrophe can strike at any time and torpedo what little financial security we have.
look for legalized euthenasia of the elderly and anyone else who is 'inconvenient'
"Big Brother" has nothing to do with this. There was no governmental involvement in this exercise in private initiative.
While it is, theoretically, possible that even my own mother could have beaten my babies during an evening of babysitting, it was HIGHLY unlikely. Let's not act as though most of us were just sitting under a lucky cloud that kept our babies safe.
It has always been rare for me to use a babysitter. Those I did use were good friends and experienced mothers. Personally, I would never be comfortable with an infant in one on one nanny care. There is no one around to see what is going on. While a day care facility may bring added germs, there is always more than one adult around. This was a substitute nanny. How do you walk out of your house and leave your baby with a TOTAL stranger?
Heck, my kid's middle school Principal offered to drive him home from school one day (the whole class had missed the bus). I don't care who the heck thought he was such a swell guy that they let him be a Principal, but my kid wasn't getting into a car with him.
You are not being taxed at a 57% rate on 55,000 income.
Pretty cool idea, actually....
Fair enough. The point that I am driving at is that you can't control everyone. How many people have mistaken the kindly neighbor or child's friend's mother for someone safe? You do what you can to protect your kids, but it's not always enough.
There was nothing that I read in the report that suggested these parents didn't check out the temporary nanny before they hired here, or that they didn't have a trial run to see how things went. I have seen reports of women using identity theft to get nannying jobs that they otherwise would never have gotten. Stealing or using someone else's references as their own, and then they have a winning personality upon the first couple of meetings. There is simply not enough information in the article to condemn these parents out of hand as irresponsible me-first people, imo.
You worry too much. Children are costly but I would have just wasted the 400 grand anyway now I have two strapping sons to brag about and catch grief from.
They are kind of like Say's Law anyway wrt money. People with far less resources and gumption than you raise kids with few real problems.
So no more excuses get than Population Explosion exploding.
When my wife was younger, she would voluteer some of her spare time to babysitting kids while the parents were in church on Sunday morning.
That also taught her quite a bit about child behavior. the older ladies tried to stick her with the job of changing diapers and cleaning up afterwards. One call from me to the president of the Ladies Guild took care of that nonsense.
That gave her a pretty good idea on which parents to look up to and who not to. Some folks seem to have it together but the answer is in their kids. Good kids = good parenting, which is nothing nore than more love than the kid can stand and a solid set of rules that don't change as fast as the TV channel does.
If your wife ever wants to have a part time job taking care of the little ones, hospitals and churchs need all the help they can get.
Your tagline says it all, jerk.
I would imagine MAD TV might do a take-off satire of this incident, using Bobby Lee of course (w/ a pillow, explaining Chinese cultural intracacies).
here=her
Hmmmm.
Income tax.
Sales tax.
Property tax.
State income tax.
Gasoline tax.
And the not really a tax taxes:.
Fees.
FICA.
Bond debts.
Costs of regulations.
Special assesments.
Indirect taxes passed on to the consumer:
Tariffs.
Inventory tax.
Compliance costs.
Payroll tax.
57% is probably pretty close. Maybe low?
I'll never forget this one time where a friend of mine asked me to come along with her to pick up her daughter at a preschool. My friend had been having some concerning intuitions about the program, but she wanted an unbiased opinion.
When we arrived, we had to walk through the middle of three classrooms to get to her daughter who was assigned to the 4th room. I will never forget the 2nd room. We were held up for two minutes while workers were vacuuming. Nothing so bad about that, were it not for the fact that this was the infant room, with infants present, with nearly all of the infants strapped into little bouncy seats (on the floor). One worker vacuumed under cribs (one crib held a fairly newborn baby who seemed to have been startled awake & was wide-eyed)while the other vacuumed the main floor area where the babies were seated. That worker went so far as to bump the tip of the vacuum into the sides of the little chairs.
Never have I been someone to stand by and watch something like that, so I stepped forward to make my point by saying, "Would you like me to slide these chairs over so you can vacuum?" The worker stopped vacuuming and she pushed the handle upright, though, she left the vacuum running. She said to us, "May I help you?" and I repeated to her my offer to help *her*. She then said something like she didn't need the help, and then asked us again if we were there for one of the infants. My friend spoke up and said no, that we were just passing through to pick up her child in the last room. The worker then motioned for us to pass over the cord and around the babies, but I stood where I was and asked the worker if she always vacuumed with the babies present. She replied yes...they liked to keep a tidy room, and that in the afternoon, the babies are laid out on blankets for some floor time.
I wasn't born yesterday, and I then asked if she always stopped to speak to parents with her vacuum running, (about 2 feet away from one babies head)to which she replied, "Oh, yes, the babies *love* the white noise."
When we were strapping ourselves into her car a few minutes later, she asked me, "Well, what did you think?" to which I replied, "Are you kidding?"
Good grief.
THANK GOD I WAS NOT A MOTHER THEN.
Immediately.
Unconscious, you know.
What about single parents? Or those who have lost a parent to death? The Single, or surviving parent has to work to provide for the kids...would you rather they stay home and live off welfare?
This FRench Hillary supporter seems to have been flying under the radar here for some time. Check out the FReeppage and the tag line.
She'd never make it to the cops being able to cuffs on her if that was my child.... she'd just disappear.
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