Awwww, so sweet. Thank you.
My anti-feminist rhetoric is [in]famous in some parts.
I have a lot of writing & editing projects lined up this weekend so I will add this one to the list and see what happens.
On a personal note, I have a friend (Keltic Nordic) and her husband (Trønder on the Brünn side) who had a baby not too long ago. The child was born with a heart defect and was rushed into surgery immediately after birth.
Now, this friend of mine was a supervising accountant for very large insurance corporation and earning about 60-70k per year. Her husband earns almost as much so they were living very, very well, as you can imagine.
When the defect in the child's heart was discovered, she put in for an extended leave of absence from work to stay home and care for him. The average American maternity leave of absence is 12 weeks total for both before and after birth. We get a whole whopping month or two to care for our infants - nice. Anyway, after being home for several months she was feeling pressure to return to work because of their dwindling savings account. However, she, with my encouragement and advise [*grin*] decided that it was best that she not work outside the home at all anymore. They sold her Mercedes and bought a less expensive vehicle; they sold the giant house and moved into a lovely but smaller home in a more family-friendly neighborhood; she no longer goes on her legendary spending sprees.
My point? Do I have one, you ask? Of course! My point is that this lovely woman decided that caring for her family
herself was more important than her Mercedes and her AmEx card. Believe me when I tell you that Nicole wasn't the pillar of maternal virtue before she got pregnant. She was a spoiled, self-centered, shoe-crazy brat like many women (including me). It has taken her husband a while to adjust to being the sole financial support for the family and he still has his moments of resentment, but overall he seems happier than he was before and their baby is healthy and growing rapidly.
Okay, maybe I had no point after all.
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