Not to hijack the thread, but what sort of degree prevents you from getting a job in another field (especially something as simple as pizza delivery)? Are you talking simply being overqualified (people reluctant to hire you because they suspect you won’t stay around)?
I kind of want to make sure my kids don’t pursue this degree…
I’m just chiming in to say that I can’t fathom putting a child in daycare if there has been a non-working spouse in the house for over a year. Money aside, I can’t understand why he wouldn’t want to spend that time with his child.
You actually can’t get this degree anywhere in the United States any more; it’s a 5-year Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy. About 15 years ago, all the schools transitioned to (or did from the outset; they’re springing up like poisonous mushrooms) the 6-year Pharm.D. degree, which is now expanding to 7 or even 8 years for the schools that require a bachelor’s degree first.
It’s also a field that people almost never leave voluntarily, and is so oversaturated, some pharmacists who are licensed in good standing are working as technicians, with tech pay which is generally just above minimum wage, just so they will have a job. :eek: In recent years, it’s morphed into something I don’t recognize, and I just don’t want to do it any more. The support I’ve had from professional colleagues, both IRL and online, has been 100%.
Half-day preschool makes sense. All-day, full-time day care does not.
You know, I love my kid a lot, but one, a good daycare will provide a lot more education and socialization than I will ever be able to on my own, and two, even I get tired of reading The Little Engine that Could to him by the 17th reading that day.
For the thread in general, it seems to me that anytime someone adds the disclaimer “and don’t tell me to leave him/her because I won’t”, whatever follows will be a bunch of good reasons to leave whoever it is.
As a husband, I’d give him a 4. He seems to be fine as a house-husband except for what appears to be a very serious addiction to the internet. I suspect online gaming.
If this was a wife, as in Astro’s rewording, I would give her an 7 - still has an internet problem. Heck, that was the norm for all moderately well off woman when I was younger. If the family couldn’t afford for the wife to stay home while the kids were in school then the man just wasn’t pulling his weight.
This isn’t true at all. As one of the most obnoxious feminists on this board, I’ve more than once agreed that a stay at home wife should cook, clean, and take care of the kids if that’s what their agreement is.
A good friend’s husband was out of work and going to school to finish his degree for a while. He cleaned the whole house, took care of their dogs, ran all the errands, arranged payment on all the bills, did the grocery shopping, and cooked the meals while she worked all day. This isn’t something notable, it was what they agreed would work for them— and it did. I have friends where the wives are the ones who stay home all day and they have the similar expectations.
It’s only sexist or misogynistic if the woman is being forced into that situation. People-- men and women-- can choose to be “stay at home spouses” and that’s a perfectly acceptable way of doing things so long as both partners agree to it. It sounds to me that the OP’s husband is leeching for a free ride-- maybe due to depression, maybe he’s just a jerk.
Well said.
No, you’re allowed to appreciate that your spouse is attractive and cooks well. Doesn’t matter if they are a man or a woman, that’s ok. I rather liked that my ex boyfriend had great abs and made bomb lemon chicken— he liked my tits and the piccata I made. Neither one of us were minimizing the humanity or equality in the relationship of either of us because of these facts. Relationships are the sum of the whole, not just each individual part.
Good thing you know what we think better than we do. What do we, the Jezebel brigade call that? Ah, yes: *mansplaining. *
Anyway, OP, as it stands, if I were in your shoes, your husband would be a solid 2 in my book, quickly dropping.
Most children under five get plenty of socialization and education from a part-time preschool. Everyone has different opinions on the matter, but pulling our kids out of daycare was the best decision we ever made.
Just a quick note: I’ve known three different couples in which one spouse asked the other to go to couples counseling, and the request was refused, so the first spouse went alone. In all three cases, divorce occurred within a year.
I don’t know cause and effect there. But if you suggest marriage counseling, please be sure he realizes how serious it is. Not through hints or innuendo or oblique references. Say something like, “I can’t continue being married to you under the current conditions. We’re in a crisis. I desperately want you to come to counseling with me, and if you don’t, that will jeopardize our marriage.”
2? 2? How are you coming away from this with a solid “2”?
Guess I could see 2.25, but 2???
:p:D
Fine, we’ll meet in the middle: 2.25.
I don’t know. He sure sounds like a quickly-dropping solid number two to me.
I’d say the first step might be to get him in for a physical, and mention to the doc his apparent depression. Tell the doc what you think of as the depression symptoms. After that, then counseling would be in order. He has his good points and his bad - we all do. But since the good points are getting less and less and the bad are increasing, you need to do what you can to salvage the marriage and both your happiness and his.
After this, if he’s not willing to take the steps necessary to improve your marriage, then you have to look at whether you want to stay together.
I’d rate him a 3, graded on a curve because I think he has depression.
StG
Wait. What? I take my dogs to the doctor. You can take your spouse to the doctor? No joke…I’m befuddled here.
It’s quite possible that he knows full well that he’s not contributing as he should, but that this knowledge tends to make him more depressed rather than motivating him to change.
This seems like a weird question to be asking a bunch of strangers on an internet message board.
I just can’t take this thread title seriously.
But he’s not fine as a house-husband - he doesn’t look after the household stuff like the stay-at-home spouse should be doing so the working spouse doesn’t have to worry about it or do it.
I also think he is using humor (tesseract said repeatedly he is making her and the kid laugh) as a means to deflect any serious talk. Tesseract, if you mention this and ask him to put the jokes aside if you want to discuss things seriously, would that work? Otherwise your relationship suffers from what this great book calls “Off-the-table-itis” and that is insidious because it impairs the self-healing capacity of a relationship. “Off-the-table-itis” can occur when a request for a serious talk is met by a flat-out refuse to talk about it, or by fights, or by deflection with jokes, or by “we’ll talk about it another time”- and that time never comes.
Based on the husband rating scale being used here I’m at least a 20. I suspect if you spoke to my wife you’d adjust the scale.
He sounds like an immature man-child. I’d give him a 3.