Letters to the Editor
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How, exactly, is living with your boyfriend since 2001 not "shacking up?"
well, she had a college degree (from Rutgers, I bet!), so that makes her better than trash, and only trash 'shacks up.'
Upper class college grads "wait til we have enough money."
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it seems funny to me
that LW harbors so much anger and blame towards the young pregnant woman, but none towards the 40year old man who impregnated her
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A beloved aunt and uncle died of cancer right before my wedding
My brother had died a year before. Those things focused my mind on the fact that the wedding was not about me, the bride, but about the family. Weddings are one of the few times families can be together without a funeral. People fly in, it's a happy time. Perhaps I have seen too many funerals. I focused on creating a wedding that would allow everyone the easiest time getting there and enjoying themselves.
I think Cary is right, and very gracious. The bride to be LW is being selfish. If the baby is a newborn, she needs to make an exception to the "no kids" rule, or prepare for her inlaws to hate her. A nursing baby needs to eat every 1 1/2 to 2 hours for the first 2- 3 weeks. making the mother choose whether to trust her child with a stranger and deal with bottle feeding or go to your wedding is simply bitchy.
As for trashy, it is in the eye of the beholder.
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Compromises
A wedding is just one day, one party. Stop worrying about the event and think about how to make a life-long marriage work instead.
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I focused on creating a wedding that would allow everyone the easiest time getting there and enjoying themselves.
beautiful
THAT is what weddings are about.
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re: A beloved aunt and uncle died of cancer right before my wedding
my aunt had just had a stroke before my wedding.
She came, unable to speak or control her movements, but overjoyed at seeing her baby brother's last girl marry.
All the pics where her aren't very "pretty," but I tear up remember how happy we all were that she was there.
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@ anonymous pg16:01 (7:32am)
Saying that being a single mother is the lazy choice indicates a complete ignorance of the level of work that goes into raising a child. Without a parent putting in a phenomenal amount of effort on your behalf, you would not have even survived your first few years, let alone gone on to get the three degrees and four languages that you prize so ostentatiously.
The same charge could be leveled at the Letter Writer. This 20-year old knows exactly how much work a baby entails, having gone through it once already. You, Letter writer, reveal that you have no clue, when you use phrases like "playing house." When was the last time you were up four times during the night for the care and welfare of someone totally dependent on you? Comparatively speaking, you are the one who has been "playing house" for the last seven years.
Back to Catalan guy: There is nothing wrong with signing up to be a stay-at-home parent. My wife and I made that choice because we feel it would be best for our children. Many single mothers' sole mistake is in choosing a partner who was not man enough to stick by them when family life got a little challenging. When the one you signed up with runs out on you, there is nothing wrong with finding another one who shares your values a little more reliably. (In this case, brother-in-law really ought to do a little more actual providing, rather than getting his wife on the government dole, but that's a different rant.)
To the extent that a society places more value on monetary achievement than it does on people -- especially on its children, who are its future -- it loses its soul. The double income family is an outgrowth of precisely that aberrant value set. Saying that only mothers who work (presumably outside the home) have any value to society is to say that the raising of children is not in and of itself a worthwhile act. That in turn implies that all the time your mother spent raising you was basically a worthless hobby. Seeing the person that is revealed in your writing, in your case that assessment may not miss the mark by much. I can't help but wonder whether your odious attitude is courtesy of the atmosphere in which you were raised.
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In this case, brother-in-law really ought to do a little more actual providing, rather than getting his wife on the government dole, but that's a different rant.)
i FOUND out that some single mothers do that to get the birth paid for and then marry the baby daddy. Not perfect, but not so immoral, providing for good health care for the baby's birth.
and I found out by -- gasp-- a family member on my in-laws side who had an unexpected pregnancy.
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Cary- you're a Real human being
Thank you Cary a million times over for an excellent reply and for standing up for those of us
who "want to be considered equal with others".I actually got tears in my eyes reading this little paragraph:
"We are the scruffy ones you see at weddings off in the corners, scandalously ill-dressed, smoking or taking drugs to deal with the feeling of exclusion, trying to maintain bravado but feeling the clean and well-scrubbed scorn of the in crowd, feeling as usual not good enough, relegated to the margins. "
Wow -somebody in this yuppified world actually understands that we didn't all come out of the womb with a college fund and the approved family background to set us on the road to upper middleclassdom.Some of us are doing the best we can and poverty and hard times were not our choice, but the hand we've been dealt.To have to deal with the contempt heaped upon us for not being the American success story ( at 20 yet! ) is heartbreaking in the extreme.
Reading the LW's complaint makes me want shoot myself because i'm a worthless human being in the eyes of so many like her, though I never get to really hear them verbalize it ,I see it in their eyes.Again Cary ,thanks for redeeming me and others who actually have no reason to to bear this kind of shame.
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BTW, LW, living with your boyfriend for that long statiscally points -- with almost metaphysical certitude -- to divorce.
Look at the numbers. Wake up. Your "dream day" will be a distant memory after your bitter divorce. But the plus side is then you won't have to worry about your "trashy" relatives.