For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for June 02, 2010

Pssshaw. I’m betting John can take a lunch hour at least a few times a week and meet with friends without having the kids interrupting every two minutes. I am constantly surrounded by children and if I do try to meet up with fellow moms, I can barely say three words in a row much less have adult conversation or connection since I have to make sure the kids aren’t destroying anything or hurting themselves or others. I have never felt so isolated and lonely in my life until I had kids. I love the little buggers… but I really miss adults.

And people who work not only get paid but they also get to talk to adults! After a while of doing nothing but chasing kids, you start forgetting how to interact like a normal person. You have to struggle not to congratulate the checkout lady at the grocery store on being able count. A husband might get off work and gets paid, but a stay-at-home-mom never does, and when her husband gets home she gets to take care of him, too!

I hear there are these wonderful husbands who go home after work and actually help with things like dinner and kids, but I think that must be a myth.

Both my son and his wife work ( she gets in first) and when he comes in from work(12hr. days a lot of time) he cooks the dinner.

The world is overpopulated and polluted. I know, let’s have kids. Let them figure out how to eat 40 years from now.

I grow tired of these arguments about who works more or harder or is more deserving. The making friends bit all depends on what kind of job you have – a dentist probably has lots of idle chatter with patients – probably all the same conversations over and over again. Conversation with employees probably isn’t that stimulating, either, and ,most likely isn’t about all the deeper things in life.

As to money, yes, they bring home the paycheck but that doesn’t mean a thing - it’s community property, and the pay earner generally gets no more than the stay-at-home parent.

As for me, I work full time, my wife 10 hours a week. Our kids are teenagers. I cook breakfast every morning, do my own laundry, do the garbage (with the boys) and cook dinner about once a week. (We don’t have a lawn to mow).

cdward: I agree, it is tiresome seeing the continuous argument. No one wins, everyone becomes aggravated, and no one goes home happy…

Let’s all agree to disagree…

Thanks ejcapulet and Mirthiful, I am having one of those mornings with the 1, 3 and 5 year old. Funny how we have the time for friends, but can’t stop watching/helping the kids long enough to have a 5 minute adult conversation (I have no adult friends now), and yet a dentist probably can’t take a proper lunch.

Am I lucky and love my kids? Definitely! Am I lonelier for adult friends than ever before? Every age and situation has its pluses and minuses.

There is really no “agreement” to come to in the argument, but it’s always good for each of us to be aware of our blessings and the other person’s issues, as well as to vent about our own.

As a grandmother of two and a stay home mom to three, I look back at the years I spent when my kids were little as the best years and a real joy. My kids are now grown and they turned into beautiful people. I wish every parent had the option to raise their children and stay home whether it was dad or mom. Friends you can make anytime, children are forever.

Having been both a stay at home parent and someone who works full time while my spouse stays at home, as well as someone who worked part time, I can say that for me anyway, there is no absolute better option. No one has it easier if you are both functioning and focused on family. As for the final comment, what I’ve learned the hard way is that it isn’t about having time to make friends, it’s about making time to have friends.

Didn’t Lynn Johnston’s REAL husband make a REAL friend of his dental assistant?

One of the things that helped me during the years when my kids were small, were the daily phone calls with my mom. She’d raised more kids, and babysat her widowed sister’s kids for a while, so she knew what it was like. Every young mother needs a mentoring woman who can help her deal with the stress. Our Sunday School class which consisted of several young families with mostly “stay-at-home” moms would plan an outing every so often, andt we could bring our kids along. The children played together (and most of them knew each other already from their classes at church) while us moms visited. We were interrupted occasionally by our kids, but not too often. When my oldest was school age, we joined homeschooling “support groups”. Sometimes they were field trips, sometimes cooperative classes, sometimes just socialization. Moms who stay home with their kids need to have interaction with adults who understand. Both our SS class & homeschooling groups had get-togethers that included the dads, too. Guys do have a more difficult time finding friends outside of work, and if the friends are AT work, many times work politics ruin a good friendship. We all need friends besides our spouse, but they need to be people who have like values. (Unlike John & his friend, Ted.)

When my kids were little and I was a full time stay at home mom, I really missed talking to adults. There were long stretches of days when my most meaningful adult conversations usually ended with the other adult saying, “And here’s your change ma’am. Have a nice day.”

I’m avoiding this one like the plague. LOL

That’s right… This horse has been beaten to a pulp. Everyone works hard. But now that I’ve transitioned from a working mom to a stay-at-home mom, I can say that I miss adult conversation the most.

Thank you howtheduck, FBOFW Historian! I am definitely going to check out that interview too. :-)

I love (and hate) how people keep reading their own lives into this strip.

My husband has way more friends than I do (and he doesn’t think he has enough). I don’t care if I have friends as I’m a loner and friends are just complicated. My family are my friends :)

I’m fed up with feminist lies. Good bye.

Our lives today are still better than those of our mothers. My mom never worked after marriage, did not enjoy motherhood, and really didn’t have much of a life at all – unless she wanted to be friends with the neighbors or my dad’s truck driving colleagues.

As a professional person, I have a much richer life – tho I never had kids. I have many interests and friends – all of which would have been denied my mom.

So if you’re fed up with “feminist lies” – go away and don’t read what you consider to be lies. Too many of us have seen both sides.

joanalos, you’d probably rather want to live before women got the right to vote too, since you hate feminists so much…

dkmfwtx, I know! No sense of reality, so nobody else is allowed to comment on the strip itself in peace.

I’m single, but I knew a mom from work who shed tears over NOT being able to be home with her kids. She hated leaving them in a day-care center, but on just her husband’s salary they weren’t able to make ends meet.