Julep: update

In light of yesterday's impassioned post, I thought I should submit an update. Mr. J and I had a productive conversation last night - and a very nice evening together with BabyCakes. We are going to get these kinks worked out.

I was under the impression that the Julep family was moving to an inverted traditional model, in which I would be the breadwinner and Mr. J would be the child-caretaker. Although I knew Mr. J would still work a bit, I saw it as keeping his hand in occasionally and doing what he could after hours, during naps, etc. In other words, a gender-reversed version of the Twinkle family. But I have come to recognize that Mr. J is not content with that model. Even though the income his business generates is a minor part of our household funds, he needs to feel like he is still a "businessman." LoLa referred to this as Mr. J's "feminine mystique moment." God bless him.

So Mr. J was trying to implement the model of a family in which both parents are working more or less full-time. That either means (1) both parents work during approximately the same hours and hire childcare for those hours, a la the LoLa family, or (2) one parent works first shift while the other is on child care duty and then they switch to cover second shift. The second model is one that many people are forced to live with, but that life sucks and I'm certainly not opting for it voluntarily.

in a nutshell, I realized that I was going to be paying for Mr. J's childcare needs one way or the other, either with my time or my money. I care a lot more about my time than I do my money. While financially it makes little sense for us to hire childcare in order that Mr. J can work, when the work he is doing is not going to net much more than the cost of said care, I'm OK with it.