Anna T husband unemployed again?

[YPestis]

Anna T latest post: ccostello.blogspot.com/2013/02/just-some-random-thoughts-on-quiet.html.

It vaguely allude to personal difficulties and past regrets. She then mentions reading "Possum Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and with (Almost) No Money". In between the lines, I wonder if her husband is unemployed again. She's mentioned in recent posts that they are experiencing financial difficulties. Her husband was unemployed for a while four years ago, forcing Anna to---gasp----find a job which EXHAUSTED Anna since it was two days a week! I don't know if their financial circumstances forced her to reconsider having more kids but if it did, she's way smarter than most other fundies we know.

Anyway, out of all the fundies we know, I think Anna T is most likely to turn fundie-lite because of her secular background, her education, and her ability to change her fundie stance when things didn't work out for her (ie using birth control once she realized that's a better situation for her). If she is once again experiencing unemployment, I wonder if she's considering finding a job again to keep food on the table. Maybe this time, her husband will be a bigger help and offer to pick up some of her chores since she's picking up his workload?

I don't wish unemployment on anyone, but I really hope that someone as intelligent as Anna T will take this chance to rethink her attitudes about working mothers, gender roles, the importance of education for women. After all, nothing turns traditional roles on its head than when a breadwinner husband loses his job.

[Daisy]

It sounds like he might be. I wonder what in particular her regrets are? I'm glad she apparently changed her mind about birth control. That perpetually exhausted woman was in no way cut out for a large family

[bsue]

I've always wondered if working outside the home truly exhausted her so much, or if it was partly (or mostly?) exaggeration in service of her propaganda - another way to go on and on about how women aren't suited to work away from home, and if they do then they won't have enough energy to properly care for their home and children.

I have the sense that she fled into fundamentalism because of a need for stability and straight, sure answers because of something in her childhood/family life, but she seems to have left herself some breadcrumbs to get out in terms of her education. I have to laugh a bit, though, about that fact that she's gone back on some of the things she's written in terms of having many children, but that hasn't stopped her from blazing ahead with judgmental, smug screeds about working women, etc. You'd think it might occur to her that if her opinion could change on one thing it might change on others.

[mostlylurking]

I don't remember now what gave me this impression, but I thought that her husband was the one who decided they should slow down on having kids.

[SamuraiKatz]

Found an blog with a snippet of "Possum Living"

chillyjr.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/living-well-without-a-job-and-with-almost-no-money/

and another snippet...and interview with the author

It sounds like you were a very mature teenager. Most teenagers want to run around with their friends and smoke cigarettes or something. Did you have that sort of desire?

Because I was given a mature position so early, I ended up rebelling kind of late—I would say in my 20s. And my rebellion was becoming more normal. In other words, I went to college, I got a job, I got a car. It’s hard to rebel when you’ve got your own still! You’ve got to go the other way to rebel.

vice.com/read/live-freed-or-die-298-v17n1

Maybe the j'slaves need a still?

edited to break the link

[Shirley MacLaine]

Wait... Anna T is on birth control? I am really out of the loop. I'm regretting not coming on FJ for months.

[mostlylurking]

I don't remember now what gave me this impression, but I thought that her husband was the one who decided they should slow down on having kids.

Actually, I think it might've been this post, as well as her last comment on the thread:

ccostello.blogspot.com/2012/10/private.html

Also in another post she says

Finally, I don't think it's about "demanding" from a woman that she should raise a large family of children, or deciding it's something each and every one should do. It is a private matter, which is between you, your husband and the Almighty.

I think there were some other things too. Reading between the lines I get the sense either her husband wanted to slow it down, or at least is supportive of a slowdown enough for her to use him as her "out." As in "Oh I totally wanted to have a new baby every year, but I guess I'll just have to submit to my husband and relax some..."

[salsa]

I've always wondered if working outside the home truly exhausted her so much, or if it was partly (or mostly?) exaggeration in service of her propaganda - another way to go on and on about how women aren't suited to work away from home, and if they do then they won't have enough energy to properly care for their home and children.

I have the sense that she fled into fundamentalism because of a need for stability and straight, sure answers because of something in her childhood/family life, but she seems to have left herself some breadcrumbs to get out in terms of her education. I have to laugh a bit, though, about that fact that she's gone back on some of the things she's written in terms of having many children, but that hasn't stopped her from blazing ahead with judgmental, smug screeds about working women, etc. You'd think it might occur to her that if her opinion could change on one thing it might change on others.

That (the bolded). She tends to be hyperbolic when depicting the so-called modern life she doesn't want to have. It's like commercials for kitchen gadgets - they show someone having all sorts of difficulty doing something simple like draining pasta, and then show how much better pasta-draining is with the gadget. She does that with lifestyle depictions. Aside from that, she also was in her first trimester with Tehilla when she worked, and the first trimester for many women is tiring. I can imagine Anna, who's always seemed to me to have perfectionistic tendencies, still fussing over the cooking and cleaning after work* and feeling more tired than her usual low-energy self.

It seems she thought the strict roles would offer her peace, but the reality is harder than she imagined. Her naivete is wearing off and maybe with that, her rigidity will soften some.

* in a more recent post, she mentioned how she likes things put away and orderly, where her husband is something of a magpie (my words, not hers), so it's conceivable that even if he did pick up some of the domestic work, it wasn't done to her satisfaction and she re-did it.