Dillards 28: A Walk Down Memory Lane

[singsingsing]

I wouldn't put much stock in what kids say they want to be when they grow up. When I was a little kid and I got asked that question, I always said I wanted to be an artist. Why? I don't know. I just thought it sounded cool, I guess. I then moved on to stripper, because it seemed that strippers were people who got paid to dance around naked, and that sounded AWESOME. Of course, unlike the Duggars I opted not to pursue those career paths with full personal freedom of choice. I mean, I realized at a fairly young age that I had no innate artistic ability and that exotic dancing probably wasn't for me, but still.

[BabyBottlePop]

I also believe that when things get unmanageable for JB to support everybody the kids won't go towards education. Those girls will be pulled into MLM crap before they step foot into a minimum wage job. 

[mpheels]

1 minute ago, BabyBottlePop said:

I honestly believe the girls were allowed to pick those career choices but JB and Michelle had no intention of them actually pursuing them. I feel like it's their version of wanting to be a Major League Baseball player or a movie star. It's fun to pretend but we know it'll never happen. 

I agree. Most kids have some type of career aspiration. Most people grow up to do something entirely different, if for no other reasons than the fact that most kids are completely oblivious to the types of careers that exist. I'm sure the Duggarlings were allowed to state their childhood aspirations, and they all had age appropriate goals. For the most part, the girls choices fall within the range of traditional women's work. Jill and Jana did actually pursue their childhood goals, sort of, in a stunted Duggar sort of way.

[onekidanddone]

41 minutes ago, BabyBottlePop said:

I also believe that when things get unmanageable for JB to support everybody the kids won't go towards education. Those girls will be pulled into MLM crap before they step foot into a minimum wage job. 

MLM?

[SamiKatz]

Highly educated people with terrible/bad grammar and writing skills are the reason Admin and Executive assistants must have good grammar and writing skills.

One of the executives I worked for (once again, very smart and well remunerated), constantly misspelled "come", as "cum" in all of his emails.  The admins finally spoke to the Boss of Bosses and said "you might want to speak to him about this".

I'm not sure if the Duggars are lazy and entitled, as much as they have no idea some people need to actually work - outside of a TV show - for a living, since their parents haven't really done so.

 

 

[Lyle Lanley]

1 hour ago, BabyBottlePop said:

I also believe that when things get unmanageable for JB to support everybody the kids won't go towards education. Those girls will be pulled into MLM crap before they step foot into a minimum wage job. 

I think it was speculated that Jill was getting paid to promote products and websites on her Instagram for a while. They'll try and live off that first.

[PennySycamore]

@onekidanddone,  MLM stands for multi-level marketing.  Amway is one classic example.  Essential oils like DoTerra and Young Living  are others.  There are threads in both QFoS and the Rodrigues thread about MLM schemes.

[BabyBottlePop]

1 hour ago, onekidanddone said:

MLM?

Multi-Level marketing, aka usually pyramid schemes. Amway, Jamberry, Herbalife, Mary Kay, LuLaroe

[onekidanddone]

Just now, PennySycamore said:

@onekidanddone,  MLM stands for multi-level marketing.  Amway is one classic example.  Essential oils like DoTerra and Young Living  are others.  There are threads in both QFoS and the Rodrigues thread about MLM schemes.

Ugh Young Living.  A friend of a friend of a friend is in to that.  She used to try to grift me her damn oils and get me to sell them. I told her a million times I was not interested.  Then I started walking away while she was still talking. Maybe she got the hint.

[colliemae]

6 hours ago, VelociRapture said:

Husband and I are one of those fortunate couples - I'm home with the baby by choice. And, honestly, it depends on a lot of factors. The most important of those, I think, is sheer dumb luck. Yeah, we worked hard, made a ton of good choices, and sacrificed to get to this point - but a ton of couples do the same things and still need both parents working to make ends meet. So I'm going with pure dumb luck playing a massive role.

I'm in the opposite position - I'm home with my son sort of against my will. My job didn't pay enough to cover his daycare expenses so, for us, my working is a luxury we can't afford. We had to make one income work.

I love my little guy, but now that he's 2, I'd really love to go back to work. 

[rexasaurus_nirb]

If there are any other statisticians/epidemiologists here, do y'all think of multi-level modeling when you see MLM written out? Just me? Ok then.... 

[mpheels]

11 hours ago, rexasaurus_nirb said:

If there are any other statisticians/epidemiologists here, do y'all think of multi-level modeling when you see MLM written out? Just me? Ok then.... 

Haha! I was exposed to multi level marketing before modeling. When I'm working, I always think about marketing for a second before I process the information as a multi-level model.

[Cheetah]

On April 7, 2017 at 9:56 AM, lomo6 said:

So it sounds like your boss's wife is just living a life of luxury. That has always existed for the privileged few. My paternal grandmother was basically Betty Draper - emotionally distant chainsmoker who did very little "parenting" despite having all the time and money in the world.

In the case of more regular middle class STAHMs whose kids are now in school, I think they generally serve as a sort of catch-all for anything that goes awry in the family (kid gets sick and needs to stay home from school, elderly relative needs a little more help around the house, furnace breaks and maintenance guys say they're coming between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m., etc.)...

But, perhaps a little less generously, they also  manage to  to stretch out the time it takes to do a lot of routine chores and activities that working people might do more quickly or just neglect all together. One relative who's in this category will often tell me about driving 20 miles to use a 10% off coupon, when she could have gone to a store 5 mins away. Sure, maybe she saved $10, but someone working 40+hrs/week would have found that a waste of time.

 

I'm a SAHM with my youngest kid in middle school.  Most of my friends are either SAHMs as well or they work part time, and our kids are all older (college/ high school/ middle school).  It's not THAT rare.  OTOH I know we are fortunate that our family can afford this.  OTOH initially it was actually more affordable for me to stay home than to work part time as adjunct faculty when my oldest was little - daycare cost more than I was making at the time.   I could actually work now but my husband travels a lot for work and regularly has meetings at really weird hours with his global staff so I'm on deck for almost all of the driving kids around, being on call when someone is sick, etc.   I also did a lot of volunteer work in the elementary school when my kids were still there.  Not so much now that they are older.  

When I was a kid my mom worked part-time, but my parents were really frugal and had this concept that a family should live off of just one income, and then invest the 2nd income for long-term savings that could get used for vacations, college, retirement, etc.  I know not everyone can do this.  But it's kind of sad to me that so many families now have to have both parents work, even if they would rather have one of them stay home.  

[Stokstaartje]

On 7-4-2017 at 10:06 PM, mpheels said:

If you go way back to the Raising 16 Kids special, they did identify real career goals for the older girls. Joy = nurse, Jinger = chef, Jessa = beautician, Jill = missionary, Jana = Midwife. 

What makes this extra sad is that these are reasonable dreams to have. There is no reason why any of them could not have become those things if they had propper schooling and a bit of support from home.

Not like they wanted to be astronauts or Olympic swimmers or something.

[nastyhobbitses]

On 4/7/2017 at 4:54 PM, onekidanddone said:

MLM?

Multilevel Marketing. Think Cutco, LipSense, It Works!, Plexus, Amway, Herbalife...basically, people have an inventory of stuff and they sell it to people within their social networks, and recruit more sellers to sell down the line and give them a cut of the profits. I'm sure that in the days before online shopping and more career opportunities for women, it served a purpose and filled a need, but these days, it's just a bunch of shysters getting stay-at-home moms and low-income/underemployed people to buy tons of overpriced crap and harass everyone they know on social media.

It seems very popular in fundamentalist circles because it's a way for women to work and purportedly bring in an income (though turning a profit in an MLM is really only possible if you have incredible hustle and incredible willingness to harass and rip off your friends and family), while keeping up the facade of being a godly stay-at-home mom, and it relies heavily on affinity marketing and social networks, which otherwise isolated fundamentalist women rely on heavily in the absence of coworkers, friends from hobbies outside the home, or schoolmates.

I think it's a very predatory industry.

[PreciousPantsofDoom]

@nastyhobbitses , agree with you about the predatory nature of MLMS, but wanted to sort of defend the Cutco knives.  My BIL sold those as his summer job during University.  What he did was rent a table in a local mall. He spent his whole summer in the Mall demonstrating and selling knives.  Doing it that way meant that he wasn't just mining his social networks (would have had to be his parents friends at that point as his own friends had no money either) and he actually made money. He kept a couple of the "free incentive" knives that the company gave him (I think most people usually turn around and sell them to increase their profits ) and so we got some as wedding presents.  I have to say they are still some of the best knives we have.   

Now, one of my friends daughters tried selling them a couple of years ago (same thing, trying to make money for Uni) and was nowhere near as successful.  She went the route of harassing her social networks to try and get sales and it didn't pay.

In other words, exactly the same conclusion that you said.  MLM can work, but only if you do it full on and run it like a real business.  Trying to sell it to your friends as a thing you do on the side is always going to suck. 

[DaisyD]

Didn't Tupperware used to be sold that way too?

[HarleyQuinn]

Pampered Chef is an MLM but damn some of those products are good lol. I hate admitting that.

 

[HumbleJillyMuffin]

2 hours ago, HarleyQuinn said:

Pampered Chef is an MLM but damn some of those products are good lol. I hate admitting that.

 

DoTerra is also MLM but I have gotten truly amazing results from a few of their products. I hate that I'm supporting an MLM, but in my case I'd rather give money to an MLM for a great product than the pharmaceutical companies. 

[nst]

Melaluca vitamins is also MLM

I was thisclose to trying to sell it.  I do take their vitamins though and use their products.... My mom joined. 

[Greendoor]

@VelociRapture

Michelle was using an IUD not the pill.

I am sure she said this on one of the very early episodes (14  &  I think).  I remember it because the woman across the street in 1981 got pregnant with an IUD in place and she thought she was lucky to have it removed and not miscarry.  Baby was born fine.

 

[marmalade]

6 minutes ago, Greendoor said:

@VelociRapture

Michelle was using an IUD not the pill.

 

No, she was on the pill. 

[Greendoor]

Down the video trail I will go.  

I don't so much hold with the party line they spout now.  In the good old bad old days they just spoke. 

Hmm   14 & preggers - "we had our first and thought we have all....."  the original lie,

15 &  and 16 & see to be missing altogether.

Undetered, I will follow a different path. 

I give up.  I will accept the Wiki version, BC pills it is.

 

[singsingsing]

Michelle was most definitely using the pill. I've never heard anything about Michelle using an IUD. It was the pill.

[marmalade]

If anyone is up to digging into their first book, I'm sure they told the story (for the thousandth time) in it.