Dillards 34: Finding Contentment

[Greendoor]

7 hours ago, 2manyKidzzz said:

I just wonder for Jill how it will be back in SCA with two small children and no help from her family. And then thee or four children. And more. Overwhelming.

And Jinjer won't have help like Jessa does. It will also be not what she expected or ever visualized, always having so many people around to help with a baby and avoid the solitude thing.

Just musing.

Her mother-in-law lives locally.  Jinger can get along just fine I would think.

[flycat]

1 minute ago, Greendoor said:

Her mother-in-law lives locally.  Jinger can get along just fine I would think.

I am pretty sure that the Vuolos live in PA.

[VineHeart137]

6 minutes ago, flycat said:

I am pretty sure that the Vuolos live in PA.

Yes, I believe this is correct.

[Greendoor]

Well, I managed ok.  There are mom and tot groups if she's lonely.  Perhaps they could learn Spanish together.  Does their church have a group?

 

[Imagine20]

FWIW, under federal law, Americans aren't entitled to ANY paid time off sick, vacation, or otherwise. They can also be fired for almost any reason (there are federal protections for certain classes of people). Most people who work hourly service jobs already live paycheck to paycheck and many of them make minimum wage, which is $7.25 per hour, but may be somewhat higher in certain states or cities. Taking an unpaid day off could mean financial disaster, not to mention a lost job.

[calimojo]

9 hours ago, Lurky said:

Like @Grimalkin I also feel for Jill.  I dislike her, but I really feel for her.  She's the one of the older daughters who wanted to study, and was denied, and seems to genuinely believe it all, but is continually hurt by it.  She bought into being a sister-mom, she felt it was her duty to chide her sisters, she tried to be cheerful about not being able to study... She really believed her parents' bullshit, especially the bullshit that they were going on missions, and she wanted to be the best Christian she could be, in the context of their weird cult.

And now she's in this difficult situation because she followed their beliefs, and it's this struggle for her.  I hate that she was the one who helped her parents oppress her siblings - but she's the one it's all rebounded on most, and I really believe she thought she was doing what God wanted.  All those huge smiles that never met her eyes, and hiding to eat, and giving up her dreams because "women don't work", and now she's in a life that patently doesn't suit her, and the only advice from the cult is to "pray harder".

This is beautifully written.  I especially reacted to your line that she was the one that seemed to genuinely believe it all only to be continually hurt by it. 

 

and yes,  as someone pointed out she voted for Trump or likely did.  But honestly,  who else would she have voted for?  Her entire life has been controlled by someone else and in addition to controlling her behavior they have made significant attempts to control her thought life too.  She would not even have the capacity to consider voting against someone her husband and family support. Not yet anyway. 

Something is off with either Jill or the baby.  Baby looks decent in the posted photos except for a bit of extra monitoring, so it would seem as if perhaps the issue is with Jill.  I hope we are all wrong.  Maybe JB is playing this for publicity.  It would seem that if there were an issue they would have posted something asking for prayers, but I also think it is likely they have their own private Social Media that only their friends and family see.  Perhaps they are sharing their concerns on there. 

Too bad we don't have any insiders on here that might know the scoop.  Not in a gossipy way but because I think that those of us who have watched this show from the beginning can't help but be truly concerned for Jill.  She may not be the fan favorite that Jessa is or even Jinger, but it is hard not to be compassionate and concerned about a young woman we have watched grow up. 

[just_ordinary]

Reading this I just can't. In Germany pregnant woman can only work six weeks before giving birth with a special permition. Everyone else stays at home. After birth your employer isn't allowed to employ you at all till 8 weeks later, if you have twins or if the baby is premature it is 12 weeks. You don't get a full salary but your health insurance pays a so called maternity benefit (calculated on your net salary off the last three months) which can't be more than 13€ per day AND your company pays the difference to your net salary.

The second you tell your company you are pregnant you can't get fired/terminated till for months after birth. Of course they can demand a doctors attest. A contract that expiring in that time it doesn't have to be extended. Since this May you are also protected from getting terminated for some time after experiencing a miscarriage after twelve weeks. There of course some very few and extreme cases where you can get terminated but this will most definitely go to court to make sure it was legal.

After the maternity protection period there are several options how to take maternal and paternal leave. If both parents take time off, there are options  up to 14 months for both which can be at the same time or for the whole 14 month period. In this case the father has to take more than two months. IIRC you are even allowed to work up to 30h in that time. There are many different options how to organise this time and you don't have to take a leave if you don't want to. If you take it you are protected against termination again like while being on maternal protection. You don't get paid by your employer but by the government. It is at least 300€ per month and max. 67% of your average net salary of the last twelve months or 1800€ per month (no way we are  paying a big CEO 67%).

[Coy Koi]

12 hours ago, SoSoNosy said:

When my oldest was about two, I was looking for a new job; in those days it was totally legal for the hiring company to ask you if you planned to have more children,  I answered "yes".  My employment agency yelled at me for that; I was supposed to lie and say "no";I  didn't get the job because I had told the truth.  I didn't have another one until she was six.

When my mom told her employer she was pregnant, they immediately started treating her just terribly (I mean really cruel) and trying to invent reasons to fire her or make her quit, when before that they loved her. It was like flipping a switch and they didn't even try to hide it. This was a large company and her having a baby wasn't going to single-handedly drive it into the ground or anything.

She was very smart and immediately requested copies of all her records from HR, including a glowing performance review that had just been done. Then she hired a lawyer and sued them for sexual harassment (evidently pregnancy discrimination does or did count as sexual harassment in our state). She ended up getting a settlement that covered the amount of her salary for the remainder of her pregnancy and postpartum period. All of this in 1980 from a conservative young woman who absolutely hates making waves! My mom is such an enigma sometimes. But I'm very proud of her for taking care of business. And fuck that company. I bet they thought twice the next time an employee had the unmitigated nerve to become a mother.

[MadeItOut]

4 hours ago, Imagine20 said:

FWIW, under federal law, Americans aren't entitled to ANY paid time off sick, vacation, or otherwise. They can also be fired for almost any reason (there are federal protections for certain classes of people). Most people who work hourly service jobs already live paycheck to paycheck and many of them make minimum wage, which is $7.25 per hour, but may be somewhat higher in certain states or cities. Taking an unpaid day off could mean financial disaster, not to mention a lost job.

How does that work then? - I'm just curious because it's so different to anything I know (all my employee work was in UK before I was self employed. I've only ever worked self employed/subcontracted here).

I'm guessing there's a lot of turnover in bottom-mid range jobs? ...but then, I never thought you guys had as strong a TU system as elsewhere, so how does a person get on in their career? - and how does high school careers advice work?

Sorry for all the questions. This stuff genuinely fascinates me.

[nastyhobbitses]

53 minutes ago, MadeItOut said:

How does that work then? - I'm just curious because it's so different to anything I know (all my employee work was in UK before I was self employed. I've only ever worked self employed/subcontracted here).

I'm guessing there's a lot of turnover in bottom-mid range jobs? ...but then, I never thought you guys had as strong a TU system as elsewhere, so how does a person get on in their career? - and how does high school careers advice work?

Sorry for all the questions. This stuff genuinely fascinates me.

Honestly, it's all pretty damn Dickensian.

[Lurky]

@calimojo Thank you.  It feels like there's no win for the 2nd generation Fundies.  Leave and there's the shunning, and trying to build a life in a world they've been excluded from, without the skills almost everyone else grows up.  Stay, and it's a struggle, and dooming their kids to an even worse life.

[Queen]

Reading all your pregnant employee stories makes me feel once again like Americans are living in some kind of dystopian, alternative reality. The US is supposed to be an industrial, western world country, damnit! Are you guys, like, okay? Need some hugs? 

[Minionmayhem]

3 hours ago, Queen said:

Reading all your pregnant employee stories makes me feel once again like Americans are living in some kind of dystopian, alternative reality. The US is supposed to be an industrial, western world country, damnit! Are you guys, like, okay? Need some hugs? 

It's something else in business. Once I alerted my company that I would need to take off an hour a month for appointments they distanced themselves. I was up for promotion, and they decided to hire outside the company. The gent they hired lasted a whopping 3 days and left in tears. Literal, sobbing tears, but they left the position open and had me do the work until after I came back from maternity leave. 

My leave was unpaid and they made it known that they were doing me a favor by not firing me. Once I returned they offered me the position, but would not pay me the same compensation they had paid the man they tried to fill the position with months earlier. That is when I left. 

[WiseGirl]

5 hours ago, MadeItOut said:

How does that work then? 

It doesn't,  imo. There are articles on minimum wage and the high turnover rate, USA's dead last in maternity care of developed nations, and the working poor. Many Americans are one paycheck away financial disaster at any time. Whoever said Dickensian had it correct, again imo..

[Timetostoplurking]

Just a little ray of sunshine....Minneapolis just passed a $15.00/hr minimum wage. City-wide. It will be fazed in over a few years.  So things may be looking up.  A bit....   Sort of......

[PainfullyAware]

Wow, this thread really paints a picture of income inequality and gender discrimination for women in the US. If you are a single mom earning minimum wage, who also has to pay for childcare immediately after giving birth (and maybe risk losing your job for having kids), and has to pay too much for health insurance  ( if you even have it)... how can you ever achieve financial security? I think the US has the highest rate of child poverty in general and among families headed by a single mother specifically.

I know that Christian conservatives often say that marriage is the antidote to the disproportional poverty among single mothers. The real reason is the lack of social welfare programs for childcare and economic regulations that prevent gender discrimination in pay.

For ex this study found "our rigorous examination of the distributional effect of children by living arrangements confirms earlier analyses, suggesting that overall differences between countries in market outcomes and, more than anything else, in antipoverty effectiveness of tax and transfer policies contribute most to the U.S. childhood poverty gap with other countries."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831375/

[FakePigtails]

5 hours ago, Queen said:

Reading all your pregnant employee stories makes me feel once again like Americans are living in some kind of dystopian, alternative reality. The US is supposed to be an industrial, western world country, damnit! Are you guys, like, okay? Need some hugs? 

What's extra awful is how many people, even women, support the status quo:

"How can businesses afford to pay for paid leave??? They shouldn't have to pay someone to not work!!!" A: They wouldn't! Taxes, yo!

"But I wanted to go back to work well before a year!" A: Good thing you could still do that if you wanted!

"But the other employees shouldn't have to do extra work while the parent is on leave!" A: That's why you make the leave long enough to hire a temp worker, and then you get the added benefit of a whole new market of jobs for people starting their careers to get more experience.

So. Freaking. Maddening. 

[justoneoftwo]

1 hour ago, Minionmayhem said:

It's something else in business. Once I alerted my company that I would need to take off an hour a month for appointments they distanced themselves. I was up for promotion, and they decided to hire outside the company. The gent they hired lasted a whopping 3 days and left in tears. Literal, sobbing tears, but they left the position open and had me do the work until after I came back from maternity leave. 

My leave was unpaid and they made it known that they were doing me a favor by not firing me. Once I returned they offered me the position, but would not pay me the same compensation they had paid the man they tried to fill the position with months earlier. That is when I left. 

I work in law.  I was fired at 6 months pregnant because the firm didn't have enough work.  It was a small firm and I get that they were struggling, so why not fire the person you promised paid leave to?  

I'm the breadwinner in the family, it was extremely hard and no one hires someone who is in the last trimester of pregnancy . . . So that was super stressful.  

[Daisy0322]

29 minutes ago, PainfullyAware said:

I know that Christian conservatives often say that marriage is the antidote to the disproportional poverty among single mothers. 

The real antidote that would help is making fathers more accountable.

For exsample; my mom works in an office for a contractor and she has to schedule everyone. 70% of the crew guys complain to her that if they work more than a certain amount of hours each week they'll have to pay more child support. She will ask them if it lowers their overall income (that they keep) if their child support goes up, and they said no it at least breaks even and then follow up with something about how they don't want to be sending money to a kid they didn't want. I'm not saying this is every guy but it is a trend and seeming to get more socially acceptable, I see it even with my cousins and their children's fathers. They never want to see them once they get a new girl friend and do everything in thier power not to help with their own kids. Or my friend whose baby daddy REFUSES to get a job so he doesn't have to pay more child support (unemployed it's about 60$ a month).

Alright I'll get off my soap box now haha this topic just gets me worked up. 

[justoneoftwo]

8 minutes ago, Daisy0322 said:

The real antidote that would help is making fathers more accountable.

For exsample; my mom works in an office for a contractor and she has to schedule everyone. 70% of the crew guys complain to her that if they work more than a certain amount of hours each week they'll have to pay more child support. She will ask them if it lowers their overall income (that they keep) if their child support goes up, and they said no it at least breaks even and then follow up with something about how they don't want to be sending money to a kid they didn't want. I'm not saying this is every guy but it is a trend and seeming to get more socially acceptable, I see it even with my cousins and their children's fathers. They never want to see them once they get a new girl friend and do everything in thier power not to help with their own kids. Or my friend whose baby daddy REFUSES to get a job so he doesn't have to pay more child support (unemployed it's about 60$ a month).

Alright I'll get off my soap box now haha this topic just gets me worked up. 

I wish that the children got assigned lawyers who could sue for imputed income.  It would help (in my mind) if they were not the mother's lawyers, because so many people seem to think mothers have a say when it comes to child support.  

[Californiacicle]

I was teaching when I was pregnant. My principal kept telling me I was going to want to stay home once I had my son. I kept telling her that no I wasn't and I couldn't afford to anyway. She laid me off for the following school year even knowing that my husband had also been laid off a few months before (yay 2008 crash). Her excuse was that they were getting rid of all 5th grade teaching positions in the Diocese which ended up being a lie. She also laid off the other "young" mother on staff. I could have taken her to court but I was 9 months pregnant and terrified as both my husband and I were going to be unemployed. My insurance ended less than a month after my son was born. I chose to go uninsured and paid for my newborn to be covered by COBRA because that was all we could afford. We left the country after that. She ruined my and my family's life. It's hard getting over it.

[kachuu]

9 minutes ago, justoneoftwo said:

I wish that the children got assigned lawyers who could sue for imputed income.  It would help (in my mind) if they were not the mother's lawyers, because so many people seem to think mothers have a say when it comes to child support.  

 

Then you have the opposite cases where the woman abuses the child support. My poor brother has been paying thousands more to her for years because her lawyer (by numbers) was able to portray how pitiful of a situation she was in compared to his army career. She's had load of issues: drugs, lying, theft, etc. She just has parents who ignore her real issues and then pay for nice lawyers.

My brother has been the only stable person for his kids. And she just continues to take advantage of him every opportunity.

We had male cousins who thwarted responsibility at every opportunity. They had multiple women they knocked up and just did their best to avoid paying or even being involved with their kids. Seeing that as well as having totally different parents, I think it helped my brother really step up as a man.

[justoneoftwo]

5 minutes ago, kachuu said:

 

Then you have the opposite cases where the woman abuses the child support. My poor brother has been paying thousands more to her for years because her lawyer (by numbers) was able to portray how pitiful of a situation she was in compared to his army career. She's had load of issues: drugs, lying, theft, etc. She just has parents who ignore her real issues and then pay for nice lawyers.

My brother has been the only stable person for his kids. And she just continues to take advantage of him every opportunity.

We had male cousins who thwarted responsibility at every opportunity. They had multiple women they knocked up and just did their best to avoid paying or even being involved with their kids. Seeing that as well as having totally different parents, I think it helped my brother really step up as a man.

Yep, mothers also take horrible advantage.  Its why I want the kids to have a lawyer, and a social worker or something to help the state look after their interests.  It sucks for the families who are doing what is best for the kids, but the outliers who have one horrible parent or more could use the help.  To be fair I have not thought through my plan completely, but something could be done to improve the situation . . . 

[lomo6]

For all those talking about short-term disability - it only lasts 6 weeks for a vaginal birth and 8 weeks for a c-section, and it only kicks in after you've used all PTO. So if you have 3 weeks of combined vacation/sick days, it will cover the following 3-5 weeks depending on the birth - and only at a fraction of your salary.

Yes, this country's federal policy's are barbaric. Some local govs like California and DC are moving on their own to guarantee paid time off, but it's not nearly enough. 

[bananabread]

Nine days since the birth. Only one grainy photo of Jill (looking okay to some, but weak/frail/not well to most). All photos appear to be taken in the hospital. Izzy was with the grandparents for a long time (and still might be). No videos from Jill or Derick. None from Jessa or Ben either. No birth story details. No People feature. No mid-episode video clip. Do we all agree there's something going on?

It wouldn't be so weird if it wasn't so utterly unlike every other Duggar (or Bates) birth I can remember.