married professional couples & time spent together

Lifestyle Relationships
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a student of mine asked a very simple qs: how many hours professsional married couple who do not have a child yet, might spend together in the comfort of their home after work hours.

i could not answer beyond what i see around in working couples with a child or two mostly and they have child care.

but it stands to reason that medicine, education & running business are professions in which people invest a lot of hours of their waking hours from 10 - 20 even, sometimes working more than 100 hours per 6 day work week.
the investment is obviously monetary but also personal to advance in a career and to make the future of the family stable financially while child care is not an issue yet.
any perspectives.
less hours and more money makes better sense or consistent good number of work hours w/ decent salary?

any thoughts?

Dushwari

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Re: married professional couples & time spent together

Desis ask these questions as if its in everyone's leisure to actually make a choice.

If everyone chose careers that allowed one to spend more time at home, then your society would not function as optimally as you'd want it. You want to saccrifice careers in society that require a lot of time, then expect sub-standard living. In Pakistan, people just don't work as many hours as Americans do. Family life is great - kids are brought up with someone always home.

But then you don't get your shiny new materialistic society that you see in America, which so many Pakistanis are running out of Pakistan for.

In a society like the American society, we need people to work those 80-90 hour weeks. Otherwise your hospitals won't function, you wont have those gas stations open in the middle of the night where you can take your car when you're low on gas, you wont have the tech support that you can call in the middle of the night when your computer shuts down, you wont have those emergency teams on call if something happens at odd hours.

Baby wants to enter this world at 2 am in the morning, and someone has to deliver it, right? Obviously, mankind wasn't made to function such that everyone can actually have a 9-5 job.

Ergo, there will HAVE to be couples that exist in which work hours become an issue. But if work hours are not an issue, then something else is. Its a problem, like any other problem.

I just hate it when people make arguments to justify having careers where you have less working hours. Not everyone has the drive to be a lazy butt.

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Re: married professional couples & time spent together

PCG when you are saying "Desi's" what kind of impression are you giving. Tum kis khet ki mooli ho. I mean you are a desi yourself. So aise baat na karo jaise tum koi gori maim ho.

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Re: married professional couples & time spent together

I love the expression "kis khet ki mooli ho". I'm a green mooli. That's what khet I'm from. The green khet.

Anyway, I agree I'm desi, but that doesn't mean every desi has to think alike. I have a right to my opinions whether they are similar to or different from the desi norm.

I do tend to speak as if I'm apart from desis, mainly because I don't think I'm a normal desi.

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Re: married professional couples & time spent together

ok PCG. Your point is accepted.

Khush raho.

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Re: married professional couples & time spent together

My husband and I spend a lot of time together. We chat on the way to and from work, eat together (except lunch on weekdays), and go out together. We have similar interests so our fun activities are usually shared, though occasionally we'll each do something with other friends. But most of the time we're together.

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Re: married professional couples & time spent together

PCG, perhaps you presume desis to be the only ones concerned about the time spent as a couple being professionals and quite clearly, it is not an animal to be had between the two people. thanks for sharing your perspective.

ASN, i appreciate. But what would your take be on the query?

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Re: married professional couples & time spent together

Sahar02,

mashAllah, this is so nice. thanks for sharing. ideal really.

Dushwari

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Re: married professional couples & time spent together

medicine, education and running businesses?
I never thought academia as one of the more time intensive fields in general. not among the top fields i think of when i think of time intensive fields.

as far as spending time, its not just the quantity of time but also quality of time that is important.

and as far as salary, that depends on the person.

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Re: married professional couples & time spent together

^ Fraudia, academia can be very time consuming depending upon which discipline you're talking about. Working in scientific research is cut-throat competetive, and its not uncommon to have labs running into the middle of the night. I had to work in one of those myself at one time. I remember how many of my professors returned home late at night because they taught night classes - that goes for many different fields of academia.

You can be a cook running a resteraunt, or an engineer, or working for the electric company, etc and have intense working hours.

It depends on the policies of the group you work for, more than anything else.

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Re: married professional couples & time spent together

True, the purpose of spending time together should be to develop understanding and to relax by sharing views, needs, problems, and perspectives with respect.

I think both of them should plan in the beginning and set limits to how much they want to earn for a decent living, without compromising on the quality and quantity of the time spent together.

what's happening to me ?
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Re: married professional couples & time spent together

thats why i said academia 'in general'
hard core research is just one sub segment.

and while there is trutgh to what type of group you work for, some fields are more intense than others. e.g. medicine, nursing, investment banking and consulting are on avg much more time intensive than lets say highschool teachers.

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Re: married professional couples & time spent together

Yeah...we look for the right person to spend our lives with....fall in love with that 'perfect' one...get married...and start working day and night to maintain certain 'standards'...paying mortgages...car payments etc............spending the majority of the time away from that 'perfect' person.....not even pausing once to think...whats the point of finding the perfect person..if we re not even going to spend time with them....just sad..i see it happening ALOT!!!

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Re: married professional couples & time spent together

me and Atif…we both are professionals…he has to work loong hours even after normal working hours…which i cant stand sometimes…and jus coz i dont say anything hes starting to get used to it…

so i made sure we spend quality time together good 2-3 hours every evening…we eat together…watch tv and talk after food…he does his work for an hour while i do my revision then wer free to go out etc…

its soooo important to have that bond before u start having kids…then u wont have time at all…and i plan to leave work for a while wen im expecting…and no ‘baby sitters’…:nono:

well sometimes wen wer going out…actually ammi jee will look after them…:stuck_out_tongue:

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Re: married professional couples & time spent together

Hands down, I agree. But then the family medicine practice guy who works from 7 am until 5 pm, and then has nothing to do afterwards...isn't he living a more relaxed and cushy life than the high school teacher who starts at 7 am, and then stays after school to tutor and run after-school programs and clubs, and then comes home with a stack high of papers that he/she grades while watching football? Not to mention all the stupid phone calls you have to make after school to parents to let them know what morons their kids are. I was teaching for some time, and though it was more manageable than medicine, it still required more hours. Now I just sit on my butt and study, and I probably have less stress and more time to dedicate to a family. Depends on what area of medicine, you're talking about I guess.

Likewise with finance, etc - I mean, you could be working for a cut-throat competetive boss, or you're working for a small business in the area. Which is more stressful? Part of it is how you manage the stress, and whether you're happy with the work. A janitor can be stressed, not because of work hours, but because they hate their work...then come home and be mean to the wife over it. Meanwhile, the OB-GYN I'm working with has crazy hours, but is such a family man. shrugs Its always circumstances, in the end, and how you choose to deal with it.

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Re: married professional couples & time spent together

^ point well made, Pcg.
you have good reasoning here. esp the last two lines.

best, :)
Dushwari

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Re: married professional couples & time spent together

difference being that afterschool programs and clubs are not always part of the job, and dont take place every day.

and finance example that u gave is not just dependent on how good someone's boss is it comes with the territory. the other example i gave was of consultants, who have to be on the road 3-4-5 days a week, does not matter how good or bad the boss is, if ur project is in a diff state thats what u have to deal with.

stress levels are a diff thing than hours at work. a consultant can enjoy his job, have a great boss, but if he is away 4 days a week, he is away for days a week, and that automatically means less time with family. That is what we had started with.

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Re: married professional couples & time spent together

I read in an article awhile back that the average couple spends 2 hours together a day. However, this includes couples with children.

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Re: married professional couples & time spent together

All in all it depends on the relationship. There is always a way...even in the field where a lot of hours r required....just one hour of quality time is better then 100 hours of merely living together.