For what it's worth, I'm enjoying Virtual Families. Though I do think it helps if you approach it from a Fish/Plant Tycoon type game rather than from the mission driven Virtual Villager's angle.

I'm willing to suspend "real" world expectations and logic, provided there are consistent virtual world model to replace them. And that's where I run into the time / money glitch...

If, with VF logic, it's 1 year for every 2 hours, (so it takes 4 real hours to produce a two year old child,) then the store should really be updated more frequently than every four years (8 hours).

Likewise, I have parents who are making $100+ a day each. If it's a real day, and I've been playing the game for 4 days now, I should have roughly less than a thosand dollars (taking into account sold collectibles, interest etc.), not enough to purchase anything other than limited food. On the other hand, if it is $100 a VF day, each parent should have an annual income of $36,500 every two hours. Instead, and I'm estimating here, the family seems to have earned about 4-6K (didn't track how much was spent in food, and I've got about 2k in "upgrades") in 4 days. I haven't lost a parent yet, but it seems that despite their listed daily income they probably won't even amass their projected yearly salary during the course of their entire working life.

And then there's the dog...
I spend less than $100 on spam software and that warrants a major family celebration. Spend $500 on a dog and there's no reaction at all? Very strange.