The real problem with The Sims is time. Plain and simple time. It is supposed to be a simulation of real life, but the clock moves way too fast. Your people move about their little home at roughly the same speed you move about your own home. But that 2 minute onscreen toilet trip takes 36 minutes of game time. Actually getting out of bed, eating breakfast, going to the bathroom, showering, and walking outside to the carpool is easily an hour and a half, assuming your Sim doesn't get stuck waiting for someone else to complete their 20 minute pee break.
Have you ever tried to actually have a successful little party while playing The Sims? It is over by the time you manage to answer the door for everyone who comes.
No wonder this game is such a depressing portrayal of real life. Imagine if it took you two hours to make it out of bed and to the front door. Sure, you might actually take a couple of hours to do this in real life, but most people do it in far less, and almost everyone can rush it if they have to. Imagine if the quickest possible meal you could eat took 30 minutes to prepare, 20 minutes to eat, and 20 minutes to clean up. Imagine if it took you a half hour to walk from the car to the living room.
The only way short of cheating that I have found to have a successful family in The Sims is to have one worker, and several people that stay home (children that like to clean are a good choice). Families with multiple workers usually quickly fall apart. Forget about having a single Sim, they will usually be blubbering to themselves with depression in a couple of weeks, unable to get any socialization done because their hands are full just trying to make it to work everyday.
What would have made this game about a hundred times better would be to slow down the clock to realtime (you could always speed it up when doing long tasks anyway). That would be so much better than watching your Sim hopelessly fail at trying to do things because they ran out of time.
Basically, real people don't take 20 minutes to walk from one room to another and that is exactly what is wrong with The Sims.