It's always a toss-up between male and female founder. With a male founder, all you really need to do is lift Hopelessness and get the wife over and married before he goes senile, right? For a woman, you need to do it with at least 4 days before elderhood strikes.
But then again, with a woman, if you haven't lifted Hopelessness yet, you can just say, "Screw it. I'm making her a single Mom, and her child can lift Hopelessness." I've done that a couple of times, and actually found it to be quite fun that way. Yes, that first generation has it super tough, but they don't know any better, anyway. And by the time they are grown, they at least have some cooking, cleaning, and mechanical skills, while they have had to do all the housework and take care of a senile elder. And they probably have some friends. But mostly, they have the experience of living through an apocalypse, to know how it's done.
BTW, here's a tip for annoying fridge antics: Move the fridge to a totally inaccessible place (like a single covered square on the roof, or in a 2x1 room with a door that locks), and your sims not only won't go for food autonomously, but they also won't give you the handwaves of "I can't reach it," which annoys the heck out of me. You just have to micromanage cooking once a day, and then make it inaccessible again. It's a life-saver, particularly when you have elders around. Of course, when your baby's ONLY caregiver is an autonomous elder, and you have to depend on them to feed the baby, you're sort of screwed.
I enjoyed this very much. Good luck with either continuing this or trying again with Eve.
Oh, and I hate to break it to you, but according to Pinstar's rules, Slacker restrictions are only temporarily subdued, not actually lifted, because Law has to come first. So, as long as he's still working, his wife can ignore Slacker rules, but then, they go right back in place the moment he quits or dies. Oh, wait.
Yeaaaah, sucks to be you. But you never know. You could still pull off a win, here.
Good luck! Keep writing! I like your style.