To ask if you think SAHMs are lazy?

Ive been a single parent working full time since my son was 8 months old. He has just started school and I'm still WFH full time, if I didn't have to work and had to bills to pay I think it would be a very easy life indeed.

Well likely yes, because he’d organise paid childcare. I doubt he’d quit his job and stay nome and do it himself.

But if he was paying for childcare he wouldn't have as much disposable income as he does now.

Also due to Covid virtually everyone I know is still wfh which makes pick ups/drop offs etc much easier.

These arguments are teedious, but regardless. Plenty of people who are high earners have a higher level of flexibility than staff lower down the food chain, whether they want to use that or whether they don't want to risk their pesky family making them go out of their way to support them is another matter. Theres been many a water cooler chat about 'working late' to avoid helping with bath and bedtime, or school runs.

The argument that someone who goes out of the home to work has it easier because mysteriously all jobs are easier than being home with a toddler is a laugh. When you are home you can also do chores/housework/shopping during the day, and all of the weird admin everyone allegedly has that takes hours. If you work you have to do that before or after work. Both are hard in different ways, neither is easier and couldn't give a hoot what anyone else chooses; but we shouldn't be staying that you can't possibly work if x or y as people read it and probably think they cannot either- you can. Military wives often work, CEO wives don't all stay at home as standard, just be honest and say unless you were abused into it or cannot afford it, you choose to stay at home, which is just as valid as going to work.

It’s like some folks don’t understand that there are single working parents and dual career families out there.

Erm, your husband is able to earn the amount he does because you are a SAHM. If he had to do 50/50 of the childcare would he still be earning that amount?

Get a grip woman

Has OP actually spoken to her husband about this issue before she divorces him as others suggest .

Is this the full story, did you budget together at some point and agree 600 was sufficient ? So you have a good relationship with money. Surely husband must tell you where the rest goes, saving for a shared comfortable retirement one would hope or for kids education ?

Are you in the dark about the family finances because you don’t ask or want to know or is it kept from you . Important difference. Just playing devils advocate really.

@Camobag - this sounds very very hard. Can you speak to a professional? You could ask your HV for recommendations if you had a good relationship with her, or a practice nurse or GP? Even start seeing a counsellor? It sounds like this marriage isn't just not equal, but like there's some really big issues that aren't good for you, nor your children.

No one person in a partnership controls the purse strings. That is financial abuse and it isn't okay. You need access to money for you and dc, anything else isn't safe for a woman for many reasons.

I don't think they are lazy ( well everyone is different some will be and some won't be) but I think they are vulnerable to financial hardship when the partner buggers off and they haven't got any financial back up.
I've always worked apart from two years I was on Mat leave. I think it's good for children to see parents working and it's definitely given my daughters that mindset that they shouldn't be reliant.

If by some miracle I have another baby I'd want to hopefully have 2 close together (cant see it happening) and I would be a stay at home mum. I've always worked with my others and I'm older now and would just want to enjoy it and be at home all the time.

Not victim blaming but....

How can you be in a situation where you're married to someone, have two kids with them, share nothing, scrape by on the little he gives you as "pocket money" and think that it's all fine because he's the one earning? For YEARS?

@CurlyhairedAssassin - of course there are some people who cannot have flexibility in their jobs. That’s not all high earners though and ime women tend to ask for flexibility and men do not because they do not want to have to do childcare etc. I’m not sure from your post whether or not your ex wanted to participate equally in your dcs life but it doesn’t seem like it.

Ima single parent now: I took a bit of a step back (because I wanted better work life balance) but I still work full time and earn well. One of my male colleagues who does an equivalent job to mine gets his mother in law to get his children up and out to school on the rare occasions his wife works. I also hear him telling his wife he’s working when he’s going running or to the gym.

Well I’m a SAHM and probably quite lazy these days to be fair, but so what? I’m not sure what it is I would need to prove here. My kids are (almost) all teens now, but there’s 4 of them and it wasn’t easy when they were little. In fact, I can’t remember because it was such a blur for about a decade. But again, so what? It was what it was and I wasn’t doing it for any medals. Plus it’s totally irrelevant to me how other women organise their lives.

But anyway... here we are. The main thing is, the kids are all doing well and were still together and we’ve survived this far. If I decided, on balance, to be with my kids and DH preferred me to do it as opposed to nannies / childminders and that how we decided to organise ourselves - then I can’t see what business it is of anyone else. Total non-issue.

DH worked non -stop for maybe 15 years and was often overseas, but now he’s sold some companies off and semi-retired at 50 and in no fixed routine, so yes, can sometimes pick the kids up from school. Increasingly so. Life changes and you adapt together as it does.

But do you think for one second I would have been a SAHM to a man who gave me an allowance and made me feel like as second-class citizen in my own home? No I would not. And nor would any woman I know. This ‘H’ in this thread has something seriously wrong with him. It has nothing to do with the OP or anything she does or doesn’t do and this shouldn’t even be a discussion. Just kick the tosser to the kerb OP, and move forward with your life.

when DS was a baby I would have sort DS after a night shift

You are the one saying you did the exact same thing.....
Presumably somebody else looked after your child while you worked for 13 hours? You came hone after a 13 hour night shift and ‘sorted him’? Presumably you slept before your next shift so again somebody else looked after your child?

OP that is not fair in any way. It’s not about the money itself (£200 is way more than I have to spend) but the fact is he can only earn that salary because you do what you do.

Many years ago DH and I had a conversation that went along the lines of if this doesn’t change and we aren’t more equal with access to finances I will divorce you. Yippee said he then I can just have EOW (they were little and time consuming) and I said what makes you think I’d want custody? Let’s see you do your demanding job with a full house and all the responsibilities and I’ll get a nice little place, a full time job and be disney mum twice a month.

It was very different after that!

Honestly there's so many variables and different situations, you cannot make generalisations.

I know a wohm, she has one dc, the grandmother arrives every morning and does the school run and cleans her house and picks up her dc. Mum arrives home. Thats a breeze

Conversely you could have a sahm with several pre school dc and a baby and no support who will be running round like crazy to look after her kids

Or you could have a single wohm with no family support, kids in wrap around care and no money to outsource chores.

Or I remember the sahm on here who had one nt 17 year old dc and was complaining about her housework!

You might be in the same house or room as your children but can you honestly say you are present. I would bet your children would prefer Centre Parks to a couple of weeks in the Maldives

Interesting that nobody has said anything like that about the children of those high earning husbands, who are not even in the same house, as they are working 24/7. Surely they can also just swap Maldives to Centerparks and pick their children up from school instead?

@Alongcameacat when DS was a baby I would have sort DS after a night shift... so while I don’t think SAHM are lazy I just think it is a God dam check that they have made their choice and then they want to make it into a competition with a working mum. Plus children go to school.... so SAHMs are not cooking and cleaning all day once their kids are at school are they!

Blulorry Who minded your child while you were in work? While you were travelling to and from work? In the morning when the child woke and you were starting/finishing a 13 hour shift? While you slept if you were doing nights?

Well, I'm a full time working mum.. And I have to pay a considerable chunk of my (split with DH) wage to get someone else to look after DD while I work. So someone else's full time job is my DC's care.. Ergo childcare is a full time job.

Don't get me started on the guilt. Trust me, if my H earned 100k+ a year I wouldn't be working... Though I can't say she wouldn't still be in maybe 2 mornings a week so I could catch a break. Mat leave was hard.. Work is hard. Life is hard. Stuff anyone who makes you feel like you're not "earning yoyr keep."

@Alongcameacat speak for yourself. I’ve had to look after my DS and still do then work a 13hour shift. Working mums still have the load of cooking, cleaning and rushing to meet time scales to get places unlike SAHM. Plus like I said it doesn’t last forever once the child gets to 4/5 it’s easier all round.

also doing the exact same things!

Except they aren’t doing the EXACT same things unless the children go to work with their working parents!

This argument of being a SAHM and working mums is endless. Because a SAHM claims that it is hard work which it is absolutely until the children start school. Then on the other hand a single working mum will obviously recognise they are working but so is the working mum also doing the exact same things!

@CurlyhairedAssassin, MN is particularly vitriolic when it comes to the matter of SAHM. I’m not sure from where this loathing stems. I certainly feel zero hatred for women who work part-time, full-time, no-time, one day a week. Truly, who gives a shit.

What concerns me more is the amount of feckless, unaccountable men out there, and, judging from the vast quantity of threads on here about that, it has zilch to do with whether their spouse works out of the home or otherwise, and everything to do with how these men have been raised/the current trend for men to see themselves as triumphant solo vessels and not at all part of a family unit.

And yes, it's derailing the thread somewhat.

Perhaps OP's husband does have a job that makes it very difficult for him to get involved in any childcare arrangements. It's not clear. But, OP, any normal person in that working situation would absolutely recognise the massive contribution their SAHSpouse makes in enabling them to have such a working pattern and would certainly not be withholding any money or giving them a "pitiful allowance."

As everyone else has said, I hope you realise what is happening there. You should be worried for your financial security.