To ask for help with housework

She has no access to money.

Ewwwwww he 'controls all the money' that's not on. I am on maternity leave and I have full access to my husbands money because when there are children then it's both your money just like if you were working in sure you wouldn't leave him with no money

Yes, I know what it's like... but it's perfectly do-able!

I have 2 dogs, 3 kids (including twins), and went back to teaching 2 days a week when the twins were 7 months.

The 3 days "off" per week looking after twins were also enough to get the housework done after having done the school run for the 5 year old.

You just need to be really organised e.g. get up and put laundry on, put laundry out to dry when back from school run, plan meals in advance that are quick and easy to cook, a quick run round the house with a duster and vacuum every day, plenty of time for baby clubs with the twins, then if they both napped together at the same time I'd get my lesson planning done. If not it had to wait until they were all in bed by 8pm!

Yes it was exhausting but my DH was out 7am until 6pm so technically doing far more hours than me!

@KewNutty this is not ok. Not one person can do it all!

You definitely need support. Running a house, having a family should be team work where you both share the load. I really feel for you and you're not asking too much from him. X

So, firstly your husband is a selfish 1950's reject.

Next, your husband needs to take some personal responsibility. Being a sat at home PARENT is just that - a parent to your children... not his skivvy. Whilst I appreciate dividing responsibilities such that he earns the money and you sort the kids is perfectly normal, the skivvy role added in is disrespectful.

Him refusing to put his washing in the wash bin is him disrespecting you each time he drops clothes expecting you to pick them up. Him not keeping track of his own wardrobe to the point that he has no clean pants... that's disrespectful too.

I do the laundry in my household. I have 2 rules.

1. If it isn't put in the wash bins it doesn't get washed.
2. On a Sunday morning you are expected to check your clothes for the week and report any shortages so that washing can be done - I.e. 2 kids check uniform, sports kits etc, husband checks shirts (and I assume underwear!!) If you don't do this and run short - don't expect me to solve the problem for you.

If my 9yr old can manage this a fully grown adult can!

Your husband should also be making the effort with the kids too. He should be doing bedtime or something with the older child every night he is home before bedtime. And he should be spending some time with baby too. They are after all his kids - I assume they would like to know they matter to him.

Tbh OP I think you'd be better off by yourself. You've said there is less work when he is not around, and you'd have access to money to make your life easier too. Financial abuse is real here.

Because she is a SAHP and that's part of her "job" to keep the house sorted, washing done.

He goes to work

The kids are a joint job

But he’s not doing anything for the kids, she’s doing it all. So he therefore has to do the “job” of laundry. He’s also strewing it all over the house, and no part of the SAHP job description should include picking up after a grown adult who knows where the washing basket is.

Why are you making excuses for a man who won’t even put his dirty fucking pants in the laundry basket? Do you think that’s too hard for a man to manage but doing EVERYTHING whilst pregnant and with an 8 month old at home, is reasonable?

You may want to run yourself into the ground in order to earn your skivvy badge from a lazy, entitled man, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us should aim so low.

It is hard to look after a child, a baby, a dog, food shop, clothes shop, cook, clean, get the kids up, do the school run, play with the children, read to the children, help with homework, bathe them, put them to bed, wash up, do the laundry, keep up with school/life admin.

It is ok to get behind sometimes, we're all only human and doing the best we can. It's ok to ask for help too, especially if the other parent is just sitting on his backside scrolling through his phone. Get him to do bedtime while you catch up with things rather than sitting there doing nothing. Aside from anything else, he's missing out on important bonding time with his children he may regret later.

@KewNutty why don't you have access to the money? He has access to the fruits of your labour (eg. Stocked cupboards, cooked dinners, clean house, cared for children (& clean and dry pants 99.99% of the time 😜). Surely if you are in a relationship you should have access to the fruits of his labour too, IE. Access to a joint spending account or a set amount of spending money paid into your personal bank account each month that you can use as you wish and don't have to ask for.

My mum was a SAHM in the 80s and had full access to and control of the family budget (money went into a joint account, mum paid all the bills from it, put some to savings and some to each person's private account so they could get what they wanted). My dad had very little interest in having "control" over it and wouldn't have dreamed of making her ask for a haircut or leaving his pants all over the place, and that was 40 years ago. If you don't have equal access to the family finances in this day and age, perhaps you need to ask trusted friends, family and yourself whether you think this is healthy and acceptable.

No, the job is to look after the children, in the hours he is working, then they should be sharing the load in the hours he is not working. Of course looking after children also involves huge amounts of extra housework, but it can't and shouldn't all be her responsibility to do it during the times she needs to be interacting with her children.

You should be doing the bulk of the household stuff, but he shouldn't do doing feck all with the kids when he gets home. He also needs to be putting his clothes in the wash basket, how lazy!

i only get behind because of the weekends, it gets so messy with everyone home

He should be doing either childcare or housework at the weekends. Then you wouldn't get behind.

I think your partner should be more supportive to you definitely, the washing up is definitely not going to kill him. However, I do know if I was a SAHM I would agree to keep on top of things.
Is there something in particular that is preventing you from keeping on top of things at the moment? is your little one (not 6 year old) difficult/needs a lot of attention?

Babies tend to need full time attention, surely? Mine certainly did and it was a struggle to survive, yet alone do housework, until they were at nursery.

OP, what was he like when you had one kid? You are putting yourself in a really shitty and vulnerable position by having a third kid with him.

Doing all the housework because he works extremely hard isn't unreasonable in itself but him getting angry when you haven't done the underpants is nasty and the fact he does nothing with the kids, never offers to help and controls the money is really bad. Controlling the money is really really bad.

Are you young? (You sound young - nothing wrong with that but it adds to the vulnerability). Have you any qualifications or career?

If I were you I wouldn't have a third child with him.

How do you see things panning out in the future?

Have you friends or family you can turn to?

Some of the attitudes on here are shocking to me, especially coming from other women. She’s his partner in life, not a maid of all work! He sounds like an absolute slob for not using washing baskets and it’s not on that he controls all of the money.

It should be a partnership, which means he pulls
his weight when he’s not in work. Otherwise the OP is working 24/7 without a break. The lack of respect is galling. He’s treating you like a skivvy.

I'd be far far more worried about the fact you're not working and seemingly not married. You have zero financial protection from this selfish man

Regarding getting a cleaner? I just think about my mum in the 70s with 3 under 3, bills paid in person, no convenience food, internet shopping, a twin tub machine and terry nappies. She did it all.

I really hate this attitude. Bet your mum was exhausted and would have loved something to lighten the load.

This is wrong on so many levels.

I'm a SAHM, I do 99% of the housework and laundry but my DH will say to me "I'm running low on work tops, do you have anything else you want me to chuck in the machine with them?" as in, do I want anything or mine or DD washed as similar colours.

He is an adult. Being a SAHM is a full time job, 24 hours a day.

I think your partner behaved like a spoilt brat, OP.

All of this.

You are very vulnerable being a SAHM. It sounds like you are not married? And he doesn't allow you access to any money other than through a grocery app? That is horrible. Even though you do not earn an income, you help support the household by doing the housework and childcare. That is financially valuable as otherwise he would have to do it. Even if some of the kids are not his, the housework benefits him: it is work he doesn't have to do, which allows him to save his energy for his paid work and for his leisure.

You know who else only gets food, clothing, and housing, but gets no money of their own as the result of their work? Slaves.

You need to really change this situation somehow.

They're his kids too. Why on earth would childcare fees be on you? Either 50:50 or based on a percentage of each partner's earnings. If he won't go along with this, bill him for the equivalent of a professional nanny plus housekeeper salary.

My ex was like this. I also had 3 dc to him, he liked me to be pregnant but wasn’t actually that keen on the dc when they arrived. Never did anything with or for them (but of course the cries of ‘but he was working really hard to provide for him so you should lick his feet clean as soon as he gets in’).
He would throw rubbish on the floor for me to pick up, leave dirty laundry wherever he felt like it etc. I’m not sure if he knew that we had a hoover.
I was also not allowed any money until one day when I found out that despite earning all of the money, being the only one with a bank account and therefore the only one able to access ‘his’ money, he had stopped paying any bills and we were about to be made homeless. To this day I don’t know where the money went (mumsnetters helped enormously on my search!).
I sound like such a mug but he convinced me that this was a normal relationship. Couple goals!

I left, opened a bank account (very grown up), got a part time job, learnt to drive, went to university, got a full time job and eventually met a gorgeous man who couldn’t work out why I was upset whenever he tried to do anything for me. I felt like I was failing him by him doing his own dishes!
We eventually married and had children.

The best bit of advice given to me on here was, is this the type of relationship that you dream of for your children when they are older? Do you want them to be treated like this? Will you listen to them when they are a sahp with a spouse who wakes them at 5:30am because they can’t find any pants?
That was the turning point for me. My children weren’t going grow up thinking that this was how people treat each other when they love each other.

I’ve been mostly a SAHM with 4 children whilst my husband worked full-time. I do nearly all the housework, laundry, school runs, kids activities, cooking etc ………. But in the evening my husband listens to 2 of the kids read and tucks them in, whilst I do the other 2. On Saturdays and Sundays we share cooking, children, tidying up. Just because he works 50 hours a week to earn money, doesn’t mean that I have to do everything 7 days a week.

OP, you’re pregnant with a toddler - he should be doing all housework when he gets home; can’t believe he’s not to be honest! When I was pregnant my husband did pretty much everything so I could rest and sleep (and he worked full time). Reading this made me so so sad for you. Life doesn’t have to be this hard.

as a minimum, he should do bedtime when he gets home, equal house work and childcare at the weekends and give you full access to household money. Anything less is frankly appalling!