DH wants me to get a job but not too big a job…

"To those saying get a big F off job so I can afford to live alone, isn’t the opposite advice offered to men? Cut down your hours so you don’t have to pay child maintenance?!"

You need to be honest and stop playing games. What do you want, what are you able to do, what are you prepared to do?

Sounds like you were offered a 50-75K permanent role four months ago. Why didn’t you take it while you were looking around for something better? I think you need to restart your career and get support on the domestic front if needed. I understand you don’t find housework fulfilling so it will expand to fill the time the children are at school with not much achieved. You will feel much better working.

To be fair, if you’re at home during the day while children are at school, it’s reasonable to expect you to keep the house clean.If you still have pre-school children or children have significant additional needs, then childcare is a job.

However, your husband is being an arse if he expects you to walk into a high- paying job and be fully responsible for all of the childcare and household responsibilities.

I’d start looking for work for your own benefit, not his. There’s a lot of lifetime left after children have left home, and you do need to look out for your own long term future.

She's clearly not a SAHM by choice - she freely admits she sucks at housework (as do I) - I, like OP, ended up taking on a SAHM role following country moves, from being 'reasonable' because 'he had a big job' - and thus it became a self-fulfilling prophecy - we 'as a couple' deprioritised my career for what seemed like good reasons at the time, and yet funnily enough, it was always to his benefit and my detriment - just like OP.

Cooking my own dinner is a choice. Cooking the kids dinner is a requirement/basic parenting. Same for all the other things. If it's so easy, then why isn't he doing it? If someone is refusing to take on more parenting tasks, can you see how that puts a crimp on job-hunting?

Complaining that your partner isn't pulling their weight financially, whilst not pulling your wait parentally is a massive cheek.

@Ducksrowing I have not worked for 4 months as my contract ended (couldn’t continue longer without massive pay cut by about half to become permanent). New roles were thin on the ground at my level in late summer due to market conditions and election etc.

First thing is that I disagree with this attitude of not taking a job below your level, or a job that's beneath you so to speak. It is better for everyone to be out and doing some kind of job, no matter what it is and even if their health isn't the best. I once took a job that paid below £23k despite being at PhD level, because it was better to get outside and do something rather than continue to remain unemployed while searching for something better.

We have 2 DC and it was agreed if worst came to worst, I would look for new roles by January after 11+ exams.

An 11 year old is not really a child anymore. Do they have to ferried around, or is it an option to walk home from school or use the bus?

Given DH's whopping salary (well within the top 2% of earners on £100k+) why not have cleaners to help with domestic tasks?

He has now said that whatever job I take, it can’t be ‘too big a job’ as his ‘has to take priority’ as this a crucial year for him due to some project. He has pointed out he will always earn more than me so whatever job I take has to have some flex for school runs etc.

DH is a dickhole for giving precise instructions in relation to employment. "You must get a job, but it has to be a certain type of job."

I think you would benefit from having any kind of work that is fulfilling, without worrying about the pay cheque too much.

This.

These threads make me so angry. Women bloody work. SAHMs work. Many of them have well paid p-t or even full time jobs online!

It's not sitting home eating bon-bons. If you're part-time, it's not a 'day off', it's a day your DH expects you to be working for the household and your job isn't paying you but you need to do a few tasks to make the next day in work run smoothly. It means missing useful work interaction whilst you whip round and try to do the (sodding) housework no one is doing! plus taking DCs to appointments/pick up from clubs.

And yet, when you have a good job, he'll still be happy enough to try it on by asking you to pay 'half' and still expect (unreasonably) that you do everything you did when part-time plus pick-ups and drop-offs.
Just refuse. Point out all those years you didn't have a proper job when you worked for the family.

I would be re-evaluating my marriage.
However, my husband never behaved in a similar way. Also had a very fortunate position, now retired.

He's a controlling misogynistic AH Massive red flags abound Do what suits you !

@DaniMontyRae your hostility towards SAHMs is dull.

Because having your ducks in a row means to have full knowledge and understanding of your financial situation and legal rights

And that gives you greater power in the "adult conversation" you have with your spouse.

If you are the lower earner or stay at home parent, your power and leverage is weaker than the spouse with the income and money.
If you don't have a full knowledge and understanding of your family's financial situation, pension savings, investments, debts, house value then it is easy for the working or higher earning spouse to take advantage of you when you have an "adult conversation".

It doesn't mean immediately divorce your spouse. It means to get a full understanding of the situation you are in financially and legally so you can make an informed decision.

My husband has a really ‘big’ job. Income and responsibility has doubled again in the last few months (very fast growing industry).

That being said, with the exception of travel for meetings, he works a very straightforward working day. I earn many multiples less than him, work longer hours and financially don’t need to work but want to.

He does easily 70% of our life and home admin (if I’m honest, probably more) because he works less hours than I do. He’s never once said to me that he’s too big or important for it. He goes out of his way to contribute to family life in every way he can, because he wants to, because he loves us and being a father and parent are the most important things to him.

He has never once questioned the balance or common sense of our situation (we would all be better really if I gave up work, took care of life admin and the home). I want to work - therefore I work. I work longer hours - therefore he picks up more slack at home.

It has never crossed his mind to question whether this is ‘worth it’ when he hugely out earns me. It’s our family money, he’s not superior to me and home jobs are not beneath him.

It’s nothing to do with how much your husband earns and everything to do with the fact he’s lazy and misogynistic and also probably just not all that nice.

Why is "ducks in a row" always the go to when anyone raises an issue with a male partner on Mumsnet. I just assume it's single people who want others to be on their own also. Why not suggest having an adult conversation instead.

Here's another one saying take a good job and let the chips fall. No one ever went broke making money ...

I did read the OP, yes. The bit where she says she is unemployed and not for the first time so of course she is the one doing these things. We also know that she doesn't keep on top of the housework or cleaning. Now, if she was the only one doing these things when they were both working full-time then she would have cause for complaint (divorce). And what I was really commenting on was the desperate claim from the OP that she is a chef, taxi driver, tutor etc. I don't get this trend from SAHMs to claim all these things. I cooked my own dinner tonight, doesn't make me a chef.

I'm sorry your ex took the piss out of you for years and you tolerated it but that doesn't make this the same as your situation.

If the OPthinks her husband doesn't value her then hopefully she will restart her career. If her husband won't support her then she has a difficult decision to make.

Do the big job and split life’s admin inc dc stuff equally.
Its called equality……….

Id also be putting plenty into my private pension if I was you, it doesn’t sound like he likes to share

If you want to maintain your lifestyle then both of you need to earn enough between you to cover your quite high outgoings. If you can get a job paying six figures plus then his job needn't take priority. If you can't well logically speaking his job will need to take priority. What do you want.

'Every parent does' - did you read the OP? He doesn't do those bits. My ex didn't - in the kids's entire life I could count on 2 hands the number of school runs he's done. The number of nights he's had them alone. The number of meals he's cooked them is in the 100s (they're teens), and the number of different meals is probably not even in double digits (he was king of spaghetti bolognese).

In lockdown, he took the youngest, and I took the eldest for schoolwork - so they youngest did nothing. He's never listened to their reading, let alone helped with homework.

I think people look at their lives, and think that what they have is what everyone has, but for some of us, that's just not the case, and you can say we're stupid, but these men are very persuasive, it seems reasonable, and it creeps up on you (and you don't want the kids to suffer of course) - until something jogs you out of it and you realise you've been being taken for a ride for years.

He sounds unpleasant but you also seem lazy if you can’t keep the house vaguely tidy during the day. How can he be better at folding laundry than you? It’s hardly a skill.

You probably could streamline things financially too- do you need meal boxes every day. We have never had them and seem to cope.

i would get a job in your position. Any job!

Net flix is about £12 a month.

£1k a month is nothing for your total household income

On £250k you can well afford a cleaner and more housekeeping help

Focus on improving your own earnings. When you come to get divorced he will all of a sudden be very much about how he earns more and you didn't contribute to that at all

Tbh I'd leave - he can have the kids some of the time so you get a break and focus on your career.

You put together those meal kits, you are not a chef. Nor does doing the school run make you a taxi driver or helping kids with homework make you a tutor. You are trying ro make a big deal out of the basic bits of parenting everyone does, especially as a SAHM to kids in full-time education. You should at least be doing the housework, you have enough time. If you don't like it then get a job, any job.

I have a DH with a similar big job, he earns over 6 figures but we live in East Anglia so it goes a long way. We have 2 DS’s, one is 19 and the other 14. When the oldest was small he had to travel a huge amount for work and would literally get home from work then get told to go for a week or so. He got the chance to take a year secondment abroad (in the Middle East) and he took as we thought it would less disruptive than suddenly having to disappear every other week. We stayed in U.K. Anyway a year became nearly 5 years.
I started work as a TA in my youngest son’s school, it was a perfect job as worked round holidays so we could all see each other and I obviously could do all drop offs and pick ups.
He is now back in the U.K. and works in London. I take home about £1200 a month. He now randomly wants me to get a “proper job”…obviously both DS don’t need me so much now but I can’t just walk into the sort of job he wants me to do at 47 just like that. DS2 also plays football to a high level and trains 3 nights a week 30 miles from where we live and I need to be able to take him.
No advice but just wanted to share my frustrations!!

He's walking a fine line thinking he's got you trapped and can be such twat to you.
He's taking the chance that you could take that full time job, make him do more, even divorce him and take half his kick arse pension with you and a big chunk of child maintenance each month.
Take the job, the older we get the harder it is to find good jobs.

My ex definitely used the 'precarious job' thing as a stick to beat me. He didn't have any education past a-levels (and poor ones even there) and used to pretend to be worried about what he'd do if his job fell through, how hard he'd find it to get another job like this, how he should make hay while the sun shone, whereas me with my degree would always be able to find another job, so I should be the one sacrificing my career so he could make the most of what he had now.

Then of course, I was just 'the little woman at home' (who should do some freelancing for his company for free - or worse, they'd give him stock for my work) - and then he started playing away, leaving me with the kids freelancing so no stable job, and the choice of turning a blind eye and losing all self-respect, or ending it and struggling.

Fucker didn't really expect me to take option b - he severely underestimated how stubborn I am :)

I don't regret it. Sure, I'd be retired on his money by now if I'd stayed, but I'd have had to sleep next to him, have sex with him, deal with him, for all those years knowing what he was getting up to while he was away - worth every penny of solicitor/barrister money to get it settled so i don't have to speak to him ever again.