DH says I’m ruining DC’s life

I do not think you’re controlling at all! I think your DH is being a bit lax to be honest! I’m a cautious person/mother too but my DH is too so we don’t have disagreements about it.

my advice would be to sit down with DH when the kids are in bed and have a casual convo about it. Admit you know you’re being a bit over the top (aren’t we all when we become mothers) but some things would make you feel anxious that he followed (holding hand, taking buggy.) I think he’s annoyed because maybe in the situation, you snap it or say it quickly? By having the conversion and admitting you’re protective, he might meet you in the middle. Otherwise I worry he’ll be even more lax just to go against you if that makes sense. Good luck OP!

You need to get your DH to pick up some of the mental load and you need to make space for you or get some therapy . Your attitude may be your OCD or could be just shititis husbandis. There is a lot of it about.

You have a full time job looking after DC, that doesn’t mean ALL life chores (bills, repairs etc), fall to you. His behaviour could be exacerbating your feelings, do he needs called out on that and a therapist may help you work on boundaries with your DH. It doesn’t automatically follow that this us solely your problem it’s caused by him not stepping up.

not taking a buggy just sounds like him being a tosser and wanting to look manly. Won’t be very manly being laid up with backache and unable to earn to provide for his family. Some of your concerns are reasonable and also need to be seen in context. How was he carrying the baby up the stairs? How he holds the baby is the issue. Equally he knows your concern and your MEDICAL problems yet it comes across like he is deliberately goading you, by continuing to be antagonistic.

How is otherwise? Is he a keeper?

I would ease up a bit- you will have to when your oldest child goes to school anyway.
You are just pushing your husband away. That will develop into you pushing your children away- you need to work on yourself, or ultimately you will lose them all.

My mum was like this with my dad when we were little. He used to read stories to us (and make them up) spend time playing when he got in from work, drinking pretend drinks and eating pretend food we made for him. My mother stomped all over his interactions with us, berated him for the most ridiculous things, and generally ruined our relationship with our father.

In our teens he didn’t have much to do with us, and then we were grown and gone. I feel resentful that my relationship with him was desecrated by my mother’s controlling and nagging behaviour. She totally wore him down.

As an adult i can see that it stemmed from anxiety she never had treated, and she was constantly scrubbing the house as nothing was ever clean enough. She’d moan on and on at my dad about fixing things. He worked a long day on a manual job and had to listen to her telling him about everything he did wrong, when he got home.

OP, my dad died 3 years ago this Easter, and I am very resentful towards my mother still. She was neurotic and unhinged and not only ruined our relationship with our father (and her), but we also struggled with our own relationships with men.

Get some help now, before you screw up everyone else’s mental health and lives.

I think this is bang on.

I’d be annoyed if OH was constantly telling me to be careful with my child as if I could not parent myself. I agree it’s controlling. I can get on board with the 2 year old holding a hand by a busy road but the rest no sorry

99% of local paper attempted abductions are bullshit.

My DH was like you. It came from a place of love and care but it didn't half do my head in for a while. He got over it.

My partner is like you and it drives me insane. I’m perfectly capable of assessing the risks with my own child. And I personally think overprotective parents stunt their child’s development.

I know it’s really hard as you probably do know best a lot of the time as I assume spend the most time caring for them - I was the same when I had my first. By the time I had my 3rd I realised I had to let go off the reigns and I wish I had been a bit more chilled. My husband is a lot of more relaxed that me about most things. I now pick my battles. And if someone goes wrong, he forgets something, someone gets hurts etc he has to deal with it.

I don’t think you’re being unreasonable. None of those requests sounds unreasonable to me but I have noticed that both me and my husband are way more safety conscious than other parents (my husband is more than me though). I hate my son being carried on shoulders and I always make him hold my hand when we’re walking by roads (he’s 4). Just sounds like you’re being careful to me rather than controlling

I hear you OP. My exH was clumsy and didn’t appear capable of risk assessing or preempting danger. He once dropped our DD when she was on his shoulders (why do men feel the need to do this??) and her lip was cut. I had zero compunction in directing him as a parent thereafter. I was also responsible for everything in our lives … while his job appeared to be chief critic responsible for continually pointing out how very badly I was doing EVERYTHING. I don’t miss him at all 😂

And what is his excuse for micromanaging her:

I’m expected to stay on top of all life admin, all housework, pretty much all drop offs/pick ups, organising childcare

You're micromanaging him as a way to control your own anxiety / ocd, and unsurprisingly you have pissed him off.

How about returning to therapy for your anxiety and OCD? It's not fair to him to use him as your outlet.

Do you trust him with the children?

if no, then you need to work on this. Children will get hurt no matter how you try to protect them and you are NOT the expert your children. Sounds like you have a good man and good father, don’t push him away by trying to “teach him” how to look after his own children.

Exactly. We would both say it to one another and neither of us bothered about it.

I was with you (sort of) until ‘multiple reports of attempted abductions’. Where is this, exactly?

I think some of the scenarios you describe, such as the running on a pavement on a busy London road at age 2 - fair enough to be cautious.

But telling the other parent ‘be careful’ when they’re carrying the baby upstairs is just wrong. I’d be quite offended if I’d been told that by my other half. You honestly need to seek help to deal with your issues. You may not be ‘ruining your dc’s life’ but you’re certainly bringing them up in an atmosphere of mistrust. It’s not right for them to hear you constantly criticising their dad

I had poor post partum mh for about 6 months every time I walked down the stairs I watched her fall from my arms and lie at the bottom in a crumpled heap. I avoided the stairs as much as I could. It can really turn the most mundane into the height of danger.

I wonder how many times in a day you make a little comment around safety and I wonder whether it would be worth for a day or two making a note of how many times you say and think something.

I think it's predominantly a communication problem and you need to come together and discuss sensible precaution for each of the day to day tasks. Finding that balance between caution to not overly exacerbate your OCD but also to not make your partner feel restricted. I think when you are the sole person taking on responsibilities and having the be the "on-it" parent it can be hard to see your other half as capable in other areas too so I think a fairer division of the life tasks would help you have the mental capacity to face your mental health and allow you to see your partner as more of a functioning adult who can take responsibility for things.

Have you consider compassion focussed therapy? It's the recommended treatment for post partum mental illness as factors in the change in life that becoming a parent can bring as well as the resulting poor mental health. I had it through the perinatal mental health team and in the mother and baby unit I was in.

@QueenMammoth it might be worth re-posting separating the two issues here - one issue being what your DH has said and what you have said to him, and the other issue being whether or not what you are doing is OTT (I don't think it is). So if you post just about what you are doing and ask "is this OTT" and leave the DH element out completely, you might get slightly more helpful responses in relation to your approach to parenting. And then on a separate thread with a different user name (!) raise relationship problems with DH over parenting. If that makes sense.

My advice to the OP was that she relies on her own judgement, that she thinks about any comments made by her DH but decides what she thinks is best, and carries on in that vein. I don't think parents making suggestions to each other like "maybe take the buggy" should lead to a responsible parent disengaging. Best practice advice would be to take the buggy, not carry a one year old in your arms through streets for a mile.

Incidentally, recklessness may not be immediately apparent in the early days of parenting either! Most irresponsible parents will have started off having been given some responsibility in the early days (not that I am suggesting that the DH here is completely irresponsible, I have no idea).

For context, I got diagnosed with postpartum OCD & anxiety and they’ve never really faded away

So you'd have no understanding at all of the above? It's pretty understandable she'd be anxious about him carrying the baby upstairs with the above diagnosis, but I guess there's no room to care about the woman who just created and birthed your child.

OP, have you looked into therapy to help with your OCD?

But,if ove read correctly, the OP also says she allows him to be on his own with the children when she doesn't do this.

If that is the case, the anxiety only manifests when she is there to see it, which indicates that the issue is around her anxiety rather than her parenting per se.

That's not to say he will make the correct judgement call every time but then neither will she because they're as experienced at being parents as each other.

The assumption that she will automatically be right because she is mum and he will automatically be wrong because he's a man is part of the reason we have such a societal imbalance in parenting responsibilities and expectations.

If he disengages from parenting completely because of this and never being able to do anything right, the OP will be back in a few years because she's shouldering the responsibility for parenting alone.

There has to he some give and take and an acceptance that the other parents will do things differently.to you.

First time I’ve ever heard carrying a child on you shoulders described as “Disney parenting”!

And yet you are…

I understand you have these protective urges, but so does your DH, and you are suffocating him and your DC.
Time to start biting your tongue, and let everyone breathe without you controlling the way everything is done.

I am a woman. Gave birth to all my kids and so on.