Male colleague needs part time working mum to take care of 1 child

Pensions are considered a joint asset in marriage. I'm not saying divorce is easy and things always get split 50/50 but pensions are taken into account.
Different if they aren't married of course.

He pretty much said he could not do his job if his wife didn’t do most of the taking care of the child.

he then went on to explain how his wife was going away for a few days and how he was going to start going with her to pick up the son and spend a bit more time with him, so he gets used to him.

this guy has a fucking desk job guys. Works from home most of the week, what and he’s never picked his son up from nursery ? Give me a break.

Because my husband essentially does work on fields or similar and isn’t physically there to do a lot of things. Whereas I have a desk job and I have way more flexibility. And no, my husband isn’t doing a number on me. It’s unfortunately the nature of his work.

You're saying the same thing he is then!! The difference is he isn’t using his wfh etc to do childcare or pick ups. I have childfree friends who would go a bit mad with your attitude to be honest as they feel their wfh is in jeopardy because of parents using it to collect kids

At university a male I knew had his mother type up all his essays. Couldn’t do that himself apparently. Some people are very good at delegating work that other people just take in their stride as a normal part of life.

You don’t get it. I’m not judging the choice as such, but I don’t agree with the way he’s framed it.

I wonder how many men frame their job this way, when actually they’re down the pub at 5 with their colleagues every night after work ‘ doing business ‘. That’s what I mean.

i don’t care about people working or not working.

Your friend’s child is very lucky to have such a hands on, involved parent.

I’m a woman and I have worked difficult busy professional jobs and I spent some time looking after my two young kids after I got made redundant. I don’t think people are necessarily shirking but there’s definitely less pressure on women to work and earn money (and equally less pressure on men to look after children and home). A city job (I did one) it’s invariably much longer hours and harder work than childcare. Yet lots of women think that they earn half their dh salary because they “facilitated his career”. Yet he will have female colleagues with no sahp doing the same job.

people can absolutely make their own choices. But my issue is double standards- if it’s alright for women not to work then it’s alright for men. Same with childcare- we shouldn’t expect women to manage everything while men can’t do the basics

He pretty much said he could not do his job if his wife didn’t do most of the taking care of the child.

he then went on to explain how his wife was going away for a few days and how he was going to start going with her to pick up the son and spend a bit more time with him, so he gets used to him.

this guy has a fucking desk job guys. Works from home most of the week, what and he’s never picked his son up from nursery ? Give me a break.

Tbh I privately think like this but not just of men, normally when women say they couldn’t possibly work more than 2 days a week or a couple of mornings because they have a toddler and it’s ‘impossible’, I just think how? This morning I’ve washed a few pots, fed cat ,chucked a wash in, sat with my toddler and other half for a bit with a coffee, he then left for work ten mins ago, I’ve hoovered the lounge and about to shower and get dressed for work, will dress toddler and be out the house for 7.50am. One of my friends, shes lovely, we have kids same age but she’s up at 5 with the toddler, got ‘sensory trays’ and ‘role play’ set up for her to play with almost immediately upon waking, basically follows the kid round tidying after her, counts down to nap time to do a wash, dishwasher, hoover etc then is out doing shopping or a playgroup or whatever in afternoon and she literally says she doesn’t know how she’d work. Plus 3 meals and snacks all cooked from scratch plus the clean up that involved, because if she doesn’t she feels guilty - so much pressure to basically base your every minute around the whim of a toddler, She just makes life hard for herself IMO! I always make sympathetic noises but also I find parenting my little one quite easy plus working, there’s just one of her and people do it with 3/4 kids every day. My friends toying with the idea of putting her dc in nursery one day when they turn 3 but she is wracked with guilt about it , she wants a day to ‘be able to catch up with the house’ . Maybe I’m a slatternly mess but how many hours a week do we really need to be cleaning and setting up bloody role play areas ?!

This is it. To be fair it works well for some women to not work and enjoy a much higher salary than they could earn themselves. Men don’t tend to get away with this

I wish women would realise that a (vast?) majority of men have no interest in children.

Perhaps those that don't shouldn't agree to have children.

I wish women would realise that a (vast?) majority of men have no interest in children.

How though? Has OP got permission from her manager to do so? Quite often we see on mn people working from home taking liberties while wfh..taking breaks to play with their dogs etc. We don't know if OP has her employers permission. We don't know if her male colleague has got permission to up and leave to do a nursery pick up. I am surprised at how there are so many assumptions about this male colleague based on a few sentences he uttered. OP is very "look at me , look how better I am " but she doesn't know anything about his/his wife's life and their circumstances. Maybe the wife is happy working part-time hours so that she can spend time with her dc instead of placing them in childcare. For all we know OPs DH might be having a colleague saying the same thing about him. Judge not others..and all that

He would find a woman to play stepmother to his child or hand the child to his mother. You think he will play single daddy for long.

Edit: problem is we enable these feckless men. We give birth to them and teach them how to be feckless by doing everything for them. Women are more than happy to play maid to their husbands and sons.

They both do the same job so I guess the same way she does.

I interpreted the 'get used to him' remark as meaning, get used to him picking the child up and dropping him off, eg, the new routine. Not literally, child barely recognises parent and would have a melt-down if this semi-stranger suddenly turned up at his nursery without warning.

In which case, neither set of fathers 'know' their kids in that sense because they don't do the grunt work and both default to the mother.

I imagine a thread could just as easily have been started by the colleague's wife:

Don't you think this situation is incredibly unfair?

My husband and his colleague both work high-pressure 9-5 jobs from home with some flexibility. Because of the nature of our husbands' jobs, both myself and my husband's colleague' agreed to become the default parent.

To accommodate our young child's schedule and family life, I decided to go part-time for the foreseeable future. This means I can do all the nursery pick-ups and drop-offs and I have some downtime and better quality of life due to only working part-time. I am very happy with this arrangement and my husband acknowledges my contribution and is appreciative. We both feel a lot less frazzled than if we were both working full-time and trying to juggle the childcare arrangements between us.

However, the husband of the colleague works a field job that takes him away from the home from early til late and can never take on any of the grunt work associated with childcare. Like me, his wife has to do all of that. But! her husband has also prevailed on her to work FULL-TIME. She has to do all the pick ups and drop offs and associated grunt work AND work full time whilst he gets to check out of it all.

Because my husband has a flexible job, he could in theory pick up some of the nursery runs if I need time off or was ill. Her husband can't/won't do that.

How is this fair? Why do men think they have the right to do this??

Yeah listen guys, I’m the first to say that if this is what works for them - I have no issue at all. I also don’t have an issue with the wife staying at home. I just found it interesting to be framed that he needs his wife’s support so much - for his big important job- which is the same job I do.