Mortgage free but DH wont let me give up work

I disagree with you.

Also the situation is completely different as you seem to be forgetting/disregarding the fact they have two young children!!

A man that wants his wife to stay in work as he is worried about long term financial security is not suddenly going to agree to spending an extra £200 a week on help. As they will already be paying £££ for nursery fees. So he does need to step up.

And I’m guessing you live alone? So the housework for one person will be hugely less than a family of 4 with young kids. Then you have all the cooking on top of that (and all the other stuff she does on top of a full time job).

The only answer is that he steps up. They can pay for a bit of extra help but he’s not going to hire a housekeeper!!

You cannot make someone do housework if they don't want to. Such a system breaks down and breaks up families.

I am not saying it is cheap to employ someone to work in the house. I have been doing that for years. I am disabled, so need someone. If I could work I would. I enjoyed going to work and being with other people. I got up one morning to go to work and my legs gave way. It was as sudden as that.

At the moment I have 8 hours standard which costs me £200 a week - £10K a year. That is not so much out of two full time jobs for peace of mind, a well kept house and company at work.

I don't agree. If the home help goes off sick, which may happen, but rarely does, the situation would not be so different from taking time off to look after a sick child. There is absolutely no reason why an arrangement where the spouse/partner employs someone to help in the house so that they can both continue to work would not work out well. Reducing to part time would have the same effect - half the income and boredom once the novelty of being at home wears off.

If they are mortgage and debt free and she considers they do not need the money enough for her to work, yet he wants her to work, that is something for them to work out.

Perhaps there are physical reasons why she no longer wants to work. Perhaps a GP could help. Giving up work is not easy when you are used to having a life beyond the family.

You never know what might happen in life, and the cost of living is not going down.

If she has been working full time for a long time, it is in her best interests to continue, because she could lose pension benefits as she says she is mature with young children.

Probably not the level they need to cover them both working full time and him not pulling his weight though. That would cost a fortune.

What do you mean by ‘keep house’ a daily housekeeper’? They don’t do childcare so then a nannie/nursery is needed on top of that.

He’s not going to pay for all that when the OP has being doing that and working full time for years..

Hence why both things need to happen (and he won’t like it). He needs to pull his weight and they need to pay for a bit more help as it won’t ever be equal.

You don't know that. I don't know of any man who would not agree to employing someone to keep house.

For a point of reference my DH was supportive of whatever I wanted to do - full time, part time or SAHM. To be fair I tried them all. The money he earnt was family money and the years I was at home (I was retraining at the same time) he very much valued what I was doing.

You say you are an older parent OP with 2 young children. You have clearly worked for many years. It really wouldn’t be the end of the world for you to step off the hamster wheel for a few years to be with young children. Especially if you are not that happy in your job/career. Nothing is permanent and you could always retrain. But your DH needs to be more supportive and appreciative of what you do at home and with the kids.

No I didn't say they are. But they can be. And your child doesn't know what's normal and may not complain or know that they can or should. It's only when I look back at that time that I realise how bad it was. I'm 45 now so I hope times have changed as well. I never had kids but if I had there's no way I would have left them with anyone else by choice. I can't get my head around the self indulgence it takes to say to yourself "I have to work for me". Why have kids then? I understand necessity but choosing to leave them with paid carers and hope for the best is insane to me.

That’s a game of luck though, my childminder was essentially a second grandmother to me and I still visit to this day, well into my 30s.

Childminders and babysitters aren’t automatically a bad thing.

He should read Erica komisars book “being there” evidence shows it’s best for your children for you to be there with them rather than having money for holidays etc. you’ll also be saving money on food and childcare but most importantly you’ll have happy joyful children!!

Exactly this. I was a full time mum to my 2 sons for the first 5 years. I had to put my career plans on hold (my husband earned more than me back then so it made sense for me to stay at home, not him), and yes we were absolutely skint, and took on some debt in the short term while we did this, but both me and my husband saw the value in our children being raised at home by me, rather than working all hours to pay strangers to do it and actually be left with next to nothing after nursery fees were paid. Me raising our family for those early years, and dealing with all the household stuff, was seen as an equal contribution to our household by us both. Nurturing our family (the next generation) is the most important job there is. When my eldest started school I started working 3 days a week, and later started studying in a profession and grew my career and paid off our debts. When they were teens, I went up to 4 days a week and now me and my husband contribute almost equally in terms of income (I actually earn a bit more than him now) and more or less equally in terms of household stuff (I'm at home one day a week so I do a load of household stuff on that day so our weekends are freed up). We have always treated all our earnings as joint money, including when my husband was the sole earner (as in effect he was paying my wages I guess). Our roles have always been valued equally by each other, and value had nothing to do with money.

We rarely hear the perspective of the child here. While my sister and I were little prior to starting nursery my mum didn't work. Then she gradually increased her hours as we went to nursery and school. By school time I was being picked up by childminders from school for a couple of hours and spending summer holidays and half term with them. Mum and I both have very fond memories of being together when I was very little. I have quite bad memories of my time with childminders. I hated it. It was an exercise in just getting through the day, and I'm sure has had repercussions on who I became. I learnt to be quiet and endure life because mum and dad were busy. The longest serving childminder was Turkish Muslim and it was the most disgustingly sexist house I'd ever been in and not one bit of how they did life made sense to me. My dad had to explain to her that boys and girls were equal. It was just horrible. But I digress. My point is, wanting to raise your children isn’t a bad thing at all and I can't think why, if you could afford to do it, you wouldn't.

Why don’t you both go part-time? Working 4 days a week each, either by reducing your hours or consolidating into four longer days? More time with your children, lower childcare costs. It doesn’t have to be full-time or nothing. It does sound like you’re doing most of the domestic labour, so a shift to part-time and splitting the parenting load would be good for all of you.

You need to at least go very part time as the family burden is firmly placed at your feet, so already there is an inequality. This would even it up a bit.

I think it’s a shame he’s not supportive of what you want. Money is not the be-all and end-all. Nor is a fancy house. Time spent with your children when they are young is a fantastic investment in their future. And a wonderful source of pleasure.

Is he not supportive because he would be jealous? Would he like to work less too? Or is he very focused on money in a way you are not? Or does he feel you would be lazing around while he slogs away?

You should discuss all these things and see if there is a way forward which could make you BOTH happy, and where you both compromise if necessary.

I can’t be sure from your messages whether you are doing twice as much as him at the moment (full time work plus nearly all childcare and housework) and so are justified in wanting to do less, or if you really do want to have a really easy time of it while his life doesn’t get any easier.

If the former, childcare and housework must definitely be part of the conversation. If the latter, then yes, you are probably asking for too much, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t another way.

Let’s be honest. If he doesn’t want her to give up work because of money - he’s hardly going to agree to someone covering off all the housework. And even if he did - will they be doing all the nursery/school drop offs and pick ups? Covering the childcare when they are ill? All the cooking and laundry? The eventual after school activities? This would all cost more than her wage.

Unless he steps up she’ll still be doing a full time job and most of the day to day stuff with the kids and the house. And he’ll think just because they have a cleaner once a week he’s off the hook.

I think men need to be on board from the start. You need to negotiate this before kids. Because otherwise you have a situation where the DH just isn’t around (stays late at the office for example) and you’re just doing everything by default as you happen to get home at 6pm and not 8pm.

Big mistake to give up work, it is good to have your independence and your own earnings so you don't have ask for anything. You also need to build a workplace pension of your own as retirement without one will be dire and you will feel poor. Your children will be grown up before you know it and then if you had stayed home it would hard to re enter the world if work. Not sure what your educational background is or what work you do, but it is good to have the mental stimulation opportunities that comes with a fulfilling career. My mother and grand mother both had good jobs and installed in me the importance of always being financially independent.

Or someone else is employed to do the housework.

Do you know anything about DNA? How do you think gifts of the parents - ie music, art, et al come about? Look at religion that is buried deep in the ancestors: doesn't that have any connection to lives through the generations?

Our way of life - society, if you will - has been the same across the world for centuries, and embedded inside all of us. I said it will take time to change men into sharing what was always - and still is, especially in Islamic countries, where the dominance of men is cruel.

Men were 'hunter gatherers' for thousands of years. Society was arranged that way. If change is made too fast, it is quickly undone.

Did I say it shouldn't be changed? Of course not: far from it. I said it cannot happen overnight, because that takes a couple more generations.

I think that if men and women share equally the load of breadwinner and homemaker, regardless of how intelligent the one is over the other, it will change what we are. I mean, that taken to it's obvious conclusion, men will have less testosterones and women will have more.

There is already confusion in the young, who feel they are in the wrong body. You may disagree with me, but I think at the root of some of this discontent is the sexes in adulthood taking on the roles of the other.

I think you are being unreasonable. However, if you are both working full time he also needs to help with looking after the children

That your salary is small is not the issue... the real issue is that you are working and from what it looks like so far, you're doing full time hours too... but then you're coming home and still on the go (kids and house) but he is getting down-time...
So he needs to be doing half of the kids and house stuff regardless of salary proportions

That poster didn’t say he did “absolutely nothing”. And the bar at not nothing is pretty low.

“Abandoning” earning capacity is hyperbolic and inaccurate.

She said she does the lion’s share with the kids, not that he does absolutely nothing.

Again, I suggest reviewing and streamlining or eliminating domestic tasks, and getting him to take on more. Abandoning earning capacity is unwise.

With a DH with that kind of attitude I suggest you keep working. You might need it at some point. Obviously until then tell him to pull his weight with the kids and the excuse that he's the higher earner and doesn't need to lift a finger doesn't apply it you have to work full-time.

Our DNA is still back in the past when women did all the work at home and earned a bit of pocket money in part time work. That resulted in women being completely dependent on men for their living expenses. Another result was that women did not earn enough NI contributions to have a decent pension. Those women are probably on pension credit. In another couple of generations the DNA might have evolved sufficiently that men might become domesticated. That time hasn't come yet.

What is this utter pile of nonsense? DNA has nothing to do with housework. Social conditioning, however, has everything to do with it.

In an ideal world, men and women would be equal and share everything equally.

At the moment we have not been 'conditioned' to that life. Our DNA is still back in the past when women did all the work at home and earned a bit of pocket money in part time work. That resulted in women being completely dependent on men for their living expenses. Another result was that women did not earn enough NI contributions to have a decent pension. Those women are probably on pension credit. In another couple of generations the DNA might have evolved sufficiently that men might become domesticated. That time hasn't come yet.

In the meantime, it is better to make the most of being able to work full time and pay someone to work in the house.

Having said all that, the best home helps and carers are men. If that is what they choose to do, they are really very good at it, and keepers.

If you marry a man like that, he will be content to run the house and care for the children, and you can got to work, earn the lion's share and have your dinner on the table waiting for you.

We just cannot have it all - yet.