To say im on maternity leave not house wife leave

DH isn’t working all day. He has long gaps during which he lazes about or goes to the gym. What’s OP doing during the baby’s naps? Not going to the bloody gym that’s for sure. Interesting you assume the DH’s work is non stop but the OP’s isn’t, whereas my experience of work, babies and life in general is that the baby work is generally more relentless. Of course paid jobs vary enormously, but it sounds like this DH is at the more dossy end of the spectrum.

As has been said, the woman/the mother is the default carer - always. Child not well at school or nursery or childminder, who is called? The child's father? No. Never. ALWAYS the mother. And the mother is always the one who is expected to use her holiday leave to care for the child too if the child is ill/off school for some reason. The mother is blamed for everything that goes 'wrong,' and if the child falls out with another child, it's the mother that the other parents come at. Never the child's father.

No, not always at all. Some of us demanded different of our partners before making them parents and have stuck to it.

DH is the one that covers DD’s sickness/inset days/school hols. DH does all school runs, lunch boxes, permission slips, dinner money. We’ve given both careers equal priority and both earn similar (6 figs). I travel more than him now, and don’t give it a second thought because he is more than capable of doing it all. (Probably more so than I am.)

You should have equal downtime. If he has more than you, then he needs to be picking up more house stuff. You’re right, you’re supposed to be looking after the baby, not the house.

Excellent idea.
Encourage him to share the parental leave. Seriously, this is the way to avoid the trap of becoming both the primary parent and the default parent.

With the caveat that you need to sort out the division of "areas of responsibility" first. So you know what you need to do when you come home in the evenings and at weekends, and more importantly, you know what not to touch because it is his responsibility.
The trap is if he does fuck all during the day and you come home to a tip of a house, kitchen messed up from lunchtime and breakfast, no laundry done, while he sits on the sofa watching TV or phone and baby amuses herself with precious little adult input or actual 'parenting'.

She is working, she has a complete dependent child to care for. Plus she still bringing in an income each month.

Crack the whip

Nothing annoys me more than seeing women being exploited to do all the housework and childcare while contributing to the household financially. Why on earth do women enable it and tiptoe around a slacker guy. Maternity leave was more gruelling than my corporate finance job, but men seem to think it’s a holiday

@wishingonastar101 , they are both working. The OP is on maternity leave not special leave to absolve her husband from household tasks and parental duties.

Personally I am of the option the not working partner does the housework etc...

I was going to say that I think YABU, as you are actually on leave (albeit maternity leave) and have more opportunities to do more housework and shopping etc, and I do think you should do a bit more housework and general chores... But still, it's a unfair that you should so it all. I would say a 65-35 split would be OK when the baby is 5 months old. (You 65.) Although I would have said 50-50 for the first few months of the baby's life.

And you said he was lazy before you had this baby, so that is why he's leaving everything to you. And he will continue leaving it all up to you when you're back at work! What was he like after the birth of the first one?

You MUST put your foot down now, and tell him he needs to step up!

Anyway, I would be driven bonkers by him being at home all day 'working from home' as you can never relax and do your own thing and watch what you want on TV (in between housework and chores.) My DH tried to apply for a job that was WFH, (just 20 hours a week,) but he didn't get it, thank God! 😬

Thing is, what you are telling us @Cloudyonasunnyday doesn't shock me, and neither do the other tales of bone-idle men who are lazy around the house. Most men are like this. Although you will hear anecdotes from some posters who say they and their DH/partner split everything 50-50, and did do all through maternity leave/having children, but in most cases that simply doesn't happen.

Honestly, no wonder so many women these days are choosing to remain childfree. They have finally got a clue, and know what life is like for the majority of women who have a child/children. A bloody hard slog. As has been said, the woman/the mother is the default carer - always. Child not well at school or nursery or childminder, who is called? The child's father? No. Never. ALWAYS the mother. And the mother is always the one who is expected to use her holiday leave to care for the child too if the child is ill/off school for some reason. The mother is blamed for everything that goes 'wrong,' and if the child falls out with another child, it's the mother that the other parents come at. Never the child's father.

As I said, no wonder so many women are choosing a childfree life now!

This. ^

Yes you can. Just stop doing half of what needs to doing. If no plates get clean, so what. Buy paper ones.

being exhausted and doing everything hasn’t made him magically Notice. Tell him and them stop doing it. If they get done badly so what. If they don’t get done. So what.

you have to bloody mean it.

this. Do not do chores during the day! Do them Evenings or weekends. And he does other cleaning cooking or kids. But alternate both.

Second child here too and just ending maternity leave. Exactly the same situation.

I do absolutely everything. Cleaning, cooking, bills, home management, all the admin which comes with two kids.

He goes to work. Sometimes does laundry. Helps with the night wakes.

I am on my last legs. Exhausted. Yet I can't ask him to help or things don't get done or slip or need to be redone.

Yeah. YANBU. This is a thing and it is infuriating. I wish I'd nipped my situation in the bud much sooner. Say something now and hopefully you can level the field.

i think the phase is "married single parent" I work from home and people that have "downtime" don't last. So you appear to be at risk of being a "working married single parent"

You deserve so much better, but so does your baby.
Stop doing anything for him.
Laundry, shopping and cooking.
Ask yourself what is the point of him?
Because it really isn't clear from your post.
You will have zero peace when you return to work because of this selfish loser.

Start insisting to him he shares the load or the marriage is over before your mat leave is finished.

Do not not have another child with this waster.
Tell family and friends the truth.
Secrecy and covering for men like him with family and friends is half the problem.
Tell the truth and shame him.

Consider some therapy to figure out why you think you deserve so little in a partner and father of your child?

I think you should look at it from the point of view of outside working hours.
After work he should do half the childcare and half the chores but not during working hours.
Having higher standards is tricky because it's never going to change.

I am a bit surprised at all the suggestions that the mum on mat leave should do nothing other than baby related stuff? Surely there's time within the day to get meals ready and do the laundry?
I took the view that DH was working all day and coming home tired. He did some night shifts with baby or toddler and did all the bath and bedtime so we were both flat out really.

This is one of those cases where a man’s true colours are shining through now there’s additional responsibility and he thinks the M in temporary SaHM stands for maid not mum.

Such a good point! If men were the default carers of young children I don’t think there’d be a huge amount of cleaning going on. It would all be ‘getting them interested in rugby’ ie watching it, and campaigning for better play areas in pub gardens.

The only part of your story that is unreasonable is "reaching out" to your dh 😂🤑other than that, get him told!! List what each of you do in the household, then he will realise how little he does and how much you do.

just stop doing anything that isn’t baby related

you need to stop accepting and facilitating the this or it will never change and your child will grow up thinking that this is ok

But is it really about equal downtime? I think not. Maternity leave is purely about bonding with your baby, healing, making mum friends if you want etc. Not doing extra housework. Not by a long shot.

YABU as you knew that he was lazy before you had a baby.

Not sure why you think a baby will give him a personality transplant....

Personally in this instance I think reframing maternity leave as parental leave may help both of you. After the initial post partum period 37 weeks of leave can be taken by either parent.

You mention you are the higher earner so you going back to would seem to make sense financially even if there may be some practicalities to iron out (esp if breastfeeding) From what you have said you plan on returning to work so I would focus on shifting the dynamic in to that transition.

Navigating the return to work can be massive, and it could also fall on you to do most of the heavy lifting as its your return to work (somewhat fair as has to be on your terms) but to facilitate that return the joint responsibilites of parenting need to be in place. I can only say what I would do in this situation and that would be to transfer perhaps the final 10 - 13 week of maternity leave to OH so you can focus on returning to work and he can wrap his head around the daily dynamics of childcare whilst you still have parental leave income in place.

Both of you need to be on the same page ASAP. Also some time away from work for OH to spend time with baby is a beautiful opportunity if he choses to see it that way.

It may also give him a bit more insight in to what the demands of being a family with two parents working actually involves, To be fair if he has never had to work and manage a household and childcare before how is he going to know unless he tries - so give him the chance to try (said with kindness and the expectation he will step up)

Why should she have to? I’m sure OP is already tidying up the house while her and the baby play, keeping on top of the hoovering and kitchen because she’s home, in a few weeks she will be cooking baby food non stop.
Why should she have to wash her husband dirty boxers during the day too?
It’s reasonable to do some light bits during the day, but OP is looking after a child on broken sleep, she doesn’t need to be taking jobs away from her DH and making his life easier than it was before having a baby.