Husband is a boring bastard

The point I made was a 3 year old shouldn’t be that much hard work. I enjoyed my children at this age.
They are out of the toddler tantrum stage. Out of the baby waking up at all hours stage, and not in the throws of puberty stage.
If you don’t like what posters are telling you then that is on you op,
Quite frankly your dh is not pulling his weight and you are finding out the hard way.
A lot of men will do whatever it takes to keep a new partner happy. The. Once they have you they really don’t have to try anymore. You are directing your anger at posters rather than your lazy, disinterested dh.
He isn’t a good father.
Again, if he can’t cope now at this relatively enjoyable stage, then God help you when your child is a teenager is all I can say.
You have been advised to speak to him and tell him how lacking he is.
Either speak to him or don’t, but he isn’t going to magically change otherwise.

Having young children in your 40s/50s can escalate into nightmare territory if your own parents are still living and start to decline. I don't know whether OP's husband has this responsibility (by the sound of it, he'd palm care for his parents off on someone else too) but it's yet another good reason to think very hard about the outcome of deciding to have kids later in life.

Nothing really useful to add, just solidarity. My husband was 54 when we married and I had 3 very young (early primary-age) children. It’s been a disaster. I’ve basically raised them as a single parent. Now I have three teens and he’s mid-60’s. It’s not going well!
The only advice (as you can’t leave) is focus on you and your child and really try to enjoy her childhood, otherwise the resentment will only grow. He will not change, so you have to.

Hmm. I think the thing is that you've met a guy who was in his mid forties and chosen not to have kids, but was happy to be a step dad to your older DC. Fine.

You accidentally get pregnant. So the baby wasn't planned. I don't know how the contraception failure happened, but usually if people really don't want to get pregnant they don't at your age.

He might love his daughter but he didn't plan to have her. I'm not sure why you're surprised he's not that hands on. I expect you're comparing him to dads who chose to have a 3 year old in their 50s so are enjoying it more.

Hopefully it will get better once she's 5 or 6.

Yikes - everyone commenting on age. My DH is 10 years older and has twice the energy I have. Kids are exhausting no matter what age you are and you can be hit by health issues and fatigue at any age. He is not even an absent dad - he seems to do stuff with the kid but it’s just a bit boring. Definitely say it’s making you unhappy and can he make more of an effort

You need to take it in turns with bath,.book bed, routine. 💯
Quite a few (not all mind you) fathers I knew would happily let the mother take the lead. Especially if they breast-fed,.as then it was oh only you could ever comfort the baby etc. Such bollocks. 🙄
Just Nope. 👎
Tell him that you will do 4 occasions of bath, book, bed routine, on:
mon/weds/fri/sun 😇
and he can do 3 occasions of:
tues/thurs and sat. 😎
Some fellas need the 'sink or swim method' of being hands on and just bloody getting on with it and tough luck learning.

God forbid if anything happened to you (hospitalised, illness or worse etc), he would need to know how to soothe her to sleep and know her daily routine. 🙏

ETA: We also had a weekly menu board put up so our weekly meals were there so DS had a bit more structure. 🤓

Every little bit of info helps.

I hope you find a decent compromise. 🫂
@bosslady24

How do you know that my DP wasn’t 53 when our youngest was 3? And the difference between 3 and 7 is actually 4 not 5 btw.

Surely it is true that

1. Many people in their 50s are healthy, fit and able to look after young children;
2. Rates of ill-health increase with age and many people in their 50s develop health conditons that impact their quality of life, sometimes very seriously. After all healthy life expectancy in the UK is under 61 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/bulletins/healthstatelifeexpectanciesuk/between2011to2013and2022to2024#healthy-life-expectancy-in-local-areas-of-the-uk
3. While lifestyle might help your chances of longer healthy life, 'shit happens' to all sorts of people, and the chances of that happening also increase with age. So people in group 1 can find themselves in group 2 with little warning (this happened - brutally - to my husband in his late 40s). Hopefully anyone deliberately having children thinks about this before TTC, and all the more so if they are older when they do so.

We've no idea whether the OPs husband is perfectly capable of being in group 1, but being lazy and selfish, or whether his health actually makes it more difficult for him to do it. This is an age category where there's an especially broad spread of health and there's no way you can extrapolate from one person's experience of parenting at this age to say how another should be.

You are looking at it from the point of view of someone who has already been through it all with kids and not wanting to do it again.

DH and I were together for over 20 years before we had DS. In that time we travelled the world extensively. We visited over 100 countries and had the time of our lives. Our bucket lists were almost exhausted.

Having a child when I was well into my 40’s and DH was 50 has been fantastic. We definitely don’t feel we are missing out on anything as we have done all the travelling and other stuff when we were younger. Settling down with our DS is a lovely change of pace.

We also had very good careers meaning we are now financially solvent and don’t need to work again if we don’t want to. The stresses of money, work and being time poor that we see with many other younger parents just aren’t an issue for us.

Ignoring all the arguing, you say he moans about going out so I’d split the weekend up. Let him organise activities for half the time, if it’s in the house or very local that’s fine! Then if you want to go further afield, you can plan it. Planing is half the issue so he may just come along and enjoy it if he hasn’t had to think about it.

Im 60 and a granny to a 5 year old, I much prefer to do things at home with her, baking, playing games, crafts and gardening. She loves doing this stuff, and it’s just as much fun as doing out somewhere and “making memories”.

I think some people here can't count. Plenty saying they're also older parents because they were 39 or 40 when the child was born. OP's DH is much older than that.

No, I did not. That expression was used by the poster I was replying to.

7 and 10 is 7 and 5 years older than a 3 year old. And you’re not yet 50. He is 53. So he’s 5 years on from you with a child 5 years behind you. Not really the same

Couldn’t agree more. I didn’t meet my DH until I was late thirties. Had children in my mid forties.

"And my dd is not a fuck up."

I never said your DD was a fuck up! Don't misquote me.

And as for the "the numerous posters here saying their Dh is/was a great ‘older’ dad.", it's not very objective.

"Early 50s it's not old . Ffs."

It's old to have a toddler. A woman of his age can't do it. There's a clue there.

"I'm an older mum, had my kids at 39 and 42."

So you're at least 10 years younger than him. NOT the same thing.

"I know men who had kids in late 40s and early 50s and they do just fine and enjoy spending time with their kids."

Respectfully (as you like to say), unless you are with them every second of the day, you don't know how tired they get after running around with the kids.

"HE f*ed up, not them."

No, she did too. She also decided to have the children with him knowing his age.

my husband loves being a dad at 50

he said he’d have hated it any sooner as he was enjoying his care free life - but now he’s content being a dad and really enjoys it 🤷‍♀️

Couldn't agree more. 50 is not old, it should be a piece of piss at that age, as I said I'm 53 and work full time with young children. Unless you're really unfit I don't see the issue.

The point is that some posters on here have been very judgmental of people who met their partner later on in life, through circumstances maybe not of their own choosing. It’s fine to say “we’re winding down now at 50 and couldn’t imagine having toddlers/primary aged children” if you met your partner in your teens/20s and started your family early. Then yes, you’re probably in the “I’m done” phase of life. Some people weren’t lucky enough/didn’t have chance to do that. So their children came later. It’s just a different family life, but their children still deserve engaged, present parents.

Since when was being in your late 40s old? Since when was early 50s ready for pensions? When we are deemed able to wait till 67/8 by the state

😂😂 Plenty on here with older spouses who manage parenting fine. This is a husband issue. Not an age one

Of course. But I wasn't talking about the OP's husband. I was giving an alternative perspective on the "reeking of privilege" nonsense by another poster.

Does the OP’s husband have any of those conditions? No. Of course, there’s health conditions that limit your lifestyle, nobody is denying that but there’s also opting out of being engaged with your kids because you can’t be arsed.