What are the duties of a sahm?

[wherearetheturrets]

What do you think the role of a sahm is? Should sahms be completely responsible for all
household tasks (cooking, cleaning, organisation, financial management, meal planning, shopping, errands and appointments)? What is a fair division of household labour when one person works full time and the other is a sahp? And do you think what’s fair depends on children’s ages?

Factor in the cost of an au pair, child minder or nursery fees per annum. Then factor in the cost of washing clothes, drying them and putting them away. Then factor in the cost of a cleaner. Then factor in the cost of a overnight nanny who will help.

It runs to the equivalent of £59,000 per year.

It's a lot of money that a SAHM or Dad - if he pulls his weight saves for the family.

Forgot the shopping and buying of clothes. Eta

😁Touche!

With your update OP. There are two options.

It is such an easy task he can contribute as it requires no effort so why in earth would he need to delegate it. He can just join in.

Or

It is a task for delegation and does require effort. In which case you need to streamline your process and just meal plan once (7 or 14 day rolling rota) and forget about it. If he doesnt like every Friday is pizza night and every tuesday is jacket potatoes. Tough.

Agree. It’s madness to go food shopping with 2 little ones.

I’m a SAHM, ages: 5, 3 + 1. DH is self employed and works from home. I do majority of pick ups/ drop offs and cooking. DH does all the laundry + bins. Everything else is a group effort.

Given that you have a toddler at home, your main tasks are looking after the 2 year old, and the 3 yr old as well when not in preschool which is most of the time. Anything you get done on top of that is a bonus not a “duty”.

What does your husband do on his 8 days not working? When are your 8 days off a fortnight? Why are you doing all financial management? That’s something that both of you are responsible for.

It depends, but downtime should be equal. So if you are a SAHM to 1 non disabled teenager then you should do more than if you have 5 children with complex needs and none of them attending school.

So....this is about the food planning, shopping and cooking.
For a start - online order and home delivery for the bulk of it.
Don't take toddlers to the supermarket.
Basically you need a rotation of 7 meals as there's 7 days in the week.
It might be boring but if you basically have the same meal on set days then you don't have to think about it.
If husband finds that boring then well too bad for him.

She must have been great in bed 😂

As a sahm years ago in the week I did everything. Weekends my husband did the nights feeds and looked after the gardening and decorating. As he drove for a living long distances everyday I thought it was fair that I did everything in the week as he needed his rest to drive . When the children grew up and I went back to work he did help more around the house . I think that was fair .

Kids at school now but I do all financial admin, diaries, school stuff, anything to do with the children, housework, washing, shopping, basically everything. He does cook sometimes as I don’t like it and if I do anything more for him I’m one step away from just being his employed housekeeper / carer (edited to add he does mow the lawn, fill the car up with petrol and very occasionally do a bit of DIY if something is broken / needs putting together)

We're a SAHM and a SAHD family, and we share everything. We work to our strengths. I'm a better cook/Baker and DH is better at cutting wood straight and other DIY projects. School run and dog walking we often do together, but sometimes separately. We share gardening, cleaning, painting and lots of other things. It's a fair split.

As others have said, you need a rolling meal plan, maybe over 2-3 weeks and even then it can be pasta Monday, chicken Tuesday, fish Wednesday etc. And then shop on line. For the first 3 weeks it will take time to write your lists and set up your online shop but after that, each week you just copy over one of your saved shopping lists and add to / amend as necessary.

Don’t make any meals harder than they need be eg slow cooker is easy as you just chuck everything in, in the morning, or a tray bake which cooks itself. Pasta with a stir-in sauce, bagged salad and garlic bread etc . Don’t feel bad about using frozen veg as it’s likely fresher than the fresh stuff which has been sitting in the supermarket. I used to batch make a load of sandwiches too, something like cheese and ham and then stick them in the freezer. And Friday is a takeaway!

Taking care of the kids while the other parent is at work.
Doing some general domestic stuff during that time too, particularly when the kids are at school.

So neither of you work @DiscoBeat? Or are you WFH?

No, we took early retirement.

I know a woman like this and tbf, I kind of admire her. She values herself very very highly, thinks her husband has won the prize here, and has men queuing up for her. No petrol station flowers for her.

If children are at school then everything. All housework, laundry, shopping, meal
planning etc can be done during school time with hours and hours to spare.

With younger children, nowhere near as much. Shopping and meal planning yes - do it online, get it delivered. But realistically a lot of housework chores are going to have to be split between the parents at the weekend. A SAHM with toddlers shouldn’t be stressing about trying to clean bathrooms and get the hoovering done while also looking after a small child. If it gets done sometimes, great. If not, then totally fine.

Your DP works part time in my book. Does he just loaf around the week he's off?

That aside, parents need to do whatever needs to be done. And it's basically full-time - like 24/7. No-one in a relationship gets to call time on their parental duties when there are small kids around. And people who live in a household need to both get everything done in the household. That means the teen doing chores and the youngest, as soon as they hit c4/5, start putting stuff away, helping load dishwasher.

I'd say its fair if you both have equal amounts of time off and equal personal spending money. If he can't do anything round the house or with the kids cos he's worked so hard all week, and you are run ragged all the time then that's not fair. Equally if all kids were at school and you havd 30+ hours to yourself a week while he worked, it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect you to take on most of the housework.

Sounds like you're not married - is he paying into a pension for you? Do you equally own the house? Are you financially dependent on him? Do you both have life insurance?

Basically, if he buggered off tomorrow would you cope financially?

I agree with your husband.

OP do you think being a SAHM means that your husband should work full time and then do things in the home so you can not work and not do anything around the house?

Division of household stuff if both parents work is very different .

But she’s run ragged looking after a 2 and 3 year old nearly full time? She’s working herself to the bone, it’s just not paid (whilst also sorting out the issues of a teenager too)

Yeah I’ve been all the above. Looking after her own children in the day not working is her job. She may not be run ragged and my teen is self sufficient and doesn’t need sorting. Sorry but I don’t agree.

This.

What a twat. You can solve the meal issue by only planning, buying and cooking stuff he hates. If it’s not a chore, and isn’t important, fuck him.

Depends what works for your set up. Everyone’s families have different things going on and different personalities.

When I was a SAHM it was anything within DH’s work hours. So if he worked 9-5 (he doesn’t), most of that stuff would be down to me, and anything when he’s not at work was split 50:50. Yes a lot of the mental load fell to me. It worked well though and felt efficient.

Now I’m at work, the jobs you list genuinely are 50:50 across the board (which works for me as I still work less than DH!). DH does half the school stuff, most of the dinners and bedtimes because I’m usually out 4 evenings a week etc.

This feels intentionally inflammatory. Please see below quote from the post you have quoted -

‘I do believe that all these tasks are more my responsibility because I’m here and not working, but I don’t feel that I should be solely responsible, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask for some help with parts of it?’

Absolutely nothing in there even implying my partner should do it and I should ‘not do anything around the house’. I already do the vast vast majority of household chores and management, as well as childcare.