to think dh is bu expecting me to be able to cut the lawns when i'm looking after a 3 year old allday?

[carriedababi]

hes got home tonight, and told me i really should be able to cut the lawns, i guess it would take about 45 mins, as i'm at home allday.
[sahm]

he was going to the gym tonight, which he seems to have time for.

so should i be doing the grass cutting while looking after a 3 year old?

Oh Come on! FFS its' not that bloody hard is it?

must be awful at home all day with ONE three year old to look after! How terribly demanding.

Just say you can't be arsed doing it, love, don't hide behind the stressed SAHM mask

lawns and bins are man jobs

i am sur you are capable of doing it - but you no doubt run the household and look after your kid

tell your dh that becuase he gets a wage it doesn't mean that you are now his personal maid - and that is what sundays are for in man world. washing cars and cutting the grass.

do you have an equal division of labour?

btw, loving the way you refer to your lawn i am envisioning something out of a jane austen novel

so should a sahm do the housework and cut the grass?

i think this is moral dilema of the day

I have been banned from trying to mow the lawn after I mowed over the flex and (presumably) could have at least severely damaged myself. Although I was trying to do that without any children in the house.

At the moment no one seems to be mowing the lawn

Well, DP is a PT SAHD and manages to mow the lawn with a 3 year old in tow.

I can't quite work out from this thread whether
A) He's a bad father for operating a small, unreliable piece of electrical equipment within a 20 yard radius of a child who may be scarred by a flying leaf
B) I'm a bad DP for letting him do something which should clearly be done by a woman for fear of it being too gender predictive and scarring my child emotionally
C) We should both be ashamed of depriving our child of 20 minutes of CBeebies in order that the lawn gets mowed
or
D) I am a lucky cow because my male DP can multitask better than the OP?

I'm a bit wary of the lawn mower. Tis a massive noisy petrol thing...

DomesticGoddess, I am sorry but your mention of a child who might "run out in front of the mower" made me giggle. Do you lot all have massive ride-on tractor type affairs, driven by blind gardeners, or what?

It's a lawn, not the M1!

It's a 3 yr old, not an 18 month toddler with no more idea of safety than a hedgehog. Explain about the spinning sharp thing, show him, compare it to scissors, etc - all done in your best very serious, 'I'm now trusting you because you're so big' voice.

Unless he's Flat Stanley, he's really not going to fling himself under the blades, and he presumably already knows about 'electricity = don't touch'.

Or failing that, does he never go to playgroup?

Agreed on the annoyingly arrogant 'should have been today' speech, though. Although it really should be possible to achieve some time in a given week, allowing for weather and mood of child.

As for kids doing mowing - my then 7 yr old was a dab hand at the ride on mower when we rented an old farm with an acre of garden. :)

OP - Is your mower a piddly wee flymo or an enormous heavy bone-shaking petrol thing?? I think we need to know....

I actually snorted at "Flat Stanley".

I'm sorry, I know I should be taking this more seriously ...

YABU. I cut the grass when I am able to and if not DH does it. I also recycle/take stuff to the dump, put the bins out, go to B & Q...all the household bits are shared as is the child-rearing bit. This was when I was a SAHM and not that I work part-time, nothing has changed. I don't iron much though - I do school uniform and my work stuff, he does his work shirts

Don't get this division of labour by gender thing - one of my neigbours saw me cutting the front lawn once. At the school gates that afternoon, I was greeted with 'We know what you you were doing this afternoon..'. Evidently, a woman mowing the lawn was gossip-worthy

now not not

In fairness, I might have been more like it with one PFB - it's only the hindsight benefit of having 2 kids aged 10 and 6 that makes me think what a daft question it is. Can't imagine just how slack I would get if I had 3 or 4 kids.

DH mows ours at the weekends but all three DC are usually out there "helping" (age 4, 2 and 2). We do have a manual push along job and not an electric one though, if that makes a difference to safety.

I could do it with the DC around, but I can't be bothered... it is about the only thing DH cares more about than me, so he does it (I am SAHM and do more or less everything else around the house during the week).

And yes I also do the bins 95% of the time, and have been to the dump every week for the last five (we have just moved house), and also done a few other "man" jobs. But DH works all the time so if I I didn't we would be overflowing with rubbish.

Our new lawn is so bumpy it needs to be steam rollered before it can be mown, so nobody will do it until Spring probably...

I would absolutely 100% prefer to mow the lawn than cook the evening meal.

Ours is a petrol mower, but is much easier to handle than our last electric thing where you kept having to whip the cable out of the way.

read "the idle parent" x

my darling ex once moaned that I didnt cut the grass - however, he liked to do it, with his earphones in listening to music, while I occupied the children inside. If I said I was going to do it, he panicked at what he was meant to do with the boys! Been cutting my own grass for last 10 years but only once boys in bed and with baby monitor on in garden for a few years - now they are old enough to cut it for me - bliss!

"so should a sahm do the housework and cut the grass?"

SAHM are suppose to do housework? I thought that looking after the children was our job, everything else is suppose to do be done on a 50/50 basis, preferbly with the female mowing the lawns and the man doing the washing up to prevent the DC growing up with any gender bias.

Your husband want's you to mow the lawn while he goes to the gym?

He would get an all round workout if he cut it and did all the edges too.

YANBU.

Unless you have many acres of land YABU (although I'd be a bit miffed if my dh telling me I should do this as if I was a child).

Surely 3yo plays outside at the same time and/or walks alongside with toy lawnmower or pushchair?

yabu - a three year old can "help" with raking while you do the job. just explain the dangers and you will be fine.
can be a great activity for both of you

Wow - I've woken up in 1951 - I really must remind DH to do his 'man jobs' today.

OP - YABU to think that you can't cut the grass because you are looking after a child. Yor DH is BU to swan off to the gym leaving you witha to do list.

'I would absolutely 100% prefer to mow the lawn than cook the evening meal.'

Completely agree - when we lived in the aforementioned large-gardened house, we would have to resort to a very strict rota as to who would tidy the house, mind the kids, prepare the meal, etc, whilst the other spent 2 hours driving around in the sunshine on a garden tractor mower, listening to music and getting a good arms workout from pulling up the grassbox to drop the clippings in the midden.

We are obviously very irresponsible parents as both ds' are outside whe the lawn is mown, they usually help by emptying the grass from the box! Dh normally does it as I tend to mow it like I am hovering indoors lol!