Mat leave has turned me into a 50's housewife

[walkingonair]

Having worked in highly stressful jobs for the last 10 years, I was looking forward to a year of yummy mummy freedom on mat leave with DD2. Especially as with DD1 I took only 3 months off work. I had all sorts of lovely things planned; parent and toddler sessions, coffee mornings, baby massage classes, sewing, swimming re-decorating the house, shopping, the list goes on..... the trouble is, the fantasy hasn?t quite lived up to the reality and I?m blaming DH.

Since going on ML DH thinks I should be his mum. He expects a hot meal every evening and has become increasingly lazy around the house. I don?t just mean he fails to occasionally pick up the vacuum, I mean he has turned into a teenage boy (pants/clothes everywhere, sulky behaviour if his dinners? late, dirty socks and sweet wrappers down the side of the sofa, general laziness). I?m sure, he expects me to follow him a round with a dust pan. Perhaps I should buy him a smoking jacket and light him a cigar each evening, before, massaging his feet!?

Before I went on mat leave DH and I took it in turns to cook and whilst I would do the lion's share of the housework, DH would help out. Now he assumes it?s my duty as housewife to do everything. We also run a business together so my day is often spent organising his business affairs. By the time I do the school run, look after DD2, house work, paperwork etc I have little time to enjoy being a temporary SAHM.

My biggest bug bare, is when he asks what have you done all day? Or if I do go out he?ll call me on my mobile and say with confusion ?where are you??

Sound familiar to anyone?...

my dh stopped asking that question the day after he did a stay at home day on his own.
NOW he says - what do you want me you cook you for dinner?

Good on you writerofdreams!

I realise that I've made a rod for my own back, but for years I was the main 'bread winner'. My job involved a fair amount of overseas travel that took me away from home allot. Though DH also worked FT, he had to juggle this with looking after DD whilst taking care of the house.

I guess when I left work to have DD2 I wanted the life I?d never had, sounds silly but I wanted the life of Nigella! I wanted to master the art of baking, learn to sew and sack the cleaner! Trouble is in doing so I've created a lazy man-child, DH has got far too comfy with his new 'domestic goddess' and for me the novelty has worn off. I'm certainly not craving my career back, in fact I?m dreading returning to the rat-race, however I also don?t want to be a complete skivvy.

Is it a sign of the times, whereby women want careers AND a family AND a nice home, yet we struggle to juggle everything?

I could have written this post.

Personally I handled it with a complete meltdown angry talking to one weekend. Had an effect. There are probably better ways of doing it. We then made up, drunk vodka and sung bollocks while cleaning.

Have given him the choice about getting a cleaner when I return or helping out.

olderandwider, have never heard that old joke before!

V rarely argue with dh but am ashamed to admit I bellowed at him this morning after he went on and on about not using a ruddy online shopping voucher. Told him he was bloody rude and how dare he speak to me like that. Am contemplating stuffing his pancetta wrapped chicken with it.

I'd agree that he should be getting off his arse, although it is an interesting contrast with another thread from a few days ago where it was the woman working and the man at home and there was a far more even split of people with one side saying "yes, he should be doing all of the housework" (as was suggested by the op)

mayorquimby - the DH in the other thread wasn't recovering from pregnancy/birth and had no children at all! Not the same thing!

Ah so if a woman was unemployed her husband would be within his rights to do literally nothing when at home and refer to it as her work?
As I said, it wasn't a case of her expecting him to do the majority of it during the week which I'd agree with, she felt she was within her rights to do literally nothing at home as he was essentially a kept man. I just don't think there would be the same level of support for a man posting such beliefs as she received if his wife happened to be out of work

I don't think there is any gender issue here at all - it is a workload issue.

Mayorquimby on the other thread it was the stay at home partner who did nothing all day - no childcare and no housework, so the woman had to come home after work and do it all. I don't know why its sexist to suggest that' snot acceptable.

When I wasn't working and had no kids I did pretty much everything in terms of housework. When there's only two of you there really isn't much to do so it's perfectly reasonable to expect to get it done between 9-5, in fact, it barely took me two hours a day with another hour for cooking and cleaning up afterwards.

Therefore I don't think the poster on the other thread was being too harsh to expect her DH to do all the housework. It's when kids come along that things change, as they're pretty much a full time occupation in themselves. When I wasn't working I would get out most days, with friends or just to the library or something and so I didn't mind when DH came home and put his feet up. Once I had the dinner done I could put my feet up too.

My DH is a closet workaholic and used my 6 months ML to work all hours. He did start bearing more or less his share of childcare and household tasks when I went back to work though, so perhaps it'll be OK when you go back to work. Maybe point out to him that its called maternity leave for a reason?