AIBU to not be "grateful" enough to DH?

[Sleeplesssister]

OK so I know I am being a spoiled brat but I figure I probably need to get flamed on here in order to get a grip. Have one DD, aged 8 months. Love her to bits but have been debating for ages about whether to go back to work part time. My old job was working for an investment bank however so although I could maybe do 4 days a week they will be long days, with DD in a nursery from 8am until 6pm. Have therefore decided to stay at home and not return to work. Don't need to go back to work, husband has a well paid job and we could manage financially on just his salary. But I have been a bit grumpy about the idea of staying at home, and as a result I've been moaning a bit to my DH, who is working v long hours (not back till 8pm at the earliest). He reckons I need to realise how lucky I am and be more appreciative of the long hours he is putting in to support us (he is hell bent on private schools for DD). I'm feeling a bit lonely stuck at home with DD and have not made many mum friends yet. DH is giving me the cold shoulder for the last 3 days because I've been grumpy. Sad about giving up my career but also can't bear the idea of leaving DD for that many days a week. Why is it so hard? I'm a spoilt so and so I know. Took me bloody ages to get pregnant as well...

Good luck!! You will make the right decision for you!! Just make sure your DH knows what you are giving up and that he knows he has a role in your DD's life that should extend beyond being the Bank of Dad. Being a Mum 24/7 where your partner leaves the parenting entirely up to you will be very hard and lonely.

"DH has been an arse about this"

Absolutely. I would lose a massive amount of respect for my DH if he treated me the way you're being treated by your partner. Shameful.

"I don't think its right for us as a family that DD gets put in a nursery/with a nanny, 4 days a week, from the age of 11 months"

Your DH obviously agrees with you. As long as he's not the one to have any negative effect on his lifestyle or career prospects.

"we should have talked about this more before DD arrived"

hindsight is a wonderful thing

"am just focusing on what is right for our DD" "I can't be selfish about this"

Like your DH is?

"that means putting the needs of my DD first"

Like your DH isn't prepared to do?

... a word of warning, having read all your posts.

Please ensure that your NI contributions, pension, etc is topped up. I've seen husbands like your DH, with their arguments on this issue, with friends. It rarely turned out well in the long run, and every single one of them has ended up screwed financially in the end because it was "easier" to give in and stay at home, as both agreed one parent needed to be there for the little one. It says a lot about the respect your partner has for you when he argues over such issues, IMHO.

Sleepless, I am sure you will make the decision that is best for your family.

Just remember, looking out for yourself also means looking out for your dd in the greater scheme of things. There is short term (tempting to give it all up to look after her at home, as the easy option), there is longer term (financial implications, relationship breakdown). If you look after yourself in terms of making sure you are able to continue to save and have pensions and keep your skills up-to-date, you are ultimately building a protective bubble around your dd.

Keep looking after yourself. I would not give anything up for a man like your dh. Be very careful.

sleepless,all your posst are about what you have to do.v little mention of husband/dad and his responsibilities his give. you are shouldering the bulk of this taking on the plural family we and your husband has absolutley same life as before, gets to work,march on, free childcare and doesnt give up any work.in fact he isnt changing owt as i can read it

sorry but this doesnt seem even handed.at all

blueshoes, I think you've hit the nail on the head with your comments about long term implications of this episode vs. short term gains (which seem most important of all right now i.e. making sure your daughter has her early years in an environment with which you are happy - for the OP, it means one parent staying at home).

Good luck, OP - please, please heed our warnings here re: not investing all your (and your daughter's) financial security with this man and so-called "father". Perhaps I'm speaking too strongly here, but this time last year a very dear friend of mine (who i've known since primary school), having been in a similar situation, found herself in the middle of a divorce. what i'd once known as a happy, laid back workaholic dad became a real bastard during the split, and it was only after that side of him emerged (having counted myself equally as his friend, to the pair of them), i saw how little "tip offs" (like him refusing to use ANY of his holiday allowance for emergency childcare, etc.) should have warned us he wasn't invested in the family life to the extent as my best friend was. and who's ended up royalled screwed, now that she's 12 years out of work, from once being in a professional job - to the point where she's being turned down for admin/PA jobs

Listen to what frgr says. I have a friend in a similar position (she's a lawyer by training, as it happens). Her H had an affair and walked out on her when her younger child was a tiny baby. She'd been out of the workplace for 6 years at that point, because they'd made the joint decision for her to stay at home. H decided to screw her for every penny: his starting point was that she couldn't have any maintenance at all for her, even though she was at home with a baby and a small child, and she had to fight a huge exhausting legal battle, which still isn't over. It was devastating for her to realise that he didn't value anything she'd done in those six years at all (she'd been a very traditional SAHM and had taken complete responsibility for running the house as well as looking after the DC, which had really enabled his career to take off). Getting to the point where she can get back into work at all is going to be hard, and she'll never get back to the level she was at pre-DC. There's no substitute for being able to support yourself and your children if you have to.

Well done OP sounds like you figured it out for yourself.

I don't like then warnings here, I hate it when people try to seed more doubt in your mind about your DH. No-one can comprehend the complexities of a relationship based on a few phrases on the internet. I think you're an itelligent woman and will work out yourself if and when there are serious issues in your relationship that need tackling.

To me it seemed like you were looking for advice about career/childcare, and I'm glad to see you have chosen a solution (which by the way I think is the best one, hope it works out).

Thanks for "you can have it all, but just not all at the same time" - so true!

TryingVeryHard, I don't like writing the warnings here too. But I've seen the effects of these warning signs too often in the relationships of friends and family to ignore the exact same thing here. Even solid relationships go through the "WOTH parent doesn't appreciate what I did, financially, emotionally, practically to be a SAHP to our children" - you only have to visit the Relationships forum of this very site to be hit with it about the head every third or 4th thread. And from what the OP wrote, she's not even starting out from a strong position i.e. where her DH agrees that he has just as much an investment in the family upbringing as her, and should therefore consider shouldering some of the burden.

In effect, what I'm saying is that even in traditional family setups where women like my own SAHP mum ended up financially fucked at the age of 57 due to the ill health of my sole-provider father.. even in relationships where mum and dad agree "we both love DCs, we both want the best for them, we both have the right to financial stability and a career" - even where there is a concensus there... partnerships don't always provide the lifelong stability the SAHP would have chosen. So why would the OP risk it by knowingly entering into an even weaker position with something that has so many warning signs attached to that route?

It makes no sense to me, and whether you like to hear it or not,as in the case of my best friend, it's all to easy to burrow your head in the sand and pretend relationships turn out rosy and your doting husband wouldn't turn into a total bastard once things have grown stale and divorce arises.

I also take issue with your point about the OP making a "choice" - that's the very point a lot of people have an issue with, based on the poster's opinion. It's a choice in name only.

The phrase Hobson's Choice springs to mind.

She made a choice. She was going to resign, then she decided to go back to work part time - how is that not a choice?

Go back to work and enjoy then take some time off when your DD goes to school - its great much more interesting and you get some time to yourself during the day.

By the way your martyr of a DH who sloggs away for "crazy" hours struggling to bring in the bacon to support his ungrateful family is probably doing exactly what he would be doing if you and DD were just figments of his imagination. He's doing what he wants to do, I don't see him suggesting that you both work part-time to give DD the best well rounded upbringing from both paretns?

Brainsurgeon: "She was going to resign, then she decided to go back to work part time - how is that not a choice?"

My suggestion to OP is that if she does not get her 3 days a week, she should only resign AFTER she has found that pt job. It is incredibly difficult to find work in this climate, particularly parttime. It is an employers' market. Why would employers consider pt positions if there are people beating down their doors to take on ft work?

If the OP resigns, her bargaining position vis-a-vis her dh is immediately lowered. She will need time during the day to find work, but childcare could easily overwhelm that. Her dh must be prepared to pay for some childcare to give her time to jobhunt, prepare for and attend interviews. He could so easily scupper things for her by not co-operating. Once she is out of the market for longer than a year, she would seriously lose marketability amongst employers. All too soon, it becomes minimum wage jobs and uneconomic for her to return to work.

So her 'choice', quickly becomes 'Hobson's choice' after all, in the course of a year. And for the rest of her marriage, she lives in the power of her dh. I am not exaggerating. She will only have a good quality of life as a SAHM if her dh values her non-monetary contribution. She will have to be absolutely sure of that (which is the only thing that matters), as I am not convinced from what she has said.

Absolutely right blueshoes.

If someone is fixated on the financial side of things as op's dh seems to be, then they use that as an excuse to ignore any other kind of contribution. A dh who thinks your the dog's bollocks before child-birth, can very suddenly start feeling hard done by when the erstwhile dog's-bollock-woman is staying at home 'playing with children'. I'm afraid I've seen too many men take this stance. The power balance in the relationship changes entirely, the woman becomes a 'non-person' and it all ends badly.

Don't resign. Make sure you've got a pt job to go to. You may find that you need a nanny but look on it as a short-term solution until you've got the job thing sorted how you want it.

Did you ever ask your oh whether he would consider pt? Just wondering what his response was. (Assuming he said/would say something like 'don't be ridiculous'.)

Good luck.

Must google Hobson's choice...
But I still think you're over-analyzing and making huge assumptions about both OP and her DH