To have just realised this about being a working mum/working couple

[MrsKravitz]

We are SO ripped off.

Talking with some colleagues at lunch today and we got around to taling about cooking. We were all discussing what we were having for the evening meal when one of the girls asked a male colleague if he cooks.
He looked blankly at us , then grinned and just said "I would but my dinner is always cooked and ready for me when i get home".

I do EXACTLY the same job as this guy. I have to use all my leave for child care and when one of the kids is sick (sometimes dh does but he is self employed so doesnt have leave as such), I get home, put my bag down and cook dinner, clean the house, do homework, bed, reading in bed, get ready for next day, then work a bit. He goes away for working weekends and conferences. I stay and look after my family while dh works on the weekend.

It was like some bizarre and somewhat late realisation. I think its been late coming because I hadnt worked with a man who was exactly in the same job role and level as me before. or I am a bit slow off the mark

I cant even imagine doing what I do now at work and then just walking in to a clean house,have my dinner cooked, kids sorted and just "relax" for the evening.

I want a sahwife.

Oh, I absolutely agree with this. Was having a discussion with a colleague only recently that a SAHD is not the same as a SAHM. Last year, dp was a SAHD, yet he was still "too busy" looking after ds2 to thoroughly do the housework etc, which I did when I came home from work. Now, he is working again, I still end up doing most of it. It's not that he doesn't try, he genuinely doesn't actually see all the things that need to be done.

I've thought for years that I need a wife. Oh, the novelty of coming home to a cooked meal :)

I did all the housework, laundry, shopping, cooking, decorating etc etc when I was with ExP. And of course I do it all now as a LP. So no real change there, other than not having to pick up his dirty clothes from all round the house. Which is certainly an improvement.

Another way of looking at it is that perhaps men are doing it right in terms of not seeing what 'needs' to be done.

They get by on less work because they just don't care as much about the details.

Or- is it that they know someone else will do it first, because she cares more?? I genuinely don't know the answer to this one.

Since exH and I split our former family house is continually quite filthy and even a bit smelly until his army of cleaners turns up once a week to blitz it. Yet my boys have not become ill when with him and he is fine, if even scruffier than ever.

Maybe they're onto something.

Dh works nights, I work days. So he cooks the dinner and washes up brings in the washing and folds it up. During the week I organise the kids for the next day, do the washing and peg it out/tumble it, the ironing and hoovering and make ds bed, (dd does her own, dh who is a sweaty betty in bed, strips the bed every day and puts the fresh linen on). At the weekend we split everything 50/50. We both work, we both like a clean house and food on the table, so we share the housework.