To Be pissed off hubby just called me a housewife....

[CoffeeDog]

SO yes i dont have a 'paid' job but we have 3 kids (5) and (twins 2) DH is rarther annoyed to find his favorite shirt is not ironed for his work piss up tonight and had a rant when i suguested he iron it himself.... including that ironing is part of my 'duties' as a housewife. TBH he's bloody lucky it was washed!!!

AIBU to suguest the various things he can do with said Iron?

Laquitar. I am more like you, but can now only manage a couple of manic months, before a bit of a collapse! I do however, believe some people are capable of massive amounts of energy. I also believe you can learn how to become like this (there are techniques) ie. some people are born 'naturals' and others need to learn it. A lot of it is a positive approach to hard work I think. I can work really hard for a while but there is a level of resentment about it, which gets to you in the end. If you enjoy and genuinely have no resentment towards to it, or no sense of entitlement to an easier life, then it's pretty easy. Wish I could crack that! There's an interesting technique called the Lightning Process, which you could try if you want to increase your energy.

Hi Merry, i have never heard of this. i will google it.

I meant to say 'thank you' merry. sorry its crazy busy right now

There is absolutely no comparison with my life in my mid 20s very junior hardly any money and 3 very small children and now. Now it's dead easy, lots of money, 3 adult children and younger ones and I own the businesses etc. It's a breeze. I can pay for help etc. However I will never forget how hard it was or how hard it is for many many other people and having all those babies was the best thing I ever did. They are wonderful and I so lucky to have them. I said exactly that when I woke the twins this morning.

For me it depends on the week and day. Last two days were busy as I was out all day and then back to work after 6. Today I am here and it's easy. IN a couple of week I have 4 hours from landing on a night flight from our holiday to catch a plane to Africa for work. I can't imagine that will be huge fun, the rush, will I make it etc etc and then I imagine most of August will be fairly quiet.

All I can say is try to ensure your life gives you the chance in career terms to own your business and be your own boss because there in lies most higher pay and most ability to control things and thus be happier. If you are a pawn at however high a level in some big company it is not as easy.

I've never much liked alcohol and don't drink now. I don't like being up late. My best time of day is first thing. I was out late singing this week and didn't feel good the next day. I get a lot of pleasure from silence and thought more than partying but I'm out tonight. I think I am lucky to feel I have a balanced life.

xenia I think you are unfairly maligned on mumsnet at times. The advice on this thread is great.

Xenia, thanks again.

Why does my DH work longer hours? He has a different job which has longer hours. He gets paid about 3x what I do though for only about 20% more work.

In our current jobs we don't really have much flexibility for leaving work early & picking up later, or at the weekends - work needs doing when the client or partner wants it done.

The choice I think we face is that either (1) I cut back my hours a lot at work, accept that I'm doing most of the childcare, and DH carries on, or (2) I cut back my hours a bit, DH changes his career to a job with lower hours (as he couldn't cut down his hours in his current one) and we share the childcare equally.

The thing is though, option (2) leaves us financially much worse off.

mniipie is why women aren't on boards and ahve few cabinet posts etc. Virtually aways women marry up. you didn't marry the man who earned a third of what you do. You married soeone who earns 3x as much so your income will be treated as pin money, it will be cut back not his and he will have the future wealth and you will be the domestic slave unappreciated and unhappy simply because simple economics mean the lower earner gets lumbered.

So the question is why did you and about 4 in 5 and probably even higher multiples marry men who earn more consciously or unconsciously>

It is an interesting question Xenia I agree.

IME though it is actually more common for couples to start off broadly equal in earning power. So it's not "marrying up" in that sense, people get together with someone equal.

The split comes later. Somewhere along the line the woman ends up less well paid. Once she is less well paid, it makes sense financially for her work to take a back seat... etc etc. The question is when and why does the woman become less well paid.

For me and my DH it was about 5 years ago. We got together as students, same uni - equal. We started graduate jobs - equal (in fact I was paid slightly more). Then DH moved into a much more highly paid career. Why didn't I? Well because I liked my job and didn't want to do what he was moving to do. Maybe money is less important to me than him, and having (a bit) more free time is more important? I don't know.

Other women I know choose to take a less demanding job in their 30s because they know they will want to be the primary childcarer. Others end up there by default because their DHs refuse to do their fair share.

given i work ft too doesn't matter what dp earns
we most definitely dont do joint money - my money is mine. decisions about where we live, careers etd have been made collaboratively and to benefit both of us.no one of us has supremacy in decision making. and we have lived and worked some v interesting places.both together and apart

Xenia, women who have well earning husbands are usually no more a domestic slave than you are as they are able to pay for cleaning, ironing and childcare, just as you are.

Scottishmummy, same here. I have my money, he has his and all decisions are joint.

I live in some weird parallel universe, all my female friends earn more than their husbands/partners

I'm not convinced it's necessarily a good thing. Quite a few of my friends have returned to work when they would have preferred to stay home for a bit longer because they had the earning power.

It can be a poisoned chalice in some instances.

4 in 5 earn less than men although today's Times has an article about marriages which are the reverse (and it is still unusual enough to have profiles of couples like that). Interestnig one of the men writing there about being at home we then find as we read that he has full time childcare in the day despite it starting out as an article about househusbands. In every case in that article the woman earned more than the man, a lot more I think and hence the decision as to who stayed home (the man, they are writers, artists etc) was therefore a commercial decision. In one the man is over 60 and took a back seat from work in his 50s and his wife is younger and he felt he'd done work so was happy to put it on the back burner and be home with the children.

Some women will have been conditioned to be a secondary pin money earner or to hate the idea of competing or moving up a career ladder or doing better than others or moving for work or working longer hours to get ahead. They want to leave early and do their nails etc

Xenia, perhaps we know different types of women or move in different social circles but I don't know any women conditioned as you say.

Just metaphorically glancing around I know of two friends who run businesses with their husbands, one who earns more and he is part time, two who earn roughly the same and about three of us whose husbands earn more, some significantly, some less so.
I think everyone simply works out how best it will suit them and their families to work things. In some cases, both will work and in some just one or one will be part time or both part time. I'm not sure it even matters who does the actual earning as it's a team effort to run a family.

The statistics speak for themselves - 4 in 5 women marry a richer man or end up earning less often simply because the man is a year or two older so earns more. I would love this to be reversed and may be it will be. It does matter at the moment given women make up about 10% or fewer of the positions of power/best jobs. They have a very long way to go. It will not matter at all when the cabinet, partners at Ernst & Young and Bishops and the like are all more than 50% female and a hubsand of a mumsnetters finds it as easy as a wife to say I'd like to take 5 years out of work to raise our babies.. We have hardly started in order to get there yet.

Ha everyone who thinks Childminding is easy should try it, I mean proper Childminding - getting OFSTED round after doing the 5 week course,noseying around the house telling you you HAVE to: have bloody stuff which would make the house look like a bloody nursery and constant training for this, that and the other for no extra money, have other peoples' little darlings come wreck your house, have to chase for payment of fees - yes that's fun but I have NO CHOICE - why? I will tell you why - I have no parents locally to help me with any childcare and I cannot afford to go out to work as we get no tax credits anymore.

Rant over, am off to bed

Sidge Sun 03-Jul-11 21:37:42
With all respect Mum2Luke that's balls.

Being a SAHM is a piece of piss compared to working part or full time out of the home. No fixed time pressures, no targets to meet, no extra studying or training to do.

When you're at home with your own children your time is your own really; if you don't get the washing on by 1000 it's no biggie, just put it on later. If the clothes don't get ironed on Tuesday it's no biggie because you can iron them sometime on Wednesday.

I'm not saying looking after small children is easy, because it's not especially if you have multiples, or 3 under 5 for example. But if you can't bung some clothes in the washing machine once a day, wash up the breakfast things by lunchtime, or have some food ready to eat by teatime then there's something wrong with how you're managing your time.

Even small children do not need parental interaction 100% of the time.

But if you're a childminder and dinner lady then you're not a SAHM are you, because you're working?

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Childminding is a bloody hard job and yes I work from home looking after other peoples' children in MY home. I have to do training in the evenings for no extra pay (really what I want to do when am up early and don't finish till 6 then have to try and cook family's tea in 10 mins flat).

I do the dinner ladying for an hour each day at the moment as I've no little ones to mind just b4 and after schoolies, scrubbing tins and washing trays not out in the playground so no, its not a piece of piss actually - its bloody hard work. I would love to go out to work but I just cannot afford to pay a childminder on a nursery nurse wage which I am qualified to do.

I hate seeing ironing about or washing piling up so it gets done on day its dry, folded etc and put away otherwise I would be searching around for clothes. Sometimes my daughter (my son lives away at Uni) will cook the dinner but she might be moving away to Uni so help will be gone there. Don't get much help from DH either and my family don't live local to me.

But that's what I'm saying! You're not a SAHM, you're a working mum. You are working in the home as a childminder, and out of the home as a dinnerlady.

So you cannot compare what you do to someone who is at home with their own children only, and not working outside of the home.