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?

Wow hasn't this one got everyone fired up!! I am a housewife and proud of it. My BIG BIG BIG bug bear - regarding employment - 'so you don't work then'!! AGH!!!! GRRRR!!! No dear the house has a mind of it's own and stays like this all of the time with five people in it - no problem!! Don't anyone underestimate the work a housewife and mum has to do - some days it's like climbing Mount Everest - only you never get to the top!! Tell him to iron his own shirt or better still to look after the children whilst you go out!! At least my husband has the good grace to say that he goes out to work and earn the wages but I work just as hard doing the things he does not see.

YABU to call him hubby

i hate the term housewife - mostly because its often preceded by the word 'only' AND theres a sort of reserve snobbery about it in the upper classes as if staying at home is a sort of martyrdom and women who choose to work even if they don't stricly need to are selfish and mean. i don't think anyones reaswon for not going out to work is any more valid than the next - horses for courses.

i resent the term hw though but dislike sahm also - i feel they both devalue my education and quals. its my job to look after dd, its not my job to look after dh. tbf though he wouldnt demmand a shirt ironed and certainly not for a night out. we have been together 4 years - he has never asked me to iron anything - i once offered when he was in a hurry and struggling - he was v grateful! otoh he's a marine engineer and doesnt need anything smart ironed/washed etc for work at all. he washes his own kit when he gets back. sometimes i do it if its lying around but i never feel obliged. i do bits and pieces for dh all the time, mostly becuse he doenst ask!

I think YABU.

Looking after your own children does not count as a job. If I had a partner and I was out at work all day I would most certainly not expect to have to do housework aswell when I get in.

Housework takes maybe a couple of hours a day for an average house and a non OCD cleaner. If people who don't have jobs can't fit that around childcare then something is going wrong somewhere.

Many thousands of us look after the children, go to work full time and do all the housework. Expecting someone with a partner to do just 2 out of the 3 doesn't seem unreasonable at all.

you are a fulltime mother

totally different to being a 50 year old with no children

he sounds like a real knob to me

i'd suggest letting him do his own washing

It's got nothing to do with the word housewife and everything to do with your husband's mistaken impression that he is your boss, you are his subordinate and he is entitled to dictate your orders. That's your real problem.

Chickydoo you sound completely mad btw - why exactly do you tolerate this situation?

YANB at all U. There is nothing wrong with being a housewife but with the negative connotations that come with it, like it's something low in status or not making a contribution to society.

Your husband banging on about your duties shows that he thinks you're his boss, in which case tell him you want a raise else you'll go find another company to work for!

Or you could just apologize meekly and burn a couple of his shirts... that'll teach him!!

I have only just joined and am wondering what all the abreviations mean. Please could someone explain YANB ????? Thank you v much.

Tell him if he mentions duties ever again you will iron the creases out of his arse.
He is not your boss and you are not his mother if he wants an ironed shirt for a night out he can do it himself or take it to a dry cleaners.
I can't stand the attitude of I have been at work all day, so have you , as a sahm the jobs are never ending and just because you do not get paid for it does not mean it isn't as equally important.

carriedababi i am nearly 50 yo and my youngest is 6 yo. 50 is not that old, you know?

Blindcavesalamander - Welcome!

Here are all the acronyms you need to know in MN world - you'd better get studying- we'll test you on them tomorrow!!

www.mumsnet.com/info/acronyms

Laquitar - I was thinking that as a 43 year old (only 7 years for me)! Also heard Ewan MacGregor gently ribbing the piss out of 50 year old Glastonbury attendees on Graham Norton. Was thinking "hey - hang about, it's not that ancient!"

laquitar.

yes i agree itsa not that old, what i was badly as usual lol, trying to get over my image of a house wife, without children.

manicinsomniac

When I stopped work to be a SAHP the emphasis was on the 'P' bit. I stayed at home for the kids, not to do DP's laundry. If he was a single bloke he'd have to go to work and sort out his own shirts.

What a knobber.

Like other posters have said above, I am a SAHM not a housewife. Not that I have a problem with the term as such, just that I don't stay at home to do the housework but to care for and raise DS (and soon to be DD). I fit whatever domestic chores I can around this, but I see those much as I did them when I worked in full-time paid employment. I don't sit on the sofa eating chocolate and drinking coffee all day (in fact, I don't even get to have a poo in peace or eat a sandwich without being harassed) so I don't see why DH should come home and sit on his backside doing nothing while I complete jobs which benefit us both.

(I don't iron btw - at all)

I am a stay at home mum. I hate the term housewife. If I didn't have children at home then I would be working - I don't stay at home for the benefit of my husband. My main responsibility, as I see it, is to raise our young children, which in the day involves a lot of entertaining and non-formal educating. Although I do try to keep the house tidy (when not nursing a broken ankle like at the moment!) and always cook from-scratch meals, my concern is for my children rather than if there's a bit of dust on the shelves. I certainly do not spend hours on tedious and, in my opinion, pointless jobs like ironing. I iron clothes when we need them in the morning and my husband irons his work shirt at night (after complaining about the creases I leave).

Of course I appreciate he is the 'breadwinner' and try to take domestic stuff off his shoulders, but he is perfectly capable of doing housework too.

Housewife is an outdated term - my husband has never called me it and I think I'd be miffed like you, too.

What do you expect if you give up work? Most women will find it much more fun to have a lovely family life and work full time. Try to earn double of 10x your other half. It's fun. Doing housework and chidlcare isn't fun although some people would never be able to get much of a job anyway so they might as well do childcare and cleaning.

Also some housewives and husbands just don't do the job. The other half works hard all day and still comes home to the other side of rhte job not having been done. Some full time workers of both sexes end up doing a lot of the other person's job too.

Since I stopped work I have never felt of lowly status or that I don't make a contribution to society. Neither have I felt that my education and qualifications are devalued, as domeb

Sorry, pressed the wrong button! That last sentence should end 'as some posters have suggested'. But the truth is that I really don't care much what other people think!

I dislike the term housewife - I'm a SAHM and hate having Housewife as the nearest appropriate occupation in a list when filling in forms for a bank account, car insurance etc...

It should be a Mumsnet campaign to rid these forms of the term!

Xenia
What do you expect if you give up work? Most women will find it much more fun to have a lovely family life and work full time. Try to earn double of 10x your other half. It's fun. Doing housework and chidlcare isn't fun although some people would never be able to get much of a job anyway so they might as well do childcare and cleaning.

Also some housewives and husbands just don't do the job. The other half works hard all day and still comes home to the other side of rhte job not having been done. Some full time workers of both sexes end up doing a lot of the other person's job too.

Wy are you always so fucking offensive about SAHP, so just the stupid should bother with staying home with their children? Who did you leave your children with? Were the nursery staff stupid because they thought children were fun?

Do they Xenia?

I don't know. I think wealthy women on large salaries who can afford cleaners and gardeners and nannies find it fulfilling to work full time .
However, the vast majority of women who work do so because they HAVE to. They do so on average or below salaries which means they go home to clean and cook and tidy and garden .

I think that you may BU to an extent but I don't have enough information about your domestic arrangements. My sister's dh does no washing or ironing but she doesn't do any care of the cars or the gardens. She and her dh have negotiated a division of domestic responsibility that suits them.

In general terms, I think that if you are at home, you have to do more of the work associated with being in the home home - the person earning the money has pressures too and it's not fair to expect a 50/50 split. I don't think it's your "duty" to iron shirts but women want respect for staying home that's equal to being in paid employment without any talk of specific responsibilities or duties and that doesn't make sense to me.

When you are at home in the day with small kids you do need a break and no, you shouldn't be a domestic slave.. but because it's hard doesn't mean it shouldn't have responsibility attached. When you are both out at work, there's a lot less housework to be done.. so it's just a reality that when there are people in the house all day and some of them are small with no sense of domestic responsibility (!) you will spend a lot of the day tidying up and keeping house and that is part of the role. It doesn't mean it's reasonable for the partner in paid employment to expect more than this, but to expect that you take care of the basics? Definitely. Expecting someone to come in from work and tidy up after their day at work because you've been having a lazy day is not reasonable.

Oh these threads are the very best.

What your husband thinks you should iron his shirts whilst doing pelvic floor exercises and decorating your home and hair with pretty ribbons? Yours has lost respect for you because you don't work or earn more than he does in half the time? Yours hasn't noticed that the gin bottle is empty and the diazepan finished. Xenia is here to remind us all that only the dullards stay at home with the trite mini beasts and that domestic staff are an essential requirement. Oh and you work full time, do every domestic job there so crack on your lazy cow.

Dear lord, fuck the gardener, sod the husband, share the gin and resist the labels.