... to think now that I am in full-time employment, DP should do the same amount of domestic chores as me?

[randomactsofcraziness]

DP has been in a ridiculously very well-paid position for 13 year whereas I have been in education until last year (not messing about or anything, that's just how long it took).

Since getting together 8 years ago, we?ve had two children, and I have been earning some money with odd jobs whilst studying and bringing up the kids. Until I completed my education, I did most of the domestic chores, fair enough...

Now we both work 40 hours, but I still do 2/3 of ?domestic? chores (this includes other unpaid chores such as taking kids to school/hobbies, gardening/DIY, sorting out insurance/finance stuff, booking holidays).

He says this is fair as he has been supporting me the last few years and it is my choice that I have chosen a career that takes a looong time to qualify. He also mentions that he earns four times as much as me (but to be fair, that was more a side note).

AIBU or is he?

Read this and then get your DH to.

The mentioning of his superior salary makes me feel a bit TBH, but giving him the benefit of the doubt, there are a lot of men out there who don't pull their weight around the home not because they're chauvinistic bastards but simply because they have vastly underestimated the amount of unseen work that goes into running a home. This is especially true if they had a very capable mother or have never lived on their own for a reasonably long period of time.

For example, it's not the shopping that takes the time. It's the remembering to think about what ingredients you need for that week's meals, whether there's any spare toilet rolls in the cupboard upstairs (and checking to see if you don't know), whether DC1 has a school trip this week and so needs extra stuff for a packed lunch. Remembering that DC2 has a dental appointment due that needs arranging, etc, that so-and-so member of the family has a birthday coming up. etc.

The book I've recommended is really good at explaining how these unseen activities take up a fair amount of time and mental energy for the average woman, and it may help your DH a lot to have that explained to him (or read it himself). IME the couples who have read it have either changed their attitude to housework or become divorced.

Good luck.

YANBU at all.

He might have been 'supporting' you financially, but you haven't exactly been living a life of leisure either - you've been looking after the children, taking care of the household chores and admin, and studying for your future career (the earnings from which will benefit the whole family). You've been contributing at least as much as he has IMO, so I certainly don't think you 'owe' him now!

The relative amounts you earn are irrelevant - if you're both working similar hours, you should both be doing similar amounts at home and having joint responsibility for the children and the house.

I don't like his attitude at all.

It doesn't sound unreasonable to me on the surface. He's doing a fair bit. You say you both work 40 hours, but if he is massively better paid than you, does his work come with significantly more pressure and stress? I cant think of many 'ridiculously well paid ' jobs which don't involve a high level of skills, or risks, or responsibility. Also- does he have a commute? As you work at home, you're saving a lot of time there. And it's physically possible for you to do things like put washing on. You say shopping and cooking are equally split, plus he does all paperwork, gardening... It may be more equal than you think, and you're just noticing the day to day small things more. The other point is that you say you aren't always child-free when you're trying to work- well that's daft, you will find yourself feeling burdened trying to do that, you need to increase childcare

From your first post I thought lazy fucker, but actually given you have a cleaner for 6 hours a week & someone does your ironing I actually don't think the division of labour sounds too bad but your DH's attitude sounds a bit . If you want to continue enjoying the lifestyle his salary affords you and he can't actually be around in the day then I don't see how he can be expected to take up the slack on the day-to-day stuff? It's all very well saying it's your time to work and regardless of salary you're career should carry equal weight, well not if you don't earn enough to support the family it isn't. I'd definitely get him to assume a few more of the administrative duties (& IME he probably has a PA who would do it but who cares if it means you don't have to ) and I'd insist on equal footing at the weekend WRT childcare, cooking, lie-ins now you're both working full time.

He should have been doing 50/50 the whole time IMO.

Higher paid jobs may involve greater responsibility and risks, but it's a myth to assume that they are more stressful. It is well documented that the most stress falls on middle management-type jobs - where people often have considerable responsibility but lack the authority to put measures in place to deal with them effectively.

Personally, I found dealing with a tantrumming child after three days with broken sleep while still having a load of housework to deal with far more stressful than dealing with belligerent companies in a different timezone. In fact there was a recent study that measured stress signals in a fleet street journalist and his SAH wife. His wife's results were off the chart compared to his, despite his assertion that because he had the demanding job with deadlines and therefore was bound to be under more stress than if he 'simply' stayed at home looking after the DC. It was precisely the sort of 'wifework' - the organising of the little things, not the doing of them - that made the wife's role so stressful.

Everyone is different. Some people thrive on working, some people do it only because they have to. Some love being at home with DC, others hate it. What you can't do though is assume that one role is automatically harder than the other simply because it has more prestige and generates more money.

Get a cleaner, tell him since he's earning 4x more, he can pay

Read the thread- they already have a cleaner! And the ironing is outsourced too.
Quite frankly, I don't think there's a major problem here. Sounds a fair enough split- especially given that op works at home so has no commute.

What Grumpla said - you're a partnership and it doesn't matter who does what or who earns what - you should both have, as far as possible, equal leisure time and equal spending money. Anything else is not fair.

I can also recommend the wifework book. How old are your DC? Can they do their bit in small, age-appropriate ways too?

Good luck with your new job.

should add that I don't mean highly paid job are un stressful (they usually are) but that they are not necessarily any more stressful than anything else that is also stressful.

"And because I work from home (not always kids-free) a lot of time is lost jus tby sorting the kids out... But DP doesn't want to up childcare."

That sounds to me like he expects her to do everything with the kids

(shit parenting, apart from anything else. Why have children if you don't want to look after them, eh?)

But despite not being any kind of proper parent (sperm donor and weekend playfellow, like a McDonald's Dad) he gets to decide how much childcare his full-time working wife is allowed to employ.

I think it's vulgar, unfair, mean spirited and disrespectful of him to mention he earns four times more than you.

I earn a lot more than dh but I've never once brought that up.

It is our money.

Like it is our house to clean, our filing, our kids to feed, organise and spend time with.

My partner earns about double what I do and in a fairly responsible, pressured job.

We share the housework. Sometimes we've outsourced some of it. But it has never been my responsibility

Well the OP sound like fucking superwoman :) so she could well be out-earning him before too long...

That is, if he doesn't fuck it up for her by insisting she looks after the children while she's at work.

Sounds like he quite liked "supporting" a SAHM (who was also doing working and studying)

The money issue is, well, an issue that he shouldn't have brought up. But you say this was a side issue, so I'm guessing it probably wasn't mentioned in a particularly wounding context?

The childcare....why doesn't he want to up it? That seems to me to be the sticking point here.

Aside from those things, I actually don't see too much of a problem here. Seems reasonably split apart from the above.

My exhusband used to say "I earn more, it's you job that gives way to mine"

No wonder we are now divorced.

IMO many couples live the old family stereotype that a man is the main earner and the woman responsible to keep the hose and take care of the children. And when the mother starts working they just see it as if a formerly compliant servant has taken a distractive hobby that is preventing her to do her job properly.

There was something that shocked me just after we split and once he left the house: Despite my lower salary I felt a comfortable financial freedom I never experienced while married to him, that being a mum was a much easier and enjoyable job than before and... that I didn't have so many house chores to do.

Good on you to successfully keep through years of doing three jobs: Being a mum, a housewife and a student. It is not that you have just started working recently, you have been working hard, and probably more than him, for many many years.

I look after no man's hose

Piglet
"And when the mother starts working they just see it as if a formerly compliant servant has taken a distractive hobby that is preventing her to do her job properly."

Well said.

Perhaps the answer is to be more rigid about working only at your paid employment during your working hours - not doing the washing / shopping etc because you are home. How does the child care work now - are the children at school? If so can you make your work hours (say) 9:30 to 2:30 and then 7 (or when he gets in ) to 9 ?

The op needs to take some responsibility for ending up working full time while trying to simultaneously look after a pre school child. No employer would entertain that idea, and neither would anyone seriously trying to work from home. I am intrigued as to what the op does, and how she ever thought it was possible to combine work and childcare. It's all very well to blame the husband for not wanting to use more childcare, but how on earth did you get this full time job op, without childcare in place? I'm genuinely astonished! The thing is, it's muddied the waters now because you've probably given the impression that your work is not 'serious', whereas if youd just booked your child in with childcare from the word go, it would make it clear that you're working too.

You definitely need to sort out that factor ASAP.

No childcare? FGS woman no wonder you are struggling. Forget about having a cleaner, send child to nursery/child minder/nanny.

If he doesn't support you on that, you are all right to be angry, annoyed and frustrated.

But don't leave your job, as you well say, getting a foot in is important, very important, especially when you have worked so hard to get there.

Oh I missed that: you're working without childcare? You can't do that. Not doing a proper job, you can't. Believe me. I worked freelance, from home, from when my children were a few months old and I could only do it - a proper working day, the sort where you start at 9 and finish at 5 - with childcare. With older children you can say firmly 'I'm working now' after school, but even then you do have to work out something for holidays. It's not up to your DP about 'upping childcare': it's a non-negotiable.

You definitely need to get childcare sorted out. How would your husband like to have the kids with him at work all day? That's not really much different from what he's expecting you to do.

In fact, most employers insist that you have childcare for the appropriate hours, as a condition of having a working-from-home arrangement. It's just not practical for most people to do a full-time job and look after a small child at the same time. Does your employer know about this?

This is your biggest problem by a long way IMO.

Yes, childcare is definitely the sticking point. Agree with posts above that yoy can't work effectively with them around. This is the problem with working from home: people tend to assume that you can fit in a load of other domestic tasks as well - and sometimes you can, but you also need time for full concentration on your work.

Are the kids pre-school, primary school etc? What's the spread? (you don't have to give exact ages if you don't want). You need to explore options asap. If your DH has a problem, ask him when he will be dialling his hours back at the office to work from home with the kids there. He doesn't get the veto on this, I'm afraid; he assumes he can go out to work regardless and childcare is your problem to solve. It's not. The kids are yours jointly so it's not just down to you.

Write down everything that has to be done.
Write down everything you do.
Write down everything he does.
Calculate the hours.
Calculate how much it would cost to get everything outsourced, inc. all child-related stuff.
Calculate how much you save each week by doing it yourself.
Calculate how much you have saved by doing it yourself over the years.
Calculate how much he saves by doing things himself each week.
Calculate everything he has saved by doing things himself over the years.
Discuss.

Depends on how well you want them doing.