To not want to work?

[jenrose29]

I have a 4.5 year old and a 4 week old. When I fell pregnant with DD1 I gave up a place at Cambridge University to stay home with her, my ex husband supported this and we spent the first three years of her life going to baby groups, the park, walking the dog, baking etc. We loved it :) When ex and I seperated I began a degree with the view of going into teaching when I'm done, I met DP with whom I have a 4 week old and I love him very much. However, though he wants more children, he expects me to work full-time. He earns well and could support us but is eager to have wages from us both coming in. At the moment I take DD1 to and collect her from school everyday, take her to lots of activities, to playdates etc and when baby gets a little older I want to give her the same childhood and attention DD1 had. I simply don't want children that I only see before/after nursery for a couple of hours when it isn't financially necessary to do so. I want the baby and any subsequent children to have the same opportunities/experiences DD1 has. DP wants to try for another baby straight away, which I would too if I could stay home to raise them. Am I being unreasonable?

"She is not, with respect, taking any form of responsibility."

She's taking responsibility for her children's upbringing. And she will of course be paying taxes for decades to come, once she does go back to work. "Choice" entails either going back to work, or choosing to be a SAHM - it doesn't work just one way.

YANBU I wish more women would admit to just wanting to stay at home with their children. In my personal opinion it is the best thing you can ever do, and if you can, you should do it. So many women are made to feel stupid, lazy, irresponsible or accused of setting women back, simply for choosing to stay at home with their kids. For what its worth, I stayed home with both my children and actually home educated both of them for a number of years. It was blissful. I have absolutely no regrets what-so-ever; and never feel that I should justify my decision.

Unfortunately women used to campaign for the right to work and be paid equally; but now there is so much pressure on women, that they increasingly no longer have the choice anymore.

I don't believe things are actually better for women or children when they have less choices. I think if going back to work will make you unhappy you need to stick to your guns. Children grow up fast and you'll soon get your life back, so that then you can pursue the things you want to do for yourself.

Yeah, okay. I buy shared responsibility.

Right now, I see the OP taking zero responsibility. Plus a lot of whining.

Let´s clarify, the DP is paying for rent that keeps the roof over his own head. He is actively not supporting her or his new baby in any way umm is their not a roof over the OP's, her DD's and their DD's head too?!?!?

The nonsense here is this assertion that he is not paying anything towards the family even though he is paying all the rent!!!! The OP would have had accommodation costs before they moved in together, if as you say she had no benefits then she must have been paying somehow, so she is saving that amount every month.

You can't pick and choose which are joint expenses. You are a family now. The rent is a JOINT expense and HE is paying it, regardless of what his outgoings were before. What do you mean by his bills?if you mean council tax that you wouldn't have paid before as you were a student then as you are a family now it is a JOINT expense. You give him no credit for paying these and acommodating your DD but expect everything else to be a joint expense, doesn't seem fair on him.

Childcare should also be a joint expense, YANBU on this one, although your DD's are not really his responsibility and I'm assuming your 4 week old isn't in childcare at the moment.

There not their!!!

To be fair to you, if everything is exactly as you say then he is being a bit of a twat about family finances, but them so are you expecting him just to support you if he's not happy about doing so.

As others have said you need to prepare to be able to support yourself just in case, so finish your degree so you have the means to support yourself.

I see people just trying to stir.

I see the usual facile DM style references about feckless single parents. And Hopefully refusing to look the reality of the situation in the face.

And the self righteous comments about how some people only had children when they could afford them... What nonsense. There are never any guarantees. Just because you are in a secure position when you conceive does not mean you will still be in a secure position when you deliver. Especially in this day and age when your job will be the first to go because you had the audacity to get pregnant! And what about PND? Hopefully did you factor in the risk of getting PND in your grand plan? Or any other maternity induced illness? Is your life insured for every eventuality or are you just a few slippery steps from falling off your perch like the rest of us?

OP, this wouldn't be so hard if your partner wasn't such a dick.

Go and google 'financial abuse'. And have a look at 'emotional abuse' while you're at it.

I'd buy hopefully's argument if it weren't for the fact that OP's DH seems to be dictating the terms and refusing to budge a single inch to help OP make it happen.

The OP's child is 4.5, so she got pregnant at 21 or 22 depending on when her birthday is. She wasn't 18. Why have another child with a new man so soon into the relationship (if she was a SAHM for 3 years she must have gotten pregnant to him within about 6 months) if she had no long-term financial security? Savings don't last forever.

Ultimately, it's nice if your partner wants to support you to stay at home with the kids, but you can't expect or demand it. Both people have to agree to it and the OP sounds very irresponsible.

Sorry, 20 or 21, not 22. Either way, she wasn't a child with no idea of what she was doing. And if she turned down a place at Cambridge, she must have applied later than people usually do, so she must have been ambitious to do that... so why then give it all up? It just doesn't add up.

I'm not saying that OP hasn't been irresponsible, or naive. But her DP has a part in all this too. He's the one actively encouraging her to have his children. Yet when she does, he's then all like 'okay, you pay for them' and then keeps on spending his own money on himself. While doing no share of the child care whatsoever.

Hopefully, would you call looking after a 4 week old baby and her older child 'zero responsibility' then?

Madonnawhore which bits of Hopefully's argument would you buy...personally, i'm struggling to be convinced or even believe that the black and white world she inhabits exists!

I do get the point about the rent. But he expects her career to fit around the kids, not his, and seems to be looking for no change from his previous situation, which was clearly heavily enabled by a very helpful mil.

Buffin, 'it's nice'?? how patronising. It may be difficult to understand but to some it is the only option they would consider for their baby/young child- either partner providing full time care and the other going to work. Just as it is not for others. for some there is no choice but this is not the case for the OP!

Well actually yeah I suppose Hopefully's argument would only really stand up if OP's DP was doing all the work in and out of the home and they were still short of money. While all the time the OP was pissing about starting degrees and moaning about other people bringing up her children and not wanting to work.

But NONE OF THAT is the case here.

I think OP's only 'crime' is that she's been naive and had a baby with a massive twat. Now she's up shit creek with a financial abuser for a paddle.

carernotasaint
hex if he has debts that he hasnt told her about then he has been dishonest

Or they haven't talked properley, or he has told her and she hasn't taken it on board. Perhaps he pays alot to his ex-wifeand their DC, maybe alot more than he has to, and it hasn't been discussed with OP yet because it a sensitive issue - who knows.

I'd have thought it was worth asking directly and also for actual income and outcome figures as a starting point to talk and plan a future together. If that is not forcoming or results in a row that would speak volumes in its self.

Some people just don't talk about money as much as you'd expect.

I'd have expected OP to talk about her plans with her babies father during the pregancy if not before so issues like going back to work would have been covered and them both walking away with the same expectations. Communication on that topic seems to have been confused at best.

goldenbear - As a teacher the OP could afford to put her younger child in childcare and the older one at before/after school clubs and still have money left over. I'm not saying it's ideal but it's not the case that it would cost her more than she was earning. She would also get 15 hours of free childcare once her child turned 3, so she would only be paying for full-time care for a year.

Yes the partner is a dick for not contributing towards his own child, but she doesn't have a RIGHT to be a SAHM

Sparklyredshoes...

"So many women are made to feel stupid, lazy, irresponsible or accused of setting women back, simply for choosing to stay at home with their kids."

I think a big component of the criticism though is mothers who claim benefits to do so, a sort of "If i only work one day a week, i can get topped up almost as much with benefits as i did wages anyway" and the obvious hostility that would bring from anyone who pays taxes.

Secondly, nobody seems to allow the same for fathers. I bet a lot of ladies here would not be happy if their DP/DH said that he wanted to stop working to be a full time SAHD whilst she worked full time. It seems that it's ok to want to stay at home with the kids but only for the mother. Even more liberal people still seem to think that, if you had to choose, it's better for a child to be with it's mum than it's dad. This brings a lot of hostility from both men and those masculine women who are not interested in children but super-interested in being on the board of directors.

"I think if going back to work will make you unhappy you need to stick to your guns" this is all very well but it really only applies to women who have had children (and a few sahds) doesn't it? I mean, it's not something you would recommend to every chlidless Tom, Dick or Harry. My DH wanted to be a sahd because he didn't like his job, I hated the idea. We both work and childcare comes from both our wages. I think it's far better to become a stay at home parent because you actively want to parent in that way than to do it because you dislike working.

there seems to be some confusion here. The OP stayed at home with child one for 3 years and only re-entered education when she split with child one's father, this means there is a period between leaving school and having her child during which she worked and was offered a place in Cambridge or that she was almost all the way through a degree when she got pregnant?

also, OP, you only moved in with him very recently. How were you paying your own rent and so on when you lived separately?

YANBU. He pays the rent, usually the main chunk of outgoings but for him, at £400 is a fraction of what the childcare costs would be - here in London childcare is like a second mortgage.
You doing the childcare and paying those related bills means he can have the life he wants to lead, devoid of any responsibility at all because he doesn't get involved.
Call his bluff, look at jobs that you might do say when Lo is is 6 months, sit down and work out who will do what and pay for what. If he can't do drop offs or pick ups, then what can he do instead? He has to pull his weight at home if you work too and do his HIS SHARE. Could you work weekends maybe? He has to realise that you are enabling his career progression at the expense of your own, FOR NOW.
Please don't have any more kids with him until you feel he is an equal partner.

What childcare bills? The baby is 4 weeks old, the 4.5 year old is not his.

Cogpsych "masculine" women?

OP's partner does not sound particularly committed to her. And she is considering putting any progress on the career front on hold to have another child with this man who does not want to support her or their dcs.

Interesting ... quite apart from the unfairness of putting a man in the sole breadwinner situation against his will.

I think a lot of women would be fine with their partners being sahd's but most men would refuse as they don't see it as worthwhile.
In what way is a working mother 'masculine'?

I think the majority of sahm are middle class as they are the people who can afford it anyway, not working class women so I don't think that's where the prejudice comes from.