AIBU to not want to cook dinner if I'm a SAHP?

[CraicWhore]

Since having DS 23 months and DD 6 months I absolutely hate cooking and I'm not that great at it anyway. I'm a SAHM through circumstance not choice. I want to go back to work but can't until DD gets a nursery place and DH refuses to take time off work to help with childcare.
If the children are fed and I'm happy to have a bowl of cereal for tea is it unreasonable if I tell DH he has to sort his own suppers out?

I don't buy the working all day so you need to cook for them bollocks.

In this house, we deal with the kids together in the mornings - sometimes we take it in turns to get a lie in. Sometimes we just all pile into bed and have breakfast together.

Then the day starts, sahp works looking after kids, wohp leaves for their day of work. When wohp gets back, once again it's 50/50, including bedtimes and dinners.

The only thing that would bother me about your post is the having a bowl of cereal - I think dinner times are important for bonding and catch up especially when looking after small children all day. Would you be able to do a meal plan and take it in turns?

Not unreasonable. I am a sahm, I make the DC dinner as dh doesn't get in until bedtime. I don't eat with the DC as I don't like eating so early, and after they are in bed dh and I each make our own dinner. Sometimes we cook for each other but not often as dh has a food allergy and we eat quite different things.
I would not be pleased to cook for him and him alone, especially under the circumstances you describe.

I like the cut of your jib, slithy!

His exact words were 'oh God I'd slit my wrists of I had to stay at home with them all day!'
He usually gets home about 8.30 so I've usually eaten by then. I like small simple things for an evening meal like soup or a poached egg on toast, but he wants a big, proper dinner.
I know part of me is just being a bit petulant because I didn't get my own way on the work issue and I did believe he was going to be a more involved.
I do have time to cook I just don't want to although I'm not saying I wouldn't ever cook. Just once in a while tell him to get something on his way home

My DH and I used to have "shifts", especially when DS was very young. If I hadn't the time to start dinner then he'd take over childcare and I'd do dinner. There's loads of meals that can be cooked in no time.

You could always pop some stuff in the slow cooker in the morning and then you have a meal for all three of you (obviously excluding your DD). My view, maybe not fashionable now, is that you're a SAHP so your job is now the kids and home which includes cooking whilst DH does his day job. You're both working equally hard. I used to get jealous of my DH that he got out and about sometimes until I started working 10hour days 6 days a week and still came home to do dinner (but by now he'd learned to cook!)

If you're not getting much sleep then maybe he could help out, again in shift pattern?

Hope this makes sense? It's frustrating looking after wee ones all day, cleaning and clearing up, then the bed time routine, dinner etc... but for the first few years it's something we all do.
HTH

OP: are you never intending to cook and fed yourself a healthy diet?
What does your DS eat at weekends and other days that he's not at nursery?

Hmm. I'm wavering
Oh I don't know.
I'll say YANBU because it sounds as though he won't help with the dcs either.
And you don't like cooking.
I mean, just because you're a sahm doesn't mean you should be responsible for every domestic "chore"

St read your update.
No. YANBU.

Ok OP, so it seems like a meal plan would be reasonable.

Could you cook simple things like shephards pie, spag Bol etc - that way you can have a small portion, he can fill his boots, and leftovers can be frozen for the days you don't want to cook? Equally, he could come home and make similar meals which could then be frozen or used for DC the next day (weekends etc)

Would he eat a fry up for dinner? That is flexible enough that you can have your poached egg.

And you can agree that one night a week is his takeaway night if you can afford it.

With a bit of planning you can reduce cooking for the evening meal to 3/4 nights a week.

My two are 15 months apart and dh rarely got a dinner when I was a SAHM.

By 7.30pm, I'd cooked and cleaned up 3 meals, there was no way I was going to start cooking again, I was done in. DH arrived home later than we would have tea with little ones, and sometimes what was easiest at 5pm for them (fishfingers, cold tea, boiled egg, pasta etc) just wasn't something I could make an extra one of to leave for dh. He never cooks, and would never have dared suggest I should have a dinner waiting for him , nor would he have suggested that at half seven when kids are in bed, I got up and returned to kitchen for round 4. So toast it was. A lot.

If your DH is a builder he probably needs more than a bowl of soup to eat.

A slow cooker is a great answer for you. You can make enough food for two nights or more and freeze it.

I have a real problem that the sahp takes sole control of the house.

Especially since my DH is a messy bugger and I'd spend my life picking up after him.

To my mind, once work is over for the day, household stuff is shared.

Staying at home with a small child and doing the majority of the household stuff is just as demanding as working (for instance) 9-6 out of the home.

No, I think YABU.

You have time, he's not home till 8.30 and I think I can see from posts that one of your DC is in nursery? Then you should be making meal for him. Batch cook or something simple like chops / pasta carbonara

It sounds like you working needs to be addressed as you sound bloody resentful tbh.

Why is it selfish ? She said she's happy to have cereal for dinner ,not expecting partner to cook for her.

So, tell me how you got to the point of having a second child with this person when you hadn't sorted out the childcare issue?

Yanbu to not want to cook a big proper meal every night.

Yanbu to want to go back to work.

Slithy: Ops husband seems to be out of the home for at least 12 hours, not 9.

I literally cook things that will do all of us though. A bit of effort cooking a massive pot of mince, and that can become 3/4 meals for the freezer.

Huge vat of pasta sauce and keep some separate for DC before seasoning goes a long way too. And you can change it up by adding bacon, or different pastas etc.

And as others have said, there is always the delicious staple of fishfingers :) I'm sure your OH would be ok with them with a pile of oven chips and peas.

There are ways to make it work if you want to.

Pax - yes, but we are only talking about him occasionally feeding himself here. OP isn't asking him to do breakfasts or bedtimes or the other things I'm mentioned.

I can't imagine the soul destroying drudgery of having to cook and clean up every single day without respite. And at 8.30, he can certainly prepare the next days dinner. Or get up in the morning and bung something in the slow cooker.

When mine Were Little I loved my slow cooker. I would bung it all in, take mine and the kids out then leave it on warm as I never knew what time he would be in

If you have simple meals in the evening, what do you eat at lunch?

Do you ever cook for yourself then?

If so can you leave some for him if/when you do?

I really cba to cook at that time though. It would be a pita to have put the kids to bed and then have to "open the kitchen" again iyswim. Oh god. The mess.just when you want to be resting. Or straightening up or something, anything else.
So I second the batch cooking thing.
A Slow cooker is a great idea IMHO. Because you can bung something in when you have a free 10 mins and then pop a spud in the oven last minuets. Or grab a crusty loaf or whatever to go with the stew/ soup/ mince thingy.
a bit of planning will help.
But it's still not unreasonable to sometimes have him bring something home. That seems very sensible.

This just doesn't sound a happy marriage.

In a happy marriage, you want your partner to be happy.

So, in your scenario, your DH would be open to the idea of you returning to work (presumably this is just whilst the children are so young?) and you would definitely want to have something ready for your DH to eat when he comes in at 8.30pm.

My DH is heading home now. He left at 6.45am. He is ravenous. The children and I have eaten. I would love to curl up and watch the latest Good Wife, but instead I am about to make a quick scrambled egg on toast for him. It's not fe dining, and it is usually a bit more substantial, but he is my husband, I love him, it would actually make me sad to think of him dragging himself in the front door after 13 hours, and for me not to have done something for him.

I think the problem is more deeper than simply you don't want to make your husband dinner.

Yanbu but I'd feel guilty not making my very hard working DH a meal after his day of manual work. When I was a sahm I occasionally did something on toast for dinner but that was rare and I felt enormously guilty about it.

How will you manage when your DC are older and meed a cooked meal in the evening?