to tell Dh I no longer want to be SAHM to 2 month old and to be a SAHD?

[MrsDutchie]

Dh is a PhD student in the final stages of submitting his research. I've been on mat leave since November and whilst I love PFB to bits, I don't want to be a SAHM much longer - it's driving me crazy. I miss my work so much I've taken on part-time consultancy work with a charity. If I go back to work, a fair amount of the money goes straight back to childcare if Dh continues with studies.

I don't get why it's not the other way round. I have the job but Dh's logic is he will eventually get the well paid job. Sod eventually - why does the fact I have vagina mean I have to stay at home and look after PFB? I have a career and interests too. He just sees her at evenings and on nice family days and I'm driving up the wall here desperate to work again.

Like I said, I love PFB but why should the fact I have boobies and gave birth mean I'm faced with this dilemma and Dh gets to waltz through guilt-free without any concerns or repercussions about how selfish he is if he goes back to work.

Any other MNers had a similar dilemma? What did you do? I'm not looking to get flamed for how selfish I am or that it was my choice to have kids. I stand where I stand on this and I want to balance both

We could obviously do with fewer women like aprilanne in the workplace. And in life

If he's writing up, he can set his own hours, isn't that one of the few plus points of doing a phd?

He should be job hunting now as well. Jobs that require a phd are so specialist that you have to apply for them when they come up regardless of whether the timing is ideal. The trade off might be that your submission gets delayed a bit - and even if he got a job tomorrow, he still might negotiate the start date or they might not want him for a month or two anyway - but that you are in a job. (I have a phd, I was lucky that a job came up as I was writing up, it was perfect for me, no way would I have passed it by as never knew when something would come up for me again. I submitted a couple of months into the job).

You should be able to come up with a solution that suits you both and he could be flexible. I suspect you have your work cut out with him with his attitudes to your work and motivation to apply for his own employment. You should be being encouraged.

PhD final write up means he's done the research (or at least I hope so!) and just needs to plough on with writing, yes? Baby is 8 weeks so basically eat, sleep, nappies plus due a growth spurt. You have the ability and willingness to work to support the family in this.

Yes - final write up is difficult but if you're on the bread line, he needs to suck it up rather than suggest you move abroad to no support network, potentially not speaking the local language whilst contending with two families within one household potentially having contrasting household views. I'm not saying the latter is correct, but the potential is there.

The real question is, if he doesn't budge, why do you want to do?

He needs to be more flexible and provide more childcare, 1 day and 2 mornings would still give him plenty of time to complete his phd. It will be busy for a few months but its temporary.

What does he expect at the moment? He pulls 9 to 6 on the phd and finds the shoping done, dinner cooked and the house clean. So a?l he has to do is change a nappy or two.

Dont move abroad with him atm, it wont solve anything.

Having done a PhD, I can see where your husband is coming from in terms of his mindset (it can be all consuming), but he's being a bit precious. I was lucky, in that I could write up full time whilst still being funded, but lots of my colleagues weren't. It's pretty normal in that situation to work part time whilst writing up. There is no reason why he couldn't help with childcare at least a couple of days a week. If he goes into academia, he'll have to learn to do 3 jobs at once anyway! The only thing to be careful about is his uni deadline (eg if he has to submit in 4 years or risks failing).

Also, he should be applying for jobs NOW. In my field, you get your job lined up in advance of submitting your thesis with an aim to moving straight into it when you finish. This is partly because your phd supervisor can help you find a job and partly because even academics need money to live

YABU if you expect him to drop his PhD, but YADNBU if you just want him to help out with childcare on a part time basis. Having children is all about becoming flexible and that applies to both parents.

Where would you be moving to if you went overseas?

Bear in mind any child custody laws there.

If you need the money then you need to work, DH needs to do some childcare too. He can't abdicate his responsibilities. Paid childcare for the rest of the week.

You are turning this into a struggle against the patriarchy and I don't think that's the case here.
Dh is nearly finished the PhD and it's reasonable for him to finish that, he can't work anyway as he isn't allowed to.
You are fed up on mat leave and skint.
If he can be finished the PhD in 12 weeks then I would maintain current arrangements till then, keep doing your consultancy and get set up with a job for three months time. Then he takes over childcare post PhD and you go back to work. If he then gets a job, then baby cano to childcare.
You need to work as a team here and not fight against eachother. Yes it's tough but you can manage 12 more weeks of it surely. Then your dh will have finished his PhD, it doesn't make sense for him to quit it, very short term thinking. Calm down, stop ranting against inequality and work together to achieve your goals which should be he finishes PhD, you go back to work, you have more money. That day will come!

(not rtft) Yanbu to expect him to pull his weight. At this stage in my PhD I had a full time job already. It is madness waiting to finish before starting job hunting, it could take months to find something. Even if he doesn't want a full time job yet, he should go and pull pints in a pub a few hours a night to contribute to his family. He has a baby to support now.

Usually, I am the first to the barricades, fighting for equality.

In this instance, though, I am slightly included to DH's suggestion: crawl back to his parental home for a couple of months. This would solve the immediate money problem and give him a breathing space to complete.

In your position, i would be all about ensuring that you work out a realistic plan which means that you don't then get stuck there. And that he has your back about division of labour in his parents house.

Two months rent and travel costs versus living hand to mouth with a practically new born makes it, for me, about pragmatically negotiating terms, including who has control of the passports etc.

Hope you find a way forward together.

heels the dh is allowed to work! Just not allowed to claim benefits

Are you Dutch btw? Because I can see how that would make a difference to your expectations. You'd be going back to work in a month, like the vast majority of Dutch women, and there's a good chance both you and DH would go down to 3 or 4 days a week. Where is your DH from?

Ah ok. But if he in the final 12 weeks of a PhD is this the best time for him to go to work or is it better that he wraps up the PhD asap and then gets a full time job?

Aprilanne, glad you are such a perfect parent with never a single problem or hiccup to contend with. Perfect finances too.

What a totally unhelpful post.

Most people I know with PhDs have had full or part time jobs while writing up and some while doing. One wrote up on her maternity leave despite a refluxy baby!

Yanbu, he is being lazy and since he misled you in regards to his finances which has led you to.be broke qnd desperate for money then it's up to him to step up more.

Yes you are a slave to a PhD while practical work is going on but writing up can be worked around. Even if he's only got three years it's very possible with you doing a fee days and him doing s few.

Does he have weekends off to enjoy himself op? Because he could write up then so you can work two days. Yanbu, he made the financial problems by misleading you and lying so he should step up.

43percent said what I was thinking.

I heard alarm bells at his suggestion that you move in with his mum abroad. Whatever you do dont do this!!

Is his sexist attitude to gender roles connected to his culture, OP?

It sounds like he always expected you to be a 'traditional' sahm, and didn't believe you when you said otherwise. Seriously if you are having these kind of problems this early on then I'd have a serious think about the long term prospects of this relationship when you are poles apart in your attitudes to this fundamental issue.

If it was the woman who was doing the phd (there have been such threads on mn) then she would be expected to juggle completion with her baby. The man certainly wouldn't be expected to become a sahd to allow her to finish it ASAP.

Ime phd completion can rumble on for months. Is he giving you a cast iron guarantee that he'll be done in 12 weeks? Then what? If he's not applying for jobs (as he should be regardless) then he will be unemployed (no jsa) for at least a few weeks. Is he still expecting you to sahm then?

I'm in a vaguely similar situation in that I'll be going back to work a few weeks after this baby is born. DP will do a bit of pt self employed work but will basically be a ft sahd.

Dont let other posters make you feel guilty about this. There's nothing wrong with not wanting to be a sahm.

What sacrifices has your husband made for PFB?

He's not earning a cent, doing little with the baby, and has no solid plan for getting a job (he could be networking and sending off resumes now spruiking for work in 3 months time). He could also take 6 months to finish so one of you could earn money.

He sounds really selfish to me. I deferred study, studied with a baby and worked with a baby so I understand the demands...I just balanced them with my responsibilities and the needs of dp. If things were delayed, study done after hours etc that's just LIfe. Studying 7 days a week is unrealistic in the extreme, unless you are single and rich.

If the OP challenging her DH's expectations that she does all the childcare, presumably because she's a woman, and won't listen to her arguments as to why she doesn't want to be a sahm, isn't a fight against the patriarchy, then I don't know what is. And I speak as a sahm. Women have been fighting the default assumption that they do all the childcare just because they have the babies for decades. Some of the posts on this thread show that this fight still goes on. I'd like to see a thread where the father, wishing to return to work, is asked "why not just put her up for adoption then, if you don't want to look after her", having done 8 weeks paternity leave. Wouldn't happen.

OP, you don't say what country he is from, but is it a fairly patriarchal one? If so, I would not go back to his country and live with his parents! You will be stuck doing all the childcare there, probably with even less chance of returning to work. I think it's a lot to expect you to move countries just so he doesn't have to take any of the responsibility of either the earning of money, or the childcare.

You have 2 problems here - financial issues due to neither of you being in paid employment, and your wishes not to remain a sahm. Your husband is ignoring both these issues and insisting continuing to write up his phd unencumbered by the impact of a newborn baby to the family. I don't think you are remotely unreasonable to expect him to do some of the childcare, whilst continuing his phd, so you can return to work.

For the love of a comma aprilanne.......

OP, I don't think you're being unreasonable at all. If the gender roles were reversed here, no one would bat an eyelid at the idea of the sole breadwinner going back to work to keep the family afloat.

Does your DP know where this well paid job is going to come from? Teaching, research, industry? I know from bitter experience that the road to a lucrative career after a PHd is a long one (and sometimes never materialises). It may be years and years before he's earning even reasonable money.

In the meantime, work out a plan with him. You go back, pay for childcare for a few days a week, carve out his space to finish up. So it might take him a bit longer, big deal. You're getting a lot of grief on this thread for not thinking about the implications of having a DC at this point in your lives. But your partner also needed to consider how pursuing his academic dreams would impact your family finances for a long, long time.

He'll just need to wrap his head around the fact that you are the breadwinner and that impacts his role now that you have DC to consider.

Whatever you do, don't move abroad with the baby. Custody laws vary and you may end up stuck.

He is being very selfish, he could easily look after the baby in the day and write at night. Most people manage to work and and study. Does he even need the PHD to find work or is it something he just wanted to do?

I'd not be compromising at one days childcare, I'd be telling him to grow up. Having a child means financial support, you are trying to do your part of that and he now needs to do the same. Otherwise you may as well be single rather than keep another adult who won't work.

Haven't read all the way through yet sorry.

But just wanted to say you sound really fed up OP,and I'm not surprised.

I do think your DH is very much pie in the sky ideas at the moment.
If your skint and could be earning good money then it's really a no brainer to me you go back to work!

I wasn't doing a PHD,but did attend college whilst a single parent to 4DC and worked part time and was chair women of a massive charity.

Your DH wouldn't be a single parent and there's only 1 child and he wouldn't be working and he wouldn't be looking after a charity neither.So I'm sure he could find a way to look after your LO whilst your at work and finish his studies.

And whatever you do, don't move back to his country and the in laws. What's that going to solve? He'll be able to take a further break from his responsibilities. You'll be isolated, away from your network of friends and family and even further away from returning to work.

I think your DH is right that he needs to finish his PhD immediately rather than returning to work but he's being unreasonable to state that without proper discussion.

I think your resentment of your husband's attitude and the shock of being a new mom is clouding your view of the situation. Your baby is two months old most people would be on maternity leave now (some loving it, others hating it) so it's not a question of being a SAHM.

In practical terms if the financial situation is as desperate as you say then just be more creative. There are 7 days in a week not 5. You could work three days a week. Your husband could do teaching and marking in the evenings, get as much writing up done as possible during the days he has the baby and work full time on writing up the remaining four days. It's annoying not to have a weekend together but this is just temporary.

I think you're being completely side-tracled by this very temporary situation. In a few months your husband will have submitted and you can go bad to work. Your larguer issue is lack of communication and respect in your relationship.

Just to note my husband ooh time off work and we struggled financially to allow me to complete my PhD just after our baby was born so this isn't a gender issue for me. A PhD requires an enormous amour of sustained effort particularly in the final stages and that can't always be combined with work and childcare.