AIBU to think being a SAHP to a six-month-old baby and under five is harder than most jobs?

[TheOddity]

I don't know many people in jobs with a schedule or level of stress like that of a woman on mat leave in school holidays.
My morning, just from 7am to 10am:
Get up by being jumped on, immediately change sodden nappy.
Nappy in nappy bucket
Get four breakfasts ready while entertaining baby and answering questions/4yo stream of consciousness.
Try to find safe place for crawling baby while I wash up. Make den for 4yo.
Wash up, clean high chair, dustpan floor (weaning), wipe floor (crawling).
Hear a cry, sort out teddy stand off.
Put washing on. Spill powder, clean floor
Clean toilet and floor (baby crawls everywhere in a flat).
Baby grumpy and crying and falling all over fighting sleep. Put to sleep while trying to mentally plan lunch.
Finish washing up, have five second shower. Baby wakes distraught (teething). Feed baby while still wet and naked. Won't go back asleep after tiny nap.
Take nappy off again as soaked through and messy from breakfast. Give her some nappy free time.
Encourage toddler to take clothes off to get dressed.
Toddler needs a poo. Juggle wiping bum while baby tries to crawl closer from other room (can't put in cot as she just breaks down. separation anxiety?!)
Baby crying as after two days the nappy free trick has worked and they have done a massive poo on the floor and are now squirming in it. Leave toddler playing in sink while I sort out 'poonami'
'Poonami' sorted, baby back with nappy. Find toddler has flooded floor with water. Wipe up water while listening to baby crying in other room.
Baby dying to finish nap, put in sling while I encourage 4yo to dress. Go downstairs to throw poo and rubbish out. Baby finally asleep in sling.
Share woes with mumsnet while 4yo watches god knows what on TV.
That is three hours. It is totally relentless. And that is just me keeping things how they were before we woke up, no extra cleaning, no shopping, no trips. We go out lots but those bits you have to do at home and getting ready are soooo much harder than my paid job before. Dh then comes home to tell me he is so tired. I breastfeed and do all night feeds.

As many pp have said it depends on the job and the kids. I have friends who work part time in relatively stress free jobs that they've done for ages - they often say that they go to work for a break. I also have a couple of friends who work ft in very stressful, high pressure jobs and I would never argue that what I do (I'm a SAHM)is harder. They might though.

Today it's pissing it down here. We had a full day yesterday and have a busy day planned for tomorrow so today has been pretty easy, messing about with balloons, done some colouring, got some housework done. Dp will have had a harder day today. Days when I'm ill, or the kids are ill can be very hard.

Hearing people say 'I do everything you do and work full time' is just a bit annoying.

My job is unbelievably stressful, so no, it's not more stressful having a 4mo and and a 3yo, which is the situation I'm in at the moment.

However, it is relentless and a bit mind numbing and frustrating. Which in itself takes its toll on your mental health but in a completely different way. I find my job easier in the grand scheme of things, but being at home is definitely a lower stress option.

People who say they do everything a SAHM does and work FT are just wrong unless they work nights. Although actually it can be true of SAHM with children in school.

I don't think anyone has said they literally do everything a SAHP and work full time. The way I read it is that WOHP still have to run a home- so all the major things like cooking, shopping, laundry, bills, getting children up in the morning, bed time routine, night wakings still have to be done. Obviously while your child is at nursery or childminder then they will be playing with other people, someone else will be changing their nappy and cooking their lunch etc. But most of the tasks of running a home still remain. And of course the really big demands of parenting- the constant worries about their well being which goes on 24/7 is there whether you work or not.

depends on the whole situation. if your struggling your struggling.

My neighbour a few doors down has dc same age as mine and has completly different experience to me. She has Mum pop in regulary ( lives close very hands on, baby sits) she can pop to shops have freedom, free nights out...lots of help and support. Her dc are also much calmer than mine, they just get in the car, they just sit at meal times...I know she still has usual dc issues but little things like walking down the street etc are all easy for her.

I have different situation, my dc are fast movers, always moving, higher chance of accidents, run without thinking, wont ever sit still, very lively and no help. She has said she finds it quite manageable I say I find it hard. I find it un relenting, no rest always on move, never time to think.

I know my DH has a job with reasonable stress levels and he looks on that as an escape from the house.

Catrabbit, I agree - personally I think that the SAHP v WOHP debate is hugely interesting in terms of how much needs to get done around the house. Of course WOHP (I am one) doesn't do the same things as a SAHP 7 days a week, though they may at the weekends. But there are still lots of things which can't be removed, such as night wakings and washing and cooking dinner. Perhaps two WOHP parents have to juggle the financial management/paperwork between them at lunchtime? Perhaps a SAHP has a partner who does all the financial management themselves.

It would be really interesting to be able to have a bigger (nosy) discussion about it but it always becomes very heated and accusatory....

Since having DCs, I've done SAHM, p/t and f/t teaching. P/t was probably the best combination for me. F/T has been relentless, and I spend less time on the nice side of parenting, and keep the exhausting parts of running the household. SAHM is easier now I've got one at preschool and one at school. Baby and toddler tantrum phase was exhausting. I'm also remote from family and close friends so felt isolated. There was more freedom to set the pace though. Working while still doing night feeds then early starts to work before the rest of the household wakes up is not much fun. Then there's the maternal guilt...

OP if your husband tells you how easy your job is in comparison to his, then let him do it. Go out one day at the weekend and leave him to it, he thinks it is easy so how can he complain?

Having said that looking at your list of events a parent who worked outside the home would still have dealt with most of that.

Tedious and knackering yes, stressful no.

YANBU

My worst nightmare

I am on leave from work as my AMAZING childminder is on holiday.

I hate it. Please HURRY up and come back

If you think that's stressful you don't know stress. Which is nice for you really. But worth being aware many people have far harder lives

I'm 22. I work a mixture of days and nights in a psychiatric hospital, am doing a full time psychology degree and am a newly single mum to an 18 month old. My day yesterday:

Awake at half 5 (baby at GPs).
Leave for work at 6, 45 minute walk uphill.
Non stop running about at work - dealing with bodily fluids, getting assaulted etc. No windows allowed to be open so was 35 degrees there today. If I'm lucky this is for 8 hours, if I'm not so lucky it's for 14.

More (literal) running to nursery to pick up my little girl. Come home, quick play, bath, dinner, cuddles and bed. This is 7ish (though she does like to keep me on my toes and refuse to go to bed till gone 10 recently).

Then comes the onslaught of washing, cleaning etc. Then comes a few hours of uni work. Can't relax usually until gone 11. Which is when I have to go to sleep due to the aforementioned 5:30 wake up.

I live for my days off with my DD. Although I still run around like a madwoman catching up on coursework, housework and life admin.

There are always people that are worse off than you, though. Comparison is the thief of joy. And this too shall pass

Augustwashout- your posts illustrate perfectly why many couples prefer to both WOH, even though in many ways it means a lot more juggling than having one parent home all day. You are worn out and find being a SAHP relentless and exhausting, while your dh finds his job stress free and an escape from the home

In the nicest possible way, I do wonder why some women put up with this. I much prefer the set up where dh and I have always seen paid work, domestic work and parenting as things we are both capable of doing very well. Share the pleasures (and the pains!)

I'm not saying it's right for everyone, but I do think that if you choose a set up where one person is sole earner and the other is a SAHP, you need to go into it eyes open, being totally honest with yourself about your choice and not doing it because you perceive you have the easier ride.

The kind of competitive approach (as the OP started!) just leads to longer term resentment. If you honestly believe that your partner has it a lot easier than you, and that it's an unequal partnership, then have a frank discussion about changing things. But you do need to be honest with yourself: if your partner turned around and said 'ok I'll be the SAHP' would you be happy to step into their shoes? The grass isn't always greener....

Related to that last point, it's interesting (and sad imo) that there's been a lot in the news lately about the extremely low take up of shared parental leave. It's unbelievably low... Most parents are still opting for the mother to take the entire leave rather than splitting with the father. It does raise the question of whether a lot of fathers don't want to- or whether the mothers don't want to let them!

I would have chewed my own arm off for shared parental leave back in the day when I had my kids... Even if it had been financially less advantageous I think all the other advantages - dad bonding time with the child, a fuller understanding of what it's like to be a WOHP/ SAHP would outweigh any financial hit.

I have always been a sahm, didn't woh after kids, but treated it like a full time job.
I suppose it depends on the kids, your belief and what you want to get out of it the same as work.
I don't think either is better, harder or more stressful tbh.
for every person who can't cope with stress there is another person who thrives on it.
I couldn't work in a stressful job but have found sahp stressful at times.

Christ....I had 4 under 5 and it was still easier than working full time in high pressure job, during summer holidays with 2 teens and 2 tweens

Baby/ toddler is the easy bit...change nappy, feed, play job done

Having kids is tougher than having no kids. That's about the only universal I can agree to.

Hmmn, it depends doesn't it? Sometimes being at home is stressful, sometimes work is challenging. It also depends on the children, their stage of development and the career you're comparing it to.

I don't think anyone has said they literally do everything a SAHP and work full time. The way I read it is that WOHP still have to run a home- so all the major things like cooking, shopping, laundry, bills, getting children up in the morning, bed time routine, night wakings still have to be done. Obviously while your child is at nursery or childminder then they will be playing with other people, someone else will be changing their nappy and cooking their lunch etc. But most of the tasks of running a home still remain. And of course the really big demands of parenting- the constant worries about their well being which goes on 24/7 is there whether you work or not.

My sister was a sahm for 2 years. She found it hugely stressful and was busy every single day. With hindsight she now admits that she created a lot of work for herself to somehow justify being at home. She says if she had a lazier day and didn't do much cleaning or just let the kids run a little riot then she felt guilty when dp came home. It does make me wonder if that's a common element of why many sahp appear to be busy all the time. Like thurlow said it would be an interesting discussion if it didn't turn into a bunfight.

Yanbu .

I have two kids (7 and 2, so two years ago similar to yours).

I also have a job that I reckon would appear on many people's lists if you said "name a few stressful, full-on jobs".

This week my kids are away and I have a particularly stressful and difficult week at work. I can truthfully say it is so, so much easier than yhe summer I was mat leave.

Now, i enjoyed that time with thr kids. It was wonderful and fun and fulfilling and all that jazz. But harder. Physically harder. Most constant and frantic and psychologically harder.

Also, more specifically, I find that I feel tiredness much more when i am looking after the kids. If, when they are home as normal, I have a broken night, it affects me so much more if I am om childcare that if I'm working.

I still can't believe how competitive people are prepared to get over this

There is no 'right' answer. People will differ as to how stressful they find different roles, end of.

Ps obviously I am comparing sahp to solely working there, not to wohp. So that could equate to the partner of a sahp too, if they leave home and childcare to the sahp.

Doing a full days work then coming home to do full evening duty is bloody hard! Especially if the other partner does fuck all or you are a lp.

I am a somewhat reluctant SAHM and find it very difficult. I think it is the best thing for our family overall and I didn't have a job to go back to so I am at home with a one year old, and it is just relentless. DP is fab. But I feel guilty if I take DD out and spend money whilst he is working, so I try to treat it like a job and do housework and just hold the fort. DD then gets bored so we have a hard day. But if I take her out I beat myself up for having fun whilst DP works. I feel pretty worthless because so many people seem to think being a SAHM is easy, and I feel depressed because I don't see any way to be happy. DP wants me to enjoy myself but I feel like I'm not doing a hard enough job if I do something nice with DD that costs money or prevents me getting household jobs done.

Frikadela and Thurlow - as a mum of older children, the really interesting discussion for me would be around this shockingly low take up of shared parental leave.

I'm part of the cohort where maternity rights were very few, and paternity rights practically non existent. My friends and I mostly returned to work when our babies were around 12 weeks, and our partners usually had the day of the birth off and possibly the following day if they had an understanding employer. We generally coped ok with this (I mean we didn't know any different and this was just the way it was) BUT many of us were quite vocal in supporting greater rights for new parents. Many of us would have chewed our arms off for the right to shared leave on offer now- so why aren't more parents grabbing it? I know one or two people who say it won't work out quite as beneficial financially for dad to take time out, but that can't be the case universally. And besides, you'd think many people would consider the short term financial hit to be outweighed by the pluses- proper 1:1 bonding time between dads and their children, a real mutual understanding of what life is like for the other partner...
It just feels to me (and perhaps to other older mums who didn't have these choices) that mothers have been very vocal for years about wanting to parity with men when it comes to the workplace, pay etc, and wanting partners who take domestic and childcare responsibility seriously- yet when legislation finally catches up, people aren't taking advantage of it.

Ultimately, if you are feeling that you've drawn the short straw either as the SAHP or the WOHP, the only person worth discussing it with is your partner. Asking for generalised comparisons on MN is fairly fruitless. It doesn't matter a jot whether we're working harder or less hard than you .... Focus on your own set up, how it got to be that way and whether you need to redress the balance. The legislation is all there now to make it possible- shared parental leave, rights for both mum and dad to request flexible working..... Believe me, it wasn't always so. Imo there has never been a better time than 2016 to put your parenting and work roles on an equal footing- if that's what you want.

Imo there has never been a better time than 2016 to put your parenting and work roles on an equal footing- if that's what you want.

In theory that's true- in practice it doesn't work like that.
While men have a right to paternity leave for many is is career suicide- on a par as women taking maternity leave.
If a man works for local government or a big organisation that has decent structures in place you are likely to be stuffed. Even then there is no guarantee that you exercising your paternity leave rights may well hinder your career progression.

OH and I have worked for many small companies. Eyebrows would be raised at any man trying to take more than a week or two off for the arrival of a baby.
The few that have tried it find themselves sidelined for promotion or out the door when a squeeze is on.

Times haven't changed that much.