To ask if my husband has adequate time to himself

[Lennon80]

Hi ladies, I have a six year old a nine month old and a baby on the way. I don't have any family support as my mum died when I was pregnant with my nine month old. Today my husband said he is leaving his job thatvhe has been in a matter of weeks as the work and commute (3hour round trip) is too much and said he wants a sixth month sabbatical. He plays tennis roughly once a week and goes to the gym once or twice a week. He said he also wants to do a Spanish class in the evening. Can I ask how much time your husbands spend out of the home at evenings and doing what as he thinks other men have a totally different life. Thanks

You'll need the maternity pay & won't need to settle your baby in nursery if your DH is at home for 6 months surely??

I'd be saying to him "take the sabbatical and I'll go to work" - see how he likes it!

Tell your husband you can swap roles after your maternity leave ends

My DH leaves home at 6:45am and gets home at 7pm. He then plays with DS and we put him to bed by about 8:30pm then has an hour to himself and maybe an hour with me before bed. Most of the weekends is spent doing family stuff and since I work Sunday mornings it's just DH and DS then. I try and give him as much time as he needs to just hang about by himself but TBH he doesn't take much.

How will this sabbatical work?

Will he spend his days doing as he wishes, while you look after 3 small children?

Can your marriage survive under these circumstances?

all he needs to do is get a job closer to home, tough shit if it isn't his chosen field.

but he doesn't want to work at all. he wants to use your family savings to spend his time having fun on his own.....i see there was no mention of childcare from him.
and why would paying for childcare be ALL your responsibility? He can damn well pay half!

if i were you i'd remove a good chunk of the savings so he can't touch them.

he's acting like a child and putting yours and your dc financial security at risk -and he doesn't give a shit.
If he feels that resentful of being the only one working then he shouldn't have had two other kids!

maybe he secretly doesn't want to go back to work at all? Rather wait for you to finish mat leave and be the breadwinner?

OP i realise you don't want to out yourself but there's a lot of "it depends" here and anyone else's DH free time is irrelevant surely

If you can afford this, if he wants a time out from work, if you can split time on childcare 50/50....

Sadly I suspect you are really just saying that he wants time out from work and children. I dunno why he has three (well okay one is still en route).

From what you say I get a vibe that he thinks being a SAHP is fun, but if that's the case he'd be volunteering to do that...?

It doesn't sound like either of you want to work, and you'd both rather be the SAHP. I think you need to get your mindset out of the 1950's mode and start to think about a way to compromise. Parental leave can now be split between both parents, so why should he be the one to do a 3 hour commute while you get to take the kids to the library?? Its 2016, and its perfectly fair for a man to want to spend quality time bringing up his children, rather than just being a walking wallet who's out of the house working from dawn to dusk. Could both of you look into part-time or working from home jobs? That way you both provide for the children, but neither of you has the full burden of being the only breadwinner

Is he going to grow a pony tail and a ratty little goatee too ?

What a prick

This made me chuckle.

I agree he is a prick.

He's a father his kids needs come first.

His need for fulfilment should not trump his children's needs for food, shelter and clothing.

Sorry just to add I mean he needs to get another job before he quits this one. Not that he couldn't possibly be a sahp. My impression from the ops post though isn't that he wants to be a sahp, instead he wants to be an unemployed person.