Childcare equals work?

[CurlyHurlyWurly]

I've just had a row with DH, where he came home from his work, and I was tired from looking after DS all day. After having put DS to bed, I cooked dinner and started hanging up laundry, and asked DH to help folding his clothes that have been sitting there for a week. "I'll do it in a bit, I just want to sit because I've been to work all day," he said. "So have I!" I said. "Bo**ocks!" he shouted.

So AIBU in thinking me looking after DS all day is the same as DH going to work?

I also have my own business, and have to juggle working from home with childcare and household chores. I'm fuming, and feel the lack of respect is unreal.

Unless someone enjoys cleaning the loo or changing nappies then of course it's work.

Some paid jobs are more physically/mentally taxing than others, but they are all under the same umbrella of being work. By the same token, looking after your own child/cleaning your own house is nicer than doing those things for someone else because you get to enjoy the results but the fact is they still involve a lot of unpleasant tasks.

If it's not 'fun' and other people earn a living doing those things, then of course it's work.

It's work if you are employing your time doing tasks, and if you have a role.
Childcare, cleaning, driving kids around around is all work as pp's have said if you can employ others to do it then it's work.
Yes, you can reap the benefits if done for yourself, but some people enjoy their paid or voluntary work, it doesn't make it leisure just because they enjoy it.

Work just means anything not fun in this scenario

That totally non-quantifiable.

I wonder at the lives of the people who think that SAHPs aren't working. I suspect that most of you are in fulltime work and someone else looks after your children, while you dream about what the fun the other person is having. Some, of course, may be natural Earth Mothers and I am so, so jealous of you if you are.

What a surprise. The ops situation with her dh has turned into the usual sahp vs wohp rot.

coyo no, funnily enough that isn't what I thought of. I have wondered a few times why some parents feel the need to put down those who made different choices, and I suspect they are trying to convince themselves they made the right choice, as well as being ignorant.

And since coming on here I'd say it's more common for sahps to have regrets. Struggling to get their careers back after years out. Or financially screwed if they end up single after years out. Exdh's and/or tax credits don't pay single mothers to be sahps.

gillybeanz

Straight out of a theory book, can't remember which, but used it alot in my degree.
A fascinating subject of views and theories about what constitutes work, rest, play, leisure and recreation.
Why spoil it by turning it into woh v sah argument.

Of course they're jobs. They require labour, physical or emotional. You can pay people in the outside world for each of them.

I could pay people in the outside world to have sex with my dh doesn't mean it's my job when I do it.

An unbelievable thread

Janet, I think you having sex with your husband should be in the 'fun' category. If it isn't, thrn you are doing it wrong