to say we get rid of cleaner when maternity leave starts?

[dazedconfused81]

Man alert!! 😂 So my wife starts maternity leave soon and is adament she wants to take as long as possible off, so 12mths probably. (Which is another bone of contention, as I would have liked to take longer off work than the standard 2 weeks!)

Obviously I’m worried about the financial impact this will have, and we’ve discussed cutting back. One of the things I think we should get rid of is the cleaner, which currently costs us about £140/mth. She disagrees, saying we will need it more than ever.

Am I being unreasonable?

I can tell you right now that if a man was the full time stay at home carer of three young children and was used to having a cleaner and his wife worked out of the home and started pontificating about sacking cleaners, they'd have got the same response as you did. It was your tone, not that you are a man. Out of interest why did you announce it? That's not a trick question, why did you feel the need to? It happens quite a lot when men post here and I always wonder why.

Moxiebelle - I believe shared parental leave was designed to give parents choice, not just the women. But ultimately it was designed to benefit the child, so that parents could decide what was best for it? Or is that me being naive?

@Moxiebelle - equality means equal.. not that one party gets to make the decision

MsGameandWatching I announced it because my wife said I may want to say that I’m a man initially - no other reason.

Shared parental leave is a tricky one actually, I don’t think it is fair for mothers to insist on taking the whole year and they should let fathers take at least some of it if they want to, for everyone’s sake, but if mothers want to breastfeed for as long as possible then 6 months is a bit early to go back to work and hand baby over to daddy. In my first post I suggested trying to find a compromise, and I think 9 months + 3 months is reasonable. It’s fair enough for mothers to have 9 months with their baby having spend 9 months growing it!

Fathers should also consider reducing their hours and working part time after the mother goes back to work, which would be a great way to get quality time with the baby/child and would work out as more time in the long run.

Presumably you pay for the childcare over and above 30 hours if you both work full time.

I imagine that costs a lot.

Just to say, my DS was later diagnosed with autism and sensory issues. He cried A LOT when he was a baby, wanted held A LOT and hated leaving the house. He still takes a lot of my time.

I would love a cleaner, but I am a single parent, so it is not affordable. £1500 a month was what I had to live on when I was on maternity leave.

But to the OP, I think for marital stability, I would keep the domestic arrangements the same. Your wife will be looking after three children, one of whom is a newborn. You say you both work FT, but if cleaning becomes one person’s job, it chips away at the equality in the relationship. If money is that much of an issue, take a mortgage holiday or something to cover it.

Apart from anything else, if your cleaner is good, you might not find someone like her in a year’s time. Fewer hours might be a compromise, but your cleaner also needs to earn a living.

@Moxiebelle has summarised it perfectly.

As others have pointed out why is it suddenly such a big deal three children in

Ooh, duh. 3 children cost more than 2? So they need to cut their cloth accordingly. Extra baby = more nappies, wipes, etc. Extra children don't come without cost.

#statetheobvious

'It's amazing how something like shared parental leave that was supposed to be to help women's equality is now becoming something that men are demanding their share of whether the woman wants to or not.'
Demanding is a bit of a strong word, isn't it? And the term 'equality' can be used loosely sometimes in terms of first world issues. Men get lynched if they try to get equality. There's no point in even talking about shared maternity if it's not something that people truly believe in

Congrats on the baby on the way! I'm of the school where a cleaner isn't necessary but is always welcome. The decider is obviously can you both cope with a less than perfect house given your wife will be off looking after the newborn, and you both already have two to look after?

If yes then fire (literally!) away. If not, you'll definitely need to talk through who and how this housework gets sorted together before letting anyone go.

That's the one yorick!

You seem so dissatisfied OP but you were the one who wanted to ask for advice.

If you both have experience of children and parenting, are reasonably intelligent adults and can both calculate household budgets, I am not sure really why you needed to... surely the obvious answer is that most people would want a cleaner if they could afford it, especially with a newborn and some will priorotise affording it more than others.

Maths is what gives you the answer to whether you can afford one or not, not MN.

I don’t think you should need a cleaner. Most of us manage to get through life perfectly well without one. Maternity leave, from my own narrow experience, is a schoosh compared to being a FT working mum. There is enough time during the day to keep on top of things whilst on mat leave.

I do think that one of the societal benefits of shared maternity leave and also reduced hours working is that in the minds of employers, child rearing is no longer seen as exclusively the woman's domain, and therefore (slightly) reduces sexism associated with reduced hours working, having to attend appointments or looking after sick children.

I have a very sexist manager, and I see him (trying) to make sexist decisions on a daily basis where he equates women working on reduced hours due to their caring responsibilities as being less committed and lazy. Unfortunately for him I regularly challenge his decisions and we have a robust HR which thwarts him. I'm not sure that he likes me very much

The more normalised it becomes for men to have to take time off to deal with childcare I think the better for women and society in general. BUT, I think that this also involves the other parent taking a full role in the parenting. My DH has been guilty of thinking that looking after the children involves him watching telly and making sure they don't die.

(appreciates it is off topic somewhat)

Do you need the cleaner now or is it just nice to have? If you need the cleaner while you’re both working and caring for your existing kids, you’ll need it just as much when she’s on maternity leave. I had far more energy to clean before I had my twins and was working very long hours.

I’ve never had a cleaner but am considering it now because I’m exhausted and desperate and my house is generally a disgrace. She’ll be looking after the baby so as long as you’re aware that no cleaner means you picking up a lot of the slack, go for it.

Joanna57 and mum11970
Do either of you have kids? Do your friends have kids? Have you ever been around babies at all? Babies don’t sleep all day and all night. Most sleep for short periods of time in the day demanding to be fed and changed frequently. Babies rarely sleep all night. A lot of babies feed every couple of hours day and night until they can get into a pattern of bigger feeds and longer sleeps. Getting up to feed a child during the night is exhausting. Broken sleep, breastfeeding/ making up bottles, changing nappies, bathing, rocking a baby to sleep, frequent visitors, midwife and health visitor appointments, Doctors appointments, endless crying, soothing a crying baby, etc etc etc.....and that’s before cooking dinner, washing dishes, doing the laundry, ironing etc. And doing all of that after a c-section or a lot of stitches, with heavy blood loss and anemia or with sore and cracked nipples is even harder. Wake up. Not all mums pop out the perfect baby with a body clock that fits their families’ schedule. Until men learn to give birth and breast feed they should not be entitled to extra time off unless their partners want to go back to work and leave them at home instead. I didn’t have a cleaner whilst bringing up two kids and I suffer from 2 chronic illnesses, but I wished that I did. It would have made life so much easier. If you are used to having a cleaner stopping doing so at one of the craziest times in your life would be very difficult. Keep the cleaner even if you have to make sacrifices in other areas.

Suzielou66, I'm not either of those posters, but I largely agree with them, and yes I have a baby....

Not all babies are the same. Assuming they don't sleep and are really time consuming as as presumptuous as assuming they all sleep well. Don't assume people don't have children because their experience is different to yours.

I agree with you - you don't really need a cleaner during this time. £140 per month would be a huge saving. During Maternity/Paternity leave some cleaning/tidying can be done while the baby sleeps or one can do in the eve.

They don't all sleep well - mine didn't- but there isn't that much to do done - hoovering, basic tidying, loading washing machine, hanging up washing, loading dishwasher. I would not bother with ironing.

Not all babies are the same. Assuming they don't sleep and are really time consuming as as presumptuous as assuming they all sleep well

My first napped beautifully as long as she was being pushed in the buggy. She had some kind of sixth sense for when we had approached our garden gate and I was just starting to fantasise about 30 seconds to myself to have a drink and then sticking some washing in. Halfway through my maternity leave we had to replace the tyres on the buggy as I had completely worn them away. On the bright side - I worked off a LOT of cake.

There will be THREE children not just one sleepy baby!

dazedconfused81

Maybe keep the cleaner for the first 6 weeks when your wife will still be on 90% pay? That also gives you both time to focus on being new parents and for your wife to recover from giving birth.

I do find it odd she doesn't want to share her leave, my husband is having to do one week paternity leave, one week annual leave because of finances. I wish he could take a month off tbh.

I gave up my cleaner when I went on maternity leave as I felt I couldn't justify to myself being at home and having a cleaner when I knew money was going to be tighter. We managed fine, however, we only had the 1 child at the time. My DH worked full time and did most of the cleaning in the early weeks whilst I fed and cared for the wee one. Once we got into a routine the balance shifted around as and when necessary.

I chose not to go back to full time work (that wasn't in our original plans) so we haven't gone back to having a cleaner.

In your situation, if you have a good cleaner that you trust, and your wife plans to go back to work in 12 months time, I would seriously think about keeping the cleaner on so you don't have to find another cleaner in a years time. 3 children, a full time job, activities to take them to and from, shopping to get and a house to clean is a lot. Having a cleaner would be a godsend.

I love how people are suggesting the OP cancel the day care for the other child instead of cancelling the cleaner.

As if looking after a baby and a young child all day every day is easier than only having the baby and sharing a bit of the housework