To get cross every time I see a woman say her husband doesn't do any night feeds because "he works"?

[TeenTitans]

I'm in a few mum groups online and I keep seeing this and it's driving me mad. Women who's husband's never do any night feeds because they work and women who think that's perfectly okay. Erm do you not think looking after the kids all day is work? My response is always "so do you!" when I see it. My partner has always helped with the nights because they're his kids as well and it's just as much his job as mine.

I'm not complaining about couples divvying up the work as they wish but the justification. YOU ALSO WORK.

the way people define "happy" is totally socially conditioned. Women have shut up and put up for millennia and most of them would have described it as "happy" because they don't know and can't imagine anything different. There is a reason why consciousness-rasing is number 1 priority in any liberation movement, including feminism

That’s actually really patronising pissedoff I’m glad I had the opportunity to stay at home with my dc especially when they were young. I actually put dd2 in to nursery at 9 months so I
could go back to teaching but I felt hideous walking away from the nursery. Not because I felt guilty because I just didn’t want to leave her, it was primal, physical. So I was lucky enough to
choose to stay at home and left work.

You don’t need to tell me I dont know or understand what ‘happiness’ is

My brother has letters after his name also and he thinks he knows it all too. Oh yeah and my niece who is 19 and just done a child care degree - she thinks she knows more about raising kids and looking after them that her mother, grandmother, aunt ect... 🙄

I guess because I have experienced the absolute exhaustion that comes from having zero sleep and a physically and emotionally challenging job I just know I wouldn’t put someone through that if I could help it. It’s not being tired, it’s feeling like you’re being tortured because your body can’t physically prop your eyes open any longer but you have to find a way to. I’ve been the one to get into work and mix up an eight cup strength disgusting pretend espresso in the kitchen with Nescafé, choked it down and still nodded off sat up in front of a customer. It’s hell. I wouldn’t want to put my OH in the position of killing someone and going to prison (it happens) and our family being unable to pay the mortgage. Not when the next day he has to go do a twelve hour shift and I can stay in the house in PJs, not drive, nobody is assessing me, and I can get micronaps at least.

@HenSolo of course your experience is valid. And that is how it is for you. And if your husband HADN'T done some nights at the expense of your mental a d physical health, he'd have been a shit. As I've said over and over, not every parent nor every family the unit are the same, or should function the same.

I am not declassifying parenting as work to devalue it,the opposite in fact. Parenting takes far more out of one physically and emotionally than any paid work imo. It is not "easier". It is completely different (for me). To be fair no-one's life has ever depended on my job, might feel differently if that was the case.

Basically I'm a radical socialist and despise the cult of "work" so my perspective on this may not be common. To me, calling something "work" devalues it and divorces it from the higher levels of self-actualisation which parenting affords. Saying something is enjoyable (and voluntary!) is not the same as saying it is not hard, or valuable.

But yes, ok, dictionary definition, I retract the statement that parenting is not work. Can I say it's not a job, or will that also get kicked to death?

I don’t think there’s much point in me arguing anymore as I’m clearly bonkers thinking people in charge of small helpless infants should need as much sleep as someone with a paid job.

So again we get back to not wanting to have a discussion in case the reality offends.

People aren't just having a discussion when they state they people who work shouldn't have an broken nights sleep which is what you are doing if you say that you did all the night wakening because your DH works. Not all women have babies who sleep quite well and not everyone can sleep in the day. Severe sleep deprivation is not only bad for health it could also be quite dangerous so it doesn't matter whether you are paid to look after the baby.

I've done every single night wake for 3+ years (there are lots) and have been at work ft since 8 months. Partner is a sahp and his days 'on duty' are much longer than mine - but also, I function on less sleep than he does. Do I get a medal?

Not all night waking by infants are "feeds" and just because one parent is doing the feeding doesn't mean the other parent is sleeping through it. With my spouse - who was the SAHP for most of the time our kids were babies - I did night feeds as breastfeeding was faster to deal with at night and usually got them back to sleep quickly but when it didn't, he did everything else - nappies, walking or rocking them to get them back to sleep, returning older kids to bed or getting up with them when they were waking at ridiculous o'clock (two of mine still do that but can be up on their own now). He even had a mattress in their room that he would crash on on difficult nights.

Infants can be really hard and everyone finds their own ways to manage. While one parent working doesn't automatically mean they can't do night feeds as plenty of us have done both and there are sometimes issues in of inequality in parenting, whatever gets everyone through intact is top priority to me though I was comparatively well rested compared to their father who now jokes that it was excellent prep for night work.

you can sleep while the baby sleeps or whenever you get chance round the clock.

I wish someone had told my DC1 that this was supposed to happen. She didn’t seem to get the memo.

Again, I’m not talking about being a bit tired during the day - we all (should) accept this as part of parenthood. I’m talking about being absolutely on your knees with the kind of brutal, brutal exhaustion that comes with only getting a few hours of sleep for days and days and days on end. When you can’t ‘sleep when the baby sleeps’ because the baby will only sleep when you’re moving, or because you have a chaotic non-napping toddler trashing the house. When your worst-case scenario isn’t just being a bit dozy at baby group, it’s crashing the car on the school run or falling asleep with the baby on the sofa.

If you’re facing that kind of exhaustion, it is absolutely absurd to think that most fathers doing most jobs couldn’t function on 7 hours of sleep rather than 8, or on 1 wakeup rather than 0. Just like most working mothers of young children doing those exact same jobs manage.

@Namestheyareachangin I put more pressure on my self to perform than any boss ever could. I find being at work much easier because it's clear when I have been productive and how I add value. At home I don't have that clarity so I'm always feeling like I'm never good enough and this added to me getting pnd - both pregnancies, 7 years apart.

It was going back to work after my first that was my saving grace and got me out of the mindset of feeling I needed to pressurise myself in order to validate my contribution to our home and family.

This time round I haven't been able to go back to work due to financial circs and I struggle to keep those feelings at bay. Sometimes it's a daily battle to not let it get to me. This time round my DH helps a lot more than he did with our first despite the fact I'm not going btw in the near future and he is much more senior with a shitload of responsibility. Because he is more involved he understands how mentally and physically draining being a SAHP can be.

For perspective our son has additional needs and challenging behaviours and our 15 month old is a full of beans toddler that rarely sleeps. Im fucked by the time he gets home as I rarely get a moment to recharge and then we tag team before going to bed shattered. The fact he goes somewhere else between 7-7 is no reason to not be equally hands on when he is at home.

Like helping your spouse grieve a dead parent is not the same 'work' as being a counsellor. great analogy names!

Hen, if the person on parental leave had to up at 6am come hell or high water for a twelve hour nonstop shift of taking care of a baby, baby never slept, never quietly played, never stopped for a second, then sure. The two are comparable. But (and I say this openly as someone who doesn’t yet have kids, just expecting one, this is coming from the experiences of a handful of close friends who’ve done parental leave) it’s not the same. Babies, the majority, take naps. That’s an inbuilt rest break. You’re at home, you can lay down on the sofa or the floor if it’s attractive enough and snatch just enough sleep to keep going. You can’t generally get away with that at work!

I’m saying that whatever someone’s job is, for example stacking shelves, it’s important to be well rested enough you don’t show up looking like shit and making silly mistakes/nodding off upright on the tills

Oh yes making a silly mistake while stacking shelves at Asda is far worse than making a silly mistake such as dropping a baby because you are so tired. And obviously people with babies never get in a car as only people who earn money do that.

@JacquesHammer just because you could do that does not mean everyone who stays at home can.

Just looking after the entire house doing 99% of the chores looking after the pets. Yes I know there is no need to but it is the system that works for us as it means we have every day from 7-12 to do stuff we enjoy and our weekends rather then doing house chorse. Once we have children while partner is at work I will be the main carer so as well as the house hold I will have a schedual for well going to all the baby socialization groups and early learning activities etc hardly sounds like a job where you can just stay in pjs.

Because as has been said repeatedly if you're at home you can have a quick snooze when the dc does. Not so easy when in the office or wherever doing 12 hours shifts. If a sleep deprived parent clumsily spills their tea at home it doesn't matte

I can't sleep in the day.

Being a single parent I had no choice, i worked full time and did all the night feeds. In those days we got 6 weeks maternity leave.
Thank God he was a sleepy baby or I would have probably died.

Babies, the majority, take naps. That’s an inbuilt rest break.

No, no it really isn’t, not for all babies. I too thought my baby would doze angelically in a Moses basket while I put my feet up, and God did I learn that lesson the hard way.

Babies, the majority, take naps

Lol. Hahahahaha. Okay.

I can't sleep in the day. due to practical issues or just sleep patterns?

@snarfblatt
I've done every single night wake for 3+ years (there are lots) and have been at work ft since 8 months. Partner is a sahp and his days 'on duty' are much longer than mine - but also, I function on less sleep than he does. Do I get a medal?
I think your example and the example of many women who return to work after ML still doing the majority of the night wakings just prove that this indeed a feminist issue. Sometimes I wonder if someone being at home is a red herring and actually it comes down to the fact that men don't expect to do any night wakings and women do. Yes BFing will impact their ability to do night feeds in some cases but the vast majority of babies in this country are FFed and I would love to see the stats on who does the night wakings in couples where both work FT. I would bet my house that it is overwhelmingly the mother ...

YOU can't sleep in the day. Perhaps the mums you get cross at can?

I cant sleep in the day and ds1 wasnt a good napper....at all

*But (and I say this openly as someone who doesn’t yet have kids, just expecting one, this is coming from the experiences of a handful of close friends who’ve done parental leave) it’s not the same. Babies, the majority, take naps.

The majority take naps but not always in their cot. If they don't like being put down or only sleep in the car etc it may not be as restful as you think it is going to be.

From another perspective, sleep dep shouldn't be underestimated - I did a Know Your Numbers thing at work recently and at 34 I have a metabolic age of 49 - I can only assume over a year of limted sleep played a big role on that. I would never try and imply parenting, especially night parenting, is easy or can be necessarily"made up" in the day. But that doesn't mean women HAVE to share night wakings if they don't want to. It's a choice, just like giving birth is a physically risky choice some of us choose to make. A lot of it has to do with how much flexibility your life has to accommodate the effects of sleep dep. One small baby on mat leave, even a velcro baby like mine, I'd say accommodation possibility is higher. Multiple children with busy schedules,other commitments that mean you have to drive or be out a lot etc - catching up will be harder and you'll need to find your level. But the answer is NOT always to simply insist everything goes down the middle regardless of how miserable that makes everybody.

But (and I say this openly as someone who doesn’t yet have kids, just expecting one, this is coming from the experiences of a handful of close friends who’ve done parental leave) it’s not the same. Babies, the majority, take naps.

The majority take naps but not always in their cot. If they don't like being put down or only sleep in the car etc it may not be as restful as you think it is going to be.

'Oh for fucks sake, I don’t think I have ever been able to lie on the settee all day in my pyjamas! Who are the lucky parents who get to do this??'

Not all day every day obviously. The point is when at home you answer to yourself only, so there is no pressure to get things done efficiently.

You are extraordinarily defensive @HenSolo. I have been a sahp and a wohp and I can say without a doubt being a wohp when sleep deprived is far more challenging than pottering about at home. It isn't an insult, it is my experience.

just because you could do that does not mean everyone who stays at home can

Indeed. Hence why I’ve repeatedly said that.