To think that I can’t work if DH won’t do any childcare?

[Crocuses]

DH is whinging about me being a SAHM, not working and not contributing my share. He keeps pointing out that SIL works so why can’t I? But he’s ignoring the fact that BIL does his share. He leaves work at his contracted finishing time 5pm and does half of the pickups. He works late on other days to give him enough flex time to be able to do half of the drop offs. He and his wife both took a week of unpaid parental leave when their youngest DC was ill. They take turns dealing with sick days. He does grocery shopping and ironing.

My DH thinks he’s so important and his company absolutely wouldn’t accept him asking for flex time or working from home or being off work, and it would affect his job security and progression. When I ask for any support he whinges that none of the other executives have to deal with childcare because they’re all so important. He finds it embarrassing to have to say “sorry I need to leave this meeting because my son needs picking up at 6pm”. He won’t even text me to say he’ll be late because it makes him look bad, and quite frankly he doesn’t want to. I’ve pointed out that if DS was with a childminder he couldn’t just be late without telling anyone, and he says but DS isn’t with a childminder, he’s with you and you’re his mother so you should just look after him, I shouldn’t have to give his mother a pickup time.

He’s never done a single night with DS because he’s so important, he has to be well slept. I broke my leg and he wouldn’t even take a day off when I went in for surgery, I had to beg an elderly neighbour to watch DC as a one off, and I had to request light anaesthesia because I couldn’t take time to rest afterwards. Even when I had food poisoning and was projective vomiting and begging him for help because I was too ill to look after the baby, he still went to work and left me.

I don’t see how I can work (especially not in the type of career job DH wants me to have) if I’m solely responsible for all pickups, drop offs, sick days, hospital appointments etc? No job is that flexible. And the bigger problem is that if I can’t work I’ll have no pension and no job for when DS grows up.

DH never takes his full holiday entitlement either, apparently they can’t spare him so they often just pay him for his missed holiday. They often phone and ask him to pop in to the office even when he’s officially on holiday. So I don’t see how I can work and cover school holiday childcare if he won’t take his holidays? And he does at least an hour of unpaid overtime every single day so I cook every meal because he isn’t home in time, I do all the grocery shopping and ironing. I don’t know how I can take on all of the family responsibilities and work too?

Work weekends then when he isn’t working

Yes, getting a Saturday job is an interesting idea.

Have you thought of the Royal Mail OP? You can get proper school friendly shifts and you are forced to work pretty much every Saturday. He would have no choice but to step up then. It's almost like being paid to go to the gym also 🤷🏻‍♀️

And book the DC into loads of clubs 😂😂

What a pig of a man, you’re more tolerant than me OP, I couldn’t be with a self-important egotistical arsehole like that

He sounds dreadful.

You shouldn’t have to do everything but if you go back to work, there are ways of organising your life to fit in your career. Many women do it.

What a grim life you’ve got ahead of you

I have 3 DC and honestly it's only now they're older that I've managed to get back to work. My DH really did have a job that was in social & inflexible by it's very nature (emergency services), there was a very real risk that something would come up & he couldn't get back to do a pick up or whatever.

Now in work full time, but my boss is amazingly flexible and my husband although still in the same employment is in a much better role which allows more flexibility. Currently I drop 3 kids to school then drive to work arriving just after 9am. Then 2 kids walk home together and let themselves in, the third goes into after school club. Dh gets in around 4.30-5.30pm so the 2 kids are in the house for around an hour which is when they do their homework. I get home anywhere from 5pm to 5.45pm & pick up my youngest from the club. Sick leave my husband can work from home for. Holidays we decide our annual leave to cover and roughly 3 weeks the 2 younger kids go into holiday club. My eldest is too old for the club so she stays home & I ring regularly & pop back on lunch breaks.

I couldn't do it though without DH & I working as a team. I cant say too much but DHs job is extremely important and is a nationwide responsibility, yet still he is as involved as he can be and never once suggested it's all on me.

Your DH is just a selfish twat. Get out now.

Absolutely Arrow. Bil is a flipping surgeon and he is there with the hoover whenever we visit and does most of food shopping and cooking and arranges his shifts so he can collect their kids on his allotted days.

He's a knob!!! Leave him!!

@CodyBurns

What an awful story. Great that you left.

Did his behaviour come out of nowhere?
Or were there flags pre children that you ignored?

@billy1966 yes there were signs, but I was young and foolish. I also had no idea what to look out for but now I do:

Being generally tight-fisted and mean with money (asking for 50p for my half of something for example)

Being proud of the fact that he was tight-fisted with money and obsessed with budgeting.

Making and tracking expenditure on detailed spreadsheets and obsessing over them.

Trying to tell me how to spend my money, looking put out or sulking when I bought something he didn’t ‘approve’ of

Trying to have the final say on any issues relating to money or economic purchases including the house, the car, bills etc.

A general preoccupation with money and finances, saving beyond what was really necessary (hoarding)

Being arsey about my choice of career (because it threatened his idea of being more intelligent than me) and feeling less of a man when I earned more than he did.

Never treating me to anything, not even a coffee. Everything was totted up and something was ‘owed’ in return or next time we went out.

Deciding what was ‘too expensive’ based on his own opinion. He knew the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

Refusing to pay anyone to do any work on the house. Wasted hours of time to save a few quid (and usually did a crap job).

Always buying the cheapest of everything, then complaining when it broke.

I’m sure on it’s own, this list doesn’t seem too bad but all of it was a warning sign in hindsight and I’d run a mile from a penny pincher like this in future.

This is the moment to recommend the Freedom Programme for the OP and also for Cody.

It is so highly recommended by women who have taken it, I wish it had been around back in the day when I was young and coming out of an abusive relationship.

@CodyBurns

That's some list.

Meanness tells you a huge amount about someone.

It should never be ignored.

It's also a red flag that shows up very very quickly in a relationship.

A very easy one to tell our daughters and sons about.

But particularly our DD's.

They need to know that meanness is not fixable. It goes to the core of someone's character.

Thanks for that @Cody

@CodyBurns Horrific........................you mind find the "who should pay on dates" threads an interesting read. Plenty on there who insist that a couple of items on your list make it more likely that a man believes in equality.

OP, if your husband were as important to his company as he likes to make out, they’d be bloody well falling over themselves to facilitate his need to leave on time, take time off for family emergencies, etc. Truly high flying, valued employees get more leeway.

He sounds a monumental dickhead TBH. I hope you can gain some independence from him.

@HelenaDove I expect there are some men out there who are a bit tight but otherwise ok and not abusive but I think meanness is a big red flag for financial abuse, especially if there are double standards. For example my ex would be really tight-fisted about pretty much everything, except his own drinking and social life. I’m always on my guard for people who are generous to themselves but mean spirited towards others. 50/50 is fine and acceptable at the dating stage, but when you are married and/or have kids that sort of rigidity often leads to problems down the track. An abusive man will always exploit a power balance and what easier way to do it than with money...

Have you read Reality's opening post on this thread www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/698029-Right-listen-up-everybody ? I think you'd find it helpful.

DH’s attitude so far has made me question how I’ll cope because I’ll obviously receive no support. This was not my expectation when we agreed to have a baby. It was him who wanted a baby, not me - but the whole burden has been put on me

Seems like he manipulated you into this set-up right from the start - knowing full well that once you had a baby and were not financially independent YOU would be trapped.
You would have no choice but to put up with his abuse - and how he's treating you IS abusive.
You've even admitted yourself that you'd rather put up with him complaining at you rather than leave - THAT is how he's conditioning you.
The longer you remain dependent on him the worse it's going to be - men like him don't stop, they get worse.

You'd be better off using this last year of DC being at home to look into re-training or something so you can hightail it out of there asap at some point in the near future.
Or divorce him whilst a SAHM.

I highly doubt someone as strategic and manipulative as him will ever change.

LTB

Gonna have to say LTB andnotjust because he’s acting like an ignorant prick! But because your future sounds grim! If he thinks he’s going to climb the ladder with a personality like this and by Communicating the way he responds to your reasoned arguments he clearly is a stubborn child... he’s never gonna earn his seniors respect and get the big bucks to afford a nanny.,, he’ll be stuck at middle management with an inflated sense of self importance amd increasing bitterness at the world and you the older he gets,.. all the while draining from you and your poor ds who will be picking up on the relationship his parents have and the tension it brings....
You and ds don’t need a fancy house to be happy and certainly not if it’s got a grim troll in it like him stinking up the place! Ds needs you to be happy and free that’s worth a million mansions! Wishing you the best! And childminders are lovely! Ds won’t be missing out that way xx

CodyBurns, your experience is the reason I refused to stop working after having children. I feared being under someone’s financial control. Well done on escaping and making it on your own.

Lots of posters advising to get a job, but that's the husband's wish, not the wish of the OP.

Daftodil, the husband wants a full-time working wife and someone who takes care of the child and everything at home, and he doesn’t want to be party to any of it. He’s so “important” that he’s shown no interest in interacting with his DS, and he points to the other “important” executives who don’t have to do any child minding. It may not be OP’s wish, but people are saying that she needs to get a job because taking charge of one’s financial future is the first step in gaining independence from this man, because who wants to be around this for the rest of her life? Is this man a good role model for her DS?

My former boss was somewhat like OP’s DH. He was “happy” to have a stay-at-home wife because it allowed him to brag to his clients and others that he was wealthy enough to afford to have a wife who didn’t have to work. He bragged that he gave her carte blanche with the credit card and she could buy whatever she wanted.

Then he turned around and treated her like crap at home while complaining in the office that his wife didn’t earn a cent.

OP, in my opinion, you need to find a job, part-time at least, as step one of your escape plan. The longer you wait, the harder it will get. A future with this jackass man looks grim.