To be upset about husband's lack of parental interest?

[araw89]

This is my first post on MN and I'm not usually a forum sort of person. However, I feel I don't really have anyone close to me who I can vent to about this, besides my MIL who doesn't like my husband anyway so can't see the situation objectively.

DH and I share one DD who is 15 months. DH has a 10 year old son from his first marriage who we usually share 50% custody of. SS is mostly a good kid, the only fly in the ointment being that his mum is pretty unhelpful (by unhelpful I mean lets him stay up too late, let's him sit on his iPad all day, believes schoolwork is "boring" so doesn't bother, let's him eat shit food, etc.) DH and I to work hard when he is with us to get him to eat well, sleep well, do some schoolwork to catch up, and just reenforce basic manners and housekeeping that his mum SHOULD be doing.
DH really takes most of the responsibility for this and pours all his energy into SS, sadly to the point he pretty much ignores our DD. I've offered to share the load and help out with things, like do some schoolwork or take SS out so DH can spend more time with DD but he always finds an excuse not to do it.

At the moment with lockdown SS is in isolation with his mum who has tested positive for coronavirus. DH is really disappointed not to see SS and is insisting on FaceTiming him daily, right at the same time our DD has her bath. I've asked him to change the time but he gets angry and says it's the only time he can chat to him. I was really hoping he could do bath/bedtime this week with DD but now he won't. I've asked him to take DD for a walk every now and then so that I don't get stuck in a rut and to offer variety with going out once a day. Instead he prefers to go for a run by himself leaving me to take DD on my own once a day, every single damn day. I spend the second half of the day doing learning and playtime activities with DD on my own whilst DH decorates SS's room and does "jobs" in the loft.

Don't get me wrong; DH helps with cooking and will share 5 or 10 minutes of interaction with DD here and there, but he never devotes any quality time with her like he does with SS. I know I shouldn't be jealous of a stepchild, but I am starting to feel fed up that one child gets so much devotion from him, hours of schoolwork, hours of playing football, computer games, etc., and then our daughter gets so little by way of comparison.
It breaks my heart to see other dads helping out so much with their younger children, feeding them, bathing them, knowing their routines inside and out etc. My DH does hardly any of that. I genuinely thought that if DH was such a keen and devoted dad to my SS that he would be with our children too.

Any thoughts or suggestions really welcome. From a fed up mum

Have you asked him how he thinks his DD feels seeing him spend hours fawning over his DS, but no quality time with her?

She's young now, but it won't be long until she clearly sees the disparity.

Ask him to write his DD a letter clearly explaining why he spends so much time with his other child over her. Tell him youll8give it to her when she's a teenager and desperately trying to find a man, any man, to love her as she never felt love from her father.

There’s a reason your DH split from his ex and it’s probably not because of his ex..

H and I to work hard when he is with us to get him to eat well, sleep well, do some schoolwork to catch up, and just reenforce basic manners and housekeeping that his mum SHOULD be doing.

This sounds like you think all the above SHOULD primarily be the mum's responsibility, but they have 50/50 custody and therefore responsibility?

Although some sections of MN seem to find it unfathomable, it is pretty common in my experience for parents to find looking after their (much loved) babies of that age boring and hard work. I'm sure plenty of parents would have a desire to opt out of this stage and get to the bit where the child is more independent and can interact better. Of course, most parents also realise that this stage of development is very important and it isn't fair on the child or the other parent to take a step back and not pull your weight.

Your DH has a responsibility to his daughter and to you to do more. It is absolutely not acceptable for him to pick and choose the bits of parenting he does and to leave you with the rest. You need to be very clear your expectations and what this would look like on practice. His SS is a bit of a red herring here I think.

You need to talk. I agree that you need to emphasize how your DD must be feeling.

Has he been like this from birth? Was he very keen to have another child or did he go with it because 4hatsxwhat you wanted? Many potential factors coming into it, but it needs to be discussed.

First off I hope your contraception is sorted.

Did he actually want a child?
Because it doesn't read as if he does.

I can understand how hurt you feel but I think you need to channel your annoyance more.

Your husband is a shit father to your daughter. End of.

Stand up for your daughter and ask him does he actually want to be in her life?

Because he is behaving as if he doesn't care for her.

He has two children.

He clearly has a bond with his son and cares for him.

He also clearly hasn't bothered to bond with his daughter.

I wouldn't be passively accepting this treatment.

Goid luck.

Yanbu. It sounds absolutely shit. You are both at home all day and he does virtually nothing with his child, you don’t even leave the house on your own. Obviously this is partly up to you, to insist on at least an hour of active solo parenting from him a day. But I’d leave out the comparisons with ss while you work on this as a stand-alone issue.

DSS presumably isn’t doing much during the day and could speak to his dad at any time so that’s a bullshit excuse.

You know what makes babies and toddlers more interesting? Getting to properly know that, what they like and don’t like, their routines, their games. He shouldn’t be “helping” he should be bloody well parenting as you are. I’m a step mum and have a one year old with my husband and I’d be strongly considering my future with him if he was trying to pull the cop out crap yours is with our child. It’s not your fault or your daughter’s fault that he’s got a flakey ex who’s a crap parent.

He doesn't want to parent. He just wants to pretend he's doing it.
50% contact and he doesn't have to pay maintenance either.
He's got a woman doing the parenting for him on his 50% time whilst he 'helps' when he feels like it.

Nope. I have a DSD who we have 50/50 of and a 20 month old. If DH treated ours with so little interest and obviously favoured DSD he would be gone. To say he may find it boring is no excuse. I don’t enjoy changing nappies but I have to?

It’s hypocritical to suggest you should move bath time when it would be no effort to bring a FaceTime forward/ back with a 10 year old who is home all day. You could move bath time but babies are better in routines and if you have a set one it might not be that fun to change as I would get massive tantrums. Do the siblings have a relationship at all? My DSD and DS are obsessed with each other. (And equally fight just like normal)

Or do you have a separate one with DSS where you put him to bed when he’s there? If it wasn’t 50-50 I might say he should do every bed time for that bond but really He sees him as much as mum. I like taking DSD to bed sometimes as I see her as my family too?

Was the break up difficult? I am wondering if he feels guilty for leaving.

When his son isn't there is he more attentive with your DD or does he still not bother with her much?

I think it's lovely how much affection he shows his son but he should also be taking the same amount of interest in his daughter.
I think it would be quite difficult as they are completely different ages and he only sees his son 50% of the time so it will always feel different as it would be impossible to treat them both exactly the same.

I am just wondering why your MIL doesn't like your husband?
I'm assuming that it's his mum. Are you in contact with your own parents?

At that age you get out what you put in. If he is finding it boring then that's all on him because if he took the time to interact with her or establish "his thing" with her - 've that a walk/bathtime/lunch together whatever, he would learn to enjoy it more.

I wonder if this is part of the reason he isn't with his son's mum?

Get an Out & About running pushchair for a start.

I think I would have to ask him why he would rather do "jobs in the loft" than spend any time with his daughter. I would be genuinely curious!

And likes others said, maybe not even mention SS, don't make it a competition. You don't need to because he is doing nothing!

At the very least he could take her out for her daily walk. How sad that he doesn't want to.

I agree with the others - be more forceful - there is no way he can argue that you doing 23 hours and 50 minutes care for her and him 10 minutes per day is fair.

Have a chat with him and come back to us for reinforcements

I also agree with PPs saying to not mention SS as this is not about the SS - you don't want him to do less with the SS you just want him to do more with your DD.

I agree that it may cause him to feel like its a competition and he could go on the defensive and think you are jealous. Which may create more tension and not get to the root of the problem.

Maybe today you could say why don't you take DD out for her walk and if he says no then ask why and say he is not spending enough quality time with her.

I don’t know if I’d be subtle about it by asking him to do something. I’d be ive noticed you spend sweet fuck all time with our child and if you don’t want to be a parent then I can’t live with you and our baby and watch this, so you can leave. If you do love our baby why are you practically allergic to parenting her? When did you last change a nappy? Feed her? Voluntarily do a single thing for her?

Ask him whether he wants a connection with his daughter because she will notice this as she gets older

Thanks everyone. For those of you asking about the bigger picture, here's a bit of background;

DH had to do most of the raising of SS from newborn age as the ex had postnatal depression and rejected her responsibilities, spending most of her day at the gym to get away from it all (this is DH's account). DH as a result can tell me absolutely everything about every stage of SS development from babyhood to toddlerhood and beyond, as he did pretty much all the feeding, weaning, routine developing, etc., way beyond what he expected, but felt he had to take full responsibility as no one else would. When the divorce took place, the ex suddenly wanted to take responsibility and be the "main" parent after being absent for the past year or so. Anyway it ended up being 50/50 custody and now almost a decade later it remains that way, with a fairly civil relationship with the ex (that's taken quite a lot of work but we've got there).

SS has a lovely relationship with DD and to be honest I prefer it when he's here as it actually takes weight off my shoulders to be the main entertainer all the time..! So no issues there.

The issues ALL lie with DH. My main instinct is that he's done with all the baby stuff because he did SO much of it before. I can sympathise to some degree as it must have been an awful time but we CHOSE to have DD, if he didn't want to do it again he should have told me so. He was very keen to have another child, it was actually me who said I wanted to wait a good few years after we met!

So I feel a bit deceived really. Today he joined us on a walk so that was some improvement and I'm going to discuss how we can manage sharing bedtimes and managing FT calls in the same day. There must be some flex somewhere.
Maybe I just have to be pushier to ensure a fairer balance but it seems frustrating to have to fight something that should come naturally.
16 months is a challenging stage, DD no longer breastfeeds so he really can help me more now!

@Poppi89 his relationship with MIL is a very stressful one because she is a very frank, honest northern woman (!) and he is from a very quiet and contrasting Dorset family and they just clash, clash, clash over everything. My mum loves to stereotype and he takes great offence to it. I've told him he needs to lighten up as my mum won't change, I've also told her to go easy on him, but neither of them took well to either suggestion! They'll tolerate each other but it's very tough.

My main instinct is that he's done with all the baby stuff because he did SO much of it before
So he's both overtly and subtly point-scoring?
He did it 'all' before' so now it's only fair that he gets to totally check out and leave you to do it 'all'?

it seems frustrating to have to fight something that should come naturally
it does come naturally to him though - afterall he claims he did it ALL with his DS.....

DH had to do most of the raising of SS from newborn age as the ex had postnatal depression and rejected her responsibilities
I smell bullshit.
More like HE couldn't opt out due to her postnatal depression and was FORCED to step up and 'help' out.....and he's exaggerating to make himself look good....plus it was a good sales technique to trick you into having a kid with him - and talk you out of sticking to your own boundary of wanting to wait.

He sold you a lie.

Who tells you all this about DSS mum being useless regarding bedtime, crap foods, Ipad so you both have to ‘save’ him during your time? I have different rules/ ideals than my DSD mum but doesn’t make her rubbish or us. It sounds like he judged her for PND too.

If you choose to have multiple babies then you choose to do ‘baby stuff’ multiple time’s regardless of his past experience.

Hopefully you can speak and figure it out but you sounds way more patient than me.

OP, I think you may have been fed a narrative that suits him.

I think you were and are being manipulated.

He definitely misled you.

He's a shit father to your daughter, and selfish to boot.

Again, i hope your contraception is sorted.

He will have a relationship with DD by virtue of her being around
Biggest lot of stinking bullshit. He won’t have any sort of relationship with her if he doesn’t positively engage with her at least sometimes.
I find it disgusting that he’s falling over himself for one child and pretty much ignoring the other. It’s not even as if he can pull out his violin and say he never sees his son - he has him 50% of the time! And sees a lot more of him than the lucky child he actually lives with.
He’s a knob and a shit dad. I’d be devastated if my DH was like this with DSD and DS.