To not rule out working outside the home?

[TinyPigeon]

It's a covid one, sorry.

I'm a chef. Was furloughed now on maternity leave. My DH has some health anxiety but we are otherwise all well. I mentioned this evening pumping for when I return to work (6 months off at least so not for a while yet). DH tried to make me promise to quit my job and not work outside the home. Apparently I'm putting us all at risk. He says cheffing apparently has the highest death rate of all professions? Does anyone know if this is true? This is insane right? Why would cheffing be so bad surely front of house would be worse? I don't want to have to quit. With DC1 I felt like I regained a bit of myself when I went back to work.

Is he referencing this?

It was 36.4 deaths per 100,000 among male taxi drivers and chauffeurs, 35.9 deaths per 100,000 among male chefs, and 26.4 deaths per 100,000 among male bus and coach drivers.
Because it says males chefs, maybe more searches could reassure him?

news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-male-security-guards-chefs-and-taxi-drivers-among-those-most-likely-to-die-with-covid-19-says-ons-11986382

Sounds like his anxiety is talking. Be sure it doesn't win.

What does your DH do for work?

At some point, if you don't have a job that will allow you to work from home, you'll be faced with a choice of going back into the real world or having no job. I understand why no job isn't an attractive option for you.

I sympathise with your DH, I'm terrified too, but I'm lucky enough to be able to work from home. Not everyone can, but everyone has bills to pay. And many people find a sense of self in work.

6 months is a long time away, and hopefully we'll have better news by then, but in the meantime, all you can do is make sure you have good procedures in place. I imagine as a chef you're pretty used to following all kinds of rules (food hygiene, kitchen safety, etc so agreeing and following some new rules shouldn't be unnatural. For example, keeping a 'quarantine' area by the door so when you get inside, you can strip off your clothes into a bag, sanitise your hands and jump straight into a shower. Maybe your DH can put that bag in the washing machine for you and sanitise his hands, whilst you're busy showering.

Could you both read through the shielding with other people guidelines and come up with some measures that make him feel safer?

YANBU - most of the chefs I worked with came from the BAME community though. Head chefs were from Europe but the rest of the kitchen staff from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and other Middle East countries

www-bbc-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-52637008?amp_js_v=a3&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQFKAGwASA%3D#aoh=15928928717960&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s

This is a BBC tool estimating the exposure of your job role, chef isn't there but cook is, it's not high on the list. My job is top ten and I've been working outside of the home throughout, DHs job is also top ten and he has also been working, we have an eighteen months old. Your husband is being ridiculous.

The two cooks where I work and the kitchen porter, where the only ones who didn't test positive. Kept the kitchen doors closed and handed everything out over the counter, no other staff allowed into the kitchen since March.

Thanks everyone. It's a closed kitchen yes, plus we wear whites which get washed at work. so should be reasonably easy to keep hygeine levels high. I don't know how to argue with his anxiety tho. My elder dc is coming up on 2 and I want to be able to take him out to baby groups. Apparently I'm being very selfish but I think my son needs social activities!

That's a great suggestion thank you @theendoftheworldasweknowit
I don't know if I can get him to engage with the practicalities enough though. He just gets really angry when we discuss it and says I'm trying to kill us all. Ffs.

@TinyPigeon Has his attitude changed at all throughout the lockdown or has he always been this scared? You're not planning to go back to work for a good while, and I'm wondering if he'll relax a bit if things improve, or if he'll just get more entrenched in his views.

As with any serious conversation, you need to pick your moment carefully - you know him best, so you should have a better idea of when he's more likely to be receptive to a chat and when he'll just be angry regardless. It may be that this isn't the right time to talk to him at all and it's worth waiting a period of time to hold a discussion - if so, you can use the waiting time to explore safety ideas which you can later bounce off him.

There's no easy answer to this. You're not unreasonable to want your financial and social independence and he's not unreasonable to be worried about your health, his health and your child's health. I really do hope you can find a compromise that works for you all - it's just so difficult having an important discussion when one person is that afraid.