To not want to be primary caregiver?

[ttcissoboring]

Not got kids yet but planning to. I don't know any woman that's not the primary caregiver IRL and it's starting to panic me. I don't want to be primary caregiver. Is this going to be enivitable?

Is it impossible to go back to work as soon as I am feeling physically able to and split the parenting at that point? A year off work seems the default but there is no way I want and could do that. Men go back after a week and there is no judgement as to 'how could he leave the child so young' woman does it and the judgement is like she has committed child abuse, I find it very sad and frustrating. And the judgement seems to come from other women as much as it does men.

Does anyone who has children consider themselves not the primary caregiver and completely equal with how they parent with their partner?

The idea of parenting doesn't appeal to me unless it's 50/50 ( of course I understand anything could happen tragically to DH where I'd have to be full caregiver and I'd have no choice)

Is primary caregiver inevitable because I'm a woman? And am I being somewhat naive to this experience?!

Please tell me your experiences of switching this narrative if you have kids, are a woman and not the default parent but share the duties equally from very early on.

Don’t know if anyone has said this yet, but I think the thing you have to be prepared for is the difference between the physical, practical care-giving (which is more obvious and perhaps easier to share 50:50 etc) and the EMOTIONAL RESPONSIBILITY and mental load that comes with being a parent.
DH and I were both working full time, kids in nursery, and theoretically sharing parenting 50:50 but in reality he just didn’t/couldn’t/ wouldn’t take on the emotional load of thinking and worrying about everything for the kids. Until you have a child I don’t think you have any idea about what the weight of that responsibility feels like, how it can wake you in the middle of the night, creep into your thoughts at work, begin to take over your supposed down time. It’s ridiculous and important things, time-consuming and simple things, but it all adds up to a sizeable workload which I would say 95% of the time a female partner ends up taking on.

what is it about children that you want op?

There is genuinely no point asking this on MN in general though. The absurd inconsistencies in rhetoric on here tells you this site bares no resemblance to reality. If you posted in a years time saying you have the child and your partner won’t do half, they would tell you he is reckless unfair and a misogynist for assuming women should be the primary carer. Now you are selfish and cold hearted because you want 50/50. If you were to split with your husband and he requested 50/50 shared custody at court he would be controlling and he obviously wouldn’t actually care for your child in this time so you should fight for sole custody.

Trying to understand what a women is supposed to do on here is genuinely impossible. You will be judged for anything and everything as a mother so please ignore the judgements on here and do what you want to do. You are the one who will have to live with the decisions you make not the judgemental posters on MN.

I would recommend split maternity leave if your husband can take or. I agree with you that relying on your husband to be a SAHD is unwise and would arrange a nursery place fir when you want to resume work. When you are breastfeeding if you end up doing it, he needs to do more household work to make up for this with kids in sleep die to nightdress for example.

See - this is the judgement I am referring to! I have already decided I would like children

I'd like to be a multi millionaire!

You want children but do you want to be a mum? What does your husband/partner think?

If you want children then you need to take it on the chin that it'll impact you're life.

For what its worth my DH was primary carer for ours as I went back to work and it wasn't as child friendly as his role (I spent a lot of time away from home, he worked local). Mostly they were bottle fed as I had a problem. A lot of the time he was like a single parent, I missed a lot of their childhood. Sometimes I envy the bond they have, very much his girls even now they're married.

As an aside having your husband as primary carer can be a nuisance as although he was the one taking them to nursery/school etc they'd call me if there was an issue and I'd then have to call him to ask him to sort it. Doctors wee also a bit strange about it at times, daddy taking two little girls for check-ups etc. Hopefully it's changed but he found it annoying that people didn't accept he was the one to speak to not me. He also felt a bit patronised by mums who thought it was nice he was looking after them and would offer advice, He was their dad and more than capable.

The one thing I would do differently, looking back, is that I wouldn’t have EBF. Poor DH had to deal with a baby who just would not take a bottle when I went back to work, and it made it all tougher than it needed to be. If we’d done mixed feeding from early on it would have been so much easier.

My DH and I went '50/50' this year.

In find in reality he takes on 50% of the childcare but maybe 20% of the housework and almost none of the mental load/life administration, which is substantial as we have a child with additional needs.

I'd be careful before agreeing to go 50/50. I thought it would solve my problems but it didn't.

I returned to work when my baby was 10 weeks old (reluctantly). We had good child care and then shared the rest 50/50. My husband got up as many times as I did during the night and changed as many nappies as I did. Unfortunately women become the primary carer by default and as soon as my children went to primary school it was always me that was called by the school if there was a problem. As long as your partner is on the same page as you it is very easy to split the caring equally. It is not 'womens work'.

When mine were little I knew a few SAHDs. No one seemed to judge the mothers any more than usual. The dads appeared to be quite competent and the kids seemed happy and loved. What more do you need?
I personally knew I wanted to be a SAHM even though dh and I both had very similar jobs before kids so that was the deal we agreed. If I’d wanted to go back to work I’m pretty sure dh wouldn’t have become a SAHD. I think you and dh can decide on your own path. Ignore anyone who is judgmental. Like pp have said- whatever you do, someone will criticise you. I was a SAHM for 6 years. Plenty of people judged me for ‘wasting my education’ ‘being a poor role model for my daughter’ ‘being financially dependent on a man’ it’s not what other people think that matters.

I think any parent has to be prepared to care for their kids FT if it came to it in case one of them dies. Yes you could find a new partner in time but that can take a while.

I know 3 women who were widowed young, there are no guarantees.

But otherwise, posters are right you have zero idea how you will feel until after the birth.

One sister was due to go back to her high paying finance job within months after her first child. In the event, she resigned and was a SAHM for 15 years before she returned to work.

Many workplaces are very unforgiving to parents generally- it is a sad fact.
Within our patriarchial culture employees are expected to work long hours, be flexible for unplanned overtime, trips away and don't support unplanned leave for family care or illness.
Some employers are enlightened, but many are not.
So this generally means having two parents working full time - even with good childcare is difficult.
One scanario is having both parents working part time or 30 hours a week, but part time work is generally low paid, so from a financial point of view it s better having at least one parent working full time.
It is such a dilemma.
Children get sick, some more than others.

I had intended taking 6 weeks off when my first child was born. I ended up jacking in my career to be a SAHM.

A child turns your world upside down.

And 5050 is waves.

Baby slept 7pm-12pm so i went to sleep then and as I breastfed i did the nights until about 4am because baby wanted milk to feed to sleep. He took her from then so i slept until 7. Now shes older he does most night or mornings because he finds it easier to get up. I always clean the bathroom. 5050 isnt always measurable, its a shared effort of pulling in the same direction. We talk if something isnt working.

He would have done shared parental leave but we decided he would take time off to support the early months and do part time when i went back. There are plenty of mem who want and are happy to parent out there. Its why so many women on here tell others that they are putting up with unnecessary shit!

Of course it’s possible to share parenting 50/50. Why commit to any pre-conceived idea of parenting before you have a child though? My DH does the majority of parenting now and I did the majority of parenting when the children were babies. You can have a 50/50 split over a number of years, you don’t have to have a 50/50 split the moment your baby is born.

Regarding going back to work 1 week after birth, I thought you had to have 2 weeks but haven't fact checked that.

I'm fairly sure it's 2 weeks for most jobs but 4 weeks for factory work.

The 4 weeks is one of the earliest bits of employment law going back over 100 years.

Op think carefully about what you want. Including the idea that your instincts may make you change your mind later. Also think carefully about what would happen should you split, would you only want to see your Kids every other weekend.

@Zarene
"Breastfeeding is the one thing that obviously your DH can't do. Five if you don't want to do it, but there are so many benefits for your baby that I would think carefully before deciding that I didn't want to try to give my baby those advantages."

What benefits?! Sorry but this is bullshit.

Haven’t read all the answers so forgive me if I’m saying something that’s already been said. I have two DC, one 18 one 13. I went back to work after four months with both. My DH has absolutely stepped up to the mark and taken on a lot of what might traditionally be seen as the maternal role. The crucial thing though is that he really really wanted to and I could see that in him from before I was pregnant the first time. It has come at some cost to his career, but mostly he has been very generous about that. My headline is that it’s entirely possible as the mother not to be the primary caregiver BUT unless you have a ton of money and/or are happy to outsource an enormous amount of childcare one of you is going to end up taking the hit for a few years in career/life terms. It sounds to me like you can sense that your DH may not be willing to do this and it’s best to be realistic I think. By the way, anyone saying that because you feel like this and are thinking about it ahead you shouldn’t have kids is (to put it politely) being a bit daft!!

10000% what @JaniceBattersby said.

If you are not prepared for your life to dramatically change after having a baby then it's not for you OP.

Does your husband currently do a 50/50 split of all housework? Does he know what needs doing and just do it or do you have to ask him to do stuff? Does he view it as him helping you if he, say, hoovers the house or does he simply do it because it's his home too? Cooking? Shopping? Bill paying?

I think that you can tell how a parenting split is likely to work by looking at the above.

Have you told him very clearly that you want an equal split and what that means?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with expecting the father to be an equal, hands on parent and making having children conditional on that.

If a man posted on here saying he wanted to have children and was willing to do exactly half of the work, but no more, everyone would be praising him to the heavens.

I took a year off for each baby. My partner was fairly useless on mat leave tbh, I was the primary carer, and again when I had my second. However I list my shit with him when I went back to work after the first baby and things are now completely different. Apart from the time I spent on mat leave (ebf), we now parent 50/50, genuinely, in terms of working hours, life admin, playing with kids etc etc. But he was always 50/50 with housework etc before kids came along and generally just a fab bloke, I think the babies just sent him into a 12 month panic when they were born. I think had I been bottle feeding that would not have happened tho.
It can be done. Discussing it before getting pregnant is extremely sensible.

Doesn't matter to me, but I would have been way too shattered to go back to work when I had my daughter, she slept a max hour at a time throughout the night and didn't sleep for more than 3 hours until she was 15 months old :( it was knackering and I walked around like a zombie for the first year.

Also I've found that men may accept doing 50/50 but noone knows what will happen once a baby arrives.

I always got told ill get all the help I'll need but I did it alone at the end of the day. It was all on me.

Only you know your DH. Do you think he will pull his weight or not? What is your gut feeling?

If you are not prepared for your life to dramatically change after having a baby then it's not for you OP.

Unless you're a man.

@JaniceBattersby

We have four kids. My husband works three days a week and I work two and at the moment that’s how we juggle it all..

However. I am 100% default parent. No question. I didn’t choose that, I don’t think most people do.

What happens is this. You carry the baby so you’re obviously default parent at the point of conception. Then you breastfeed, so again biologically that makes you default for the time your feeding the baby. But you have a community of women around you on here and IRL, your mum, the friends you meet at baby groups, other friends with kids, and you talk to them about weaning and nurseries etc and so then you start to make those decisions too. Don’t get me wrong, your husband will hold the spoon for the weaning and do the drop-offs but will he be the one to have done the research etc? No, because you’re the one on mat leave so you have time to do it and you’re already much more intertwined in the baby’s life and biologically connected to it. And when the baby cries, in my experience the mums physically can’t leave it for more than a second or two so they’re the ones who pick the baby up and soothe it while the men finish their massive morning poo or whatever.

And before you know it, you’re the one picking primary schools because, well, you have the network of other parents who have been through this before and can advise you etc.

So whatever active role your partner plays, however enthusiastically, it’s always really you who’s going to be driving it. And that gets bloody exhausting which is why so many women I know often drop their hours after baby number two, and around we go.

I guess the question you need to be asking yourself about whether your partner is as fully on board with 50/50 is whether he’s on another forum right now, assertively asking about how on earth he can make sure that he’s properly an equal parent and how he can ensure he plays a 50/50 role in everything.

Because if he’s not, then you’re already default parent without intending to be so.

People do manage it, of course, but out of about 100 women whose circumstances I can be confident of, whether they work full time or not, there’s only one who I would consider had her husband as default parent, and he’s retired.

This. It's the mental load that falls to the woman, no matter how equal you to try be. That's my experience, anyway, and I think it's common.