To think my husband is taking the piss?!?

[Summer1980US]

I’m interested to hear how other mums and partners manage childcare. Currently I do the bulk of childcare while my DH is off playing golf most weekends.

We both work full time. My husband has a busy job and leaves the house at 530am and is back about 630pm. This leaves me to get the DDs(1 and 3) ready for crèche and do drop off and collection every day. DDs go to bed at 7/730 so DH has limited interaction with kids during the week.

At the weekend he leaves for golf on Saturday at 7am and comes back at 2pm. After this he usually requires a nap. He spends some time with DDs between 4-7.

Sundays are usually better and he is only away for a couple of hours in the morning. He does spent a couple of hours quality time with the kids on a Sunday.

I’m so exhausted and overwhelmed from being the main caregiver. I know men are generally less involved with DD, but at this stage I feel like he is really taking the piss!!

He has one weekend for golf, next weekend is yours. He's a dad and needs to step up. Deal breaking behaviour.

It's what happens if you marry a tosser from the sixties. You avoid it by picking modern minded men who don't pretend their job is special, don't treat their wife as the unpaid help and don't ignore their children.

This is utterly unsustainable. My DH used to work long hours so I had paid help 5-7pm every day so I didn’t get so exhausted. You’re not “lucky” to have a cleaner, that’s the bare minimum you need if you’re both working full time. The weekends DH and I split the burden 50-50 having equal amounts of time alone to do our stuff and family time together.

My dh goes out cycling almost every Sunday from 8am - 1/2ish.
BUT he gets up with dcs and takes them out in a Saturday morning every week. Has done since ds was tiny (needed a bf before he went). Initially he just took baby ds to Starbucks, then he started doing the shopping with him, now he takes them both for shopping and something fun.

why I’m sharing, is to say that it can be worked so that each parent has a morning “off” and there’s still plenty family time together and chores get done. If both parents are equal and fair.

I had hobbies before I had kids. Somehow I realised all by myself that I needed to cut back on them when I had kids in order to not take the piss.

My husband also realised all by himself that he had to cut back on his gaming hobby when we had kids in order to not take the piss.

Maybe we both managed to come to these realisations because we're considerate adults who love and respect each other?

He barely knows he has children, does he?You need to decide between you which is his day off and which is yours.

I know I’m not the first one to say this but he plays golf every weekend, has time to himself on Sunday as well and you get no me time. That is incredibly unfair. Presumably you get no lie ins unless he gets up with the kids on Sunday mornings?

You need to lay down the law now. It might now be 50/50 but if he insists on golf every Saturday then you get time to yourself on Sunday including a lie in. Although golf once a month seems fairer to me. Leave him to it every Sunday from now on and see how he likes that. X

FFS. Is that all you can come up with @EatDiamondsForBreakfast?

That the answer to having a selfish lazy swine who takes your labour for granted is to cede even more control to him by giving up your F-T career & financial autonomy?
So that she can stay at home half the week, earning less money, but sucking up all the domestic load her lord & master is too important to concern himself with?

DH and I are both retired now and are probably older than most of you on here.
But when we were working (both full time but shifts for me) we absolutely split the childcare 50/50, after DC finished breastfeeding. Even before then, I would feed, DH would then take DC and change/bath/put them down.
This was the 80s/90s and was completely normal among our friends, even for those of us working in the City. (Me for one)
He was fully involved and he wanted to be, childcare was as important for him as it was for me.
I'm sorry, OP, your DH has basically checked out of family life - it sounds as if he actually does less with them than the average divorced Dad.
Don't let him get away with it any longer.

The whole point of talking about it so so that if either person rolls that way they don't have kids.

We can see from this thread it's a big problem. Direct cause of three divorces on the handful of pages we've.read.

Agree

The whole point of talking about it so so that if either person rolls that way they don't have kids.

That might be the reasonable option. But once you have children, you cannot roll this way as a parent any more.

And if they want to maintain that lifestyle they should have kids.

And twenty minutes conversation making sure they're both on the same page might be patronizing' but will clearly save a vast number of divorces and difficulties.

In fact. What do people discuss when they mutually decide to have children if they're not mentioning the difficulties?

If it's patonising to discuss the amount of inconvenience and graft isnt it also patronising to discuss the good sides? What are people discussing here.

I'd like to think most couples would talk about the pros and cons of much smaller decisions. Why not this one?

Shouldn't

The suggestion was it was discussed before because afterwards is too late.

DH never specifically informed me that my life will need to change once we have DC. Because I have a brain and can understand that little people need some time and attention. Not like it's a big surprise and well kept secret?

Of course they talk about it.
Men like this make all the right noises about partnership & committment in that talk, then go on to blindside their partner by reneging on the agreement.

I know men are generally less involved with DD,

why do you think this? Couldn’t be further from the truth for me and a lot of dads i know who have daughters. My partner absolutely dotes on our 9 month old girl. Loves getting home from work and getting lots of giggles and smiles. He doesn’t do bed time because my little girl only seems to settle for the night when I do it but he would if I asked and he does bath times / feeding her / cleaning up the house when I’m doing bed time!

I think your not expecting enough from him by a long shot and letting him get away with it. You had children ‘together’ and it’s a joint responsibility. Why should you be lumbered with all the hard work?

I had one like this. Except after the nap the football started on tv at 3pm so that was that day done. And on Sunday the football started after golf at 12. Then 3pm again.
Divorced six years now. Lovely peaceful life which isn't dictated to by a television or 6 pieces of metal in a bag with a few balls thrown in.

I'm counting four divorces over this issue in this thread (and I've only read three pages) so clearly people are regularly getting the wrong end of the stick.

Hmmm. So men really want kids, they really want to settle down. And they lie about that to get a family. Then they realize it's all hard work and decide they don't fancy it after all.

Meanwhile mumsnet is full of women who are so enthusiastic about children they spend time on a forum talking about them and the motoring/sailing/football/cycling forums are all full of men.

It's almost as though the main interest in nurturing lies with women and men are less frequently interested in kids. Which is fine, but if there are frequent misunderstandings that lead to children being born where one partner isn't that enthusiastic I doubt it's typically men who caused the misunderstanding. (In general, obvs.)

I see this happen all the time with friends. I know so many women who's husbands take up "marathon training/long distance cycling/golf" once the kids are born and disappear for hours on a weekend. I would feel very frustrated and exhausted as OP if my husband didn't pull his weight. You should be a team, supporting each other - totally OK for him to need to some time to decompress on a weekend but you also need it by the sounds of it, perhaps you can agree to every other weekend he plays golf, then the weekends he's not, you do what you want. And if that's staying at home with a cup of tea then so be it, your husband can take the kids out for a few hours. He needs to cut the nap because that's taking the piss. Perhaps you propose the afternoons are for family time together. And Sundays you plan a couple of hours together without the kids. You need to take care of yourself, you can't pour from an empty cup.
I find it a bit odd that he doesn't want to engage much in family time having spent most of the week working, but I suppose everyone is different and everyone has different stresses, work loads, priorities. You need some balance.
My husband works from home but takes our 2 year old to the park every morning for an hour or 2 before starting work. This gives me time to exercise, clear up, have breakfast etc - some time to myself and makes all the difference. The main thing is he wants to spend as much time with him as possible when he's not working.

You need to take up a hobby on Sunday whereby you leave at 7am and return at 2pm then have a nap.

Yes he is taking the piss!

I was in a situation like this. He would magically get home just after I'd bathed and put the kids to bed alone every night. He got up every morning and only sorted himself out for work. I did everything, childcare runs, everything. He wouldn't even take time off when the kids had training days and I was at work (teacher). I had to drive them 4 hours to a relative for a couple of days because I literally COULDN'T take time off in term time.

I divorced so that I could get every other weekend to myself.

Before this he had taken the kids to the park a sum total of three times without me - but he didn't dare go alone, he went with a friend and their kids.

This was his only contribution.

The oldest was 5.

I work pt but am currently on mat leave. DP leaves for work at 7, gets home for 6 so our oldest has usually had his dinner by then. I go out for a walk for an hour or so(unless it’s pissing of rain) DP helps with ds’s baths n pyjamas n supper ds1 bed time then goes to gym for an hour or so then helps with ds2 last night feed when he gets bk. Saturdays he will either go to the gym for 2-3hrs or fishing, then I get a few hours to myself to go for a walk or have a bath n sit through bedroom to watch tv or have a nap, Sunday we all spend the whole day together either in the house, garden or the park depending on the weather. You too need some alone time without the kids. As much as we love our kids we also need time for our self’s to make us better functioning adults, to destress so we can actually enjoy the time we spend with them n not feel physically or mentally drained