Work full time and do all of the childcare during the weekends.

[NeoXY]

My DP is SAHP for the first year of our DD’s life and obviously looks after her Monday to Friday, although I always put her to bed.

However, apart from the first nap in the morning I’m doing all of the looking after during all of the weekends (I also do almost all of the cooking).

What do other families do where one parent works full time and one is SAHP? How do you share the looking after and the chores?

So what is he doing?

but when I was a working parent - I very much wanted to take on a lot of the parenting over the weekend.

And my partner was sahp

What happens in the evenings when you get home from work? What does your partner do at weekends?

What is he doing at the weekend? When I worked full-time and DH was part-time, he had DS two days each week without me. But at weekends we parented together unless one of us was away seeing friends or something.

I assume you’re a man and your partner is the mother and on maternity. Maternity or parental leave for the first year is for that person to look after baby during hours they would normally be working ie office hours. Outside of office hours childcare and household duties should be shared equally.

i am currently on maternity with my 5 month old. It is not a holiday. I thought I would be able to do x y z ie deep clean the house, had images of me finally having time to scrub the grout and clean the oven. Spoiler alert, you are lucky if you manage to put baby down and maybe run the hoover round bleach the loo and get a hot cuppa.

Who's doing evenings? Who does night wakings? What does your partner do at the weekend?

I don't think you should be doing all the weekend work whatever the answer to those questions tbh, but it might help us help you.

Aren't you doing things together at the weekends then?

It really irritates me when OPs deliberately obscure the sex of those concerned by using "partner" and "stay at home parent".

Stop being so elusive and be straight.

I think you should do alternate early wakings at weekend and the working partner take over most of the feeding responsibilities to give the sahp a break and a chance to go to gym or whatever but equally the working partner should get a few hours off to do whatever too. And if either partner has say a haircut planned then to tell the other one in advance not just assume childcare is a given.
and go out/ do stuff together on Sunday as a family ideally. Doesn’t have to be all day just 11am to 3pm or similar

Someone has to look after the children. For example today i gardened all morning and DP looked after the kids DP then made lunch and i looked after the kids. DC are small and need to be actively cared for.

Obviously you both need to share looking after the kids at evenings and weekend.

it’s quite odd to call this ‘childcare’ though.

It’s not a job!

presumably you took the decision together to have kids. Why do that if you don’t want to spend time with them and as a family?

Why does it matter though?

It absolutely shouldn't change your 'verdict'

I view SAHP as a 'job' so Monday to Friday the SAHP is simply doing their job by taking care of all child care related activities

At the weekends it should be shared as a family

As equally as possible

DH and I have one lay in each day of the weekend, we have alone time with the kids each to give the other a break too and then family time

Equal leisure time. So does the SAHP get downtime in the week? You should get equal respite. Or be doing stuff together on weekends.

Equal leisure time only exists on Mumsnet

We always share all parenting equally when we are at home. Sometimes that means a juggle if we have things we need to get on with and sometimes that means we parent fully together. We have a lot of family time at weekends, to us that was kind of the point of having a family! We alternate mornings so one gets the coffee and sorts the kids out one day and the other the next day.

I do everything child related, my partner works 60+ hour weeks so only seems fair to me. That’s just me though.

Does the OP get any leisure time in the week?

Just wanted to add that you have to find a compromise that works for both parents, it’s no good asking MN and taking it as gospel truth. I can tell when my partner has had a very bad working week and I make sure I do extra bits accordingly. If the working parent can tell the kids have been particularly draining that week, I equally expect the working parent to suggest a few hours out solo for the SAHP. It’s not so much about doing 50/50, but finding something that works for both. I know someone who wakes her husband up for night feeds before he has to drive a lorry for 13 hours, she also leaves all of the tidying up until when he’s home to do it and very often doesn’t have dinner prepared either. I think that takes the absolute piss.

Evenings and weekends should be shared. Ideally, you'd have a fair split between 'childcare' and chores so you're both spending time with your DC. SAHP might be able to get some of the chores done during the day but that depends on your child, how demanding they are, whether they nap and how tired SAHP is from night wakings. Given that most people can have a 30 minute lunch break or take a couple of short coffee breaks during their working day, expecting the SAHP to crack out the hoover as soon as baby goes down for a nap is unrealistic.

I think it's reasonable in some cases for SAHP to do most night wakings during the week, but the other parent should take over at the weekend so SAHP gets at least a couple of nights uninterrupted sleep a week. Sleep deprivation is torture and the burden shouldn't rest entirely on one parent. Lie-ins should be shared and reasonable (e.g. 9.30/10am not 2pm). Both parents should have some time to do their own thing at weekends, but there should also be family time as well.

Weekends we spent time out and about with the kids, mostly together. So shared childcare. In the evenings sometimes one or the other went out.. our kids were out like a light at 7 so that was easy.

We had our own thing too during the day on weekends but absolutely no hobbies that took hours (golf cycling). I always cooked. And cleaned mostly, but he did floors, and we had a weekly cleaner. I was the sahp. Often we divvied up the kids, I had 3 under 3.

For the poster who is irritated that the sex is obscured, as the other poster pointed out, it should absolutely not change the verdict (but I believe in some cases it would hence keeping it neutral).

I’m a women and DH is the SAHP. I also do the nights (all of them as admittedly I can do them with less interruption to myself and to the baby, given DH would have to get up to boil the kettle) and DH takes over around 6:00am.

I do have an easy going job at the moment, though, but shortly that will change. For those who raised this, we do some things together as a family during the weekends but admittedly at the moment I don’t really get any me time at all (apart from as some posters mentioned you get lunch breaks / coffee breaks at work but that is not really me time) which DH does (a bit).

Once my job demands change we will definitely need to share out the responsibilities more, but I was also interested to hear what does a range of people do. I wanted to spend time with DD during the weekends as much as possible given I’m at work but as everything, it kind of became a given.

That doesn't seem like a fair split.

But then, I'd never have agreed to either of us being a sahp.

You both need some time off at weekends.

All the men with SAH wives that post on here seem to go off cycling at weekends because 'they've worked all week and deserve a rest'! And they're not even doing the overnights like you are.

How old is DC? A 2 in month old baby is obviously more demanding than an 11 month old. It does seem you are doing a lot though with no time to yourself factored in which is very important