Husband

[Tdeyres]

My husband and I have 4 children who are 6,5,4 and 18 months old. We both work full time and his days off land on Tues and Wed, my parents have my youngest Tues through their choice so he has a day to himself and he just has the youngest on Wed. We share nights at the gym through the week which I think is fair. My issue is that I'm doing the weekends on my own with 4 children, classes, parties etc and when he gets home he just parks himself on the sofa saying he's had a long day and lets me sort bath, bed etc which I do all week. As he has early shifts on his working days it's left to me to get all 4 kids ready and out for the day every morning,on days off in the week he doesn't get up to help me. I feel like I'm being treated like a housewife rather than an equal working parent (I also do all the household washing and cleaning). If I'm being unreasonable advice would be appreciated

I should probably also add that I'm heading out withy team from work for a couple of hours post work Friday. Every time I mention a work colleague who are mostly male and old enough to be my father he gets angry and accuses me or leading them on etc. He's historically done this with every make colleague I've worked with. I now feel like I cannot speak to him about work and want to tell my colleagues I can't go out on Friday and give the real reason, rather than protecting him like I have for so many years

Have you spoken to your husband about the lack of help he gives you? What does he say, anything other than 'he's had a long week'? It's his house and these are his children, so he should share the responsibility for both.

Please do not cancel your work do.

Well you need to sort it out don't you. Set up a time for a proper discussion and explain how you feel and why it's important that you share childcare, house work, cooking and cleaning equally.

I'm quite shocked at the thought of having 4 children and not having sorted this stuff out long ago.

This won’t change unless you force change, your DH has a cushy number so there is no motivation for him to do anything different. Sit down and have a conversation, tell him, not ask him, that you need to have a more equal division of labour. Four kids didn’t happen by accident so he needs to step up. The going out thing is a different issue but sounds controlling which always worries me in relationships.

When I became pregnant with our third child I explained to him that we couldn't go ahead with the baby due to lack of support I had, he promised he would step up which he massively did and things were a lot better. But it had been on the decline again recently and I cannot seem to get it through to him

How convenient that he has made you so uncomfortable about talking about your male colleagues that you might miss a team event on Friday and have to stay home and look after the children.

It's almost like he's trying to avoid having to look after the DC...

This won’t get any better if it was it would have by now before number 3 or four came along. Pity you can’t disappear let him do a few days non stop.

Who has 4 y/o and other kids after school? Who cooks? Who does shopping? You mention laundry and cleaning, but what about all the other stuff?

If things didn’t improve after number 3 why have number 4?

Bit late now!

It’s wrong to talk about help he gives, or not as the case may be. Talking of him helping suggests that it’s women’s work and anything he does is helping you. Fuck that, the housework and childcare are equal responsibilities. @Tdeyres you need to stop, right now, doing far more than your share. Just don’t do it FFS. Your DH is never going to shoulder his share whilst you are running around doing it for him.