To say no to this and leave it to DH to sort?

[Peeeko]

Brief background. Me and DH don't share finances as I've never wanted to, I've always wanted access to my own money and we both earn well so never felt it necessary.

We have a joint account that pays for bills and we have a joint account that we save in but the rest goes in personal accounts and we don't question the other on what is spent on what.

We were trying for a child for a long time, I ended up with quite severe depression due to it, we also lost a baby along on the way and it was a really dark time but we eventually managed to have our own child who is now 1. My husband also has a son from a previous relationship who currently lives with us 50:50.

I always wanted to keep my career going but also wanted to spend some time at home. So I ended up dropping a day at work so that I could spend it with our son and just do things with him, spend time with him, get out and about before he starts being tied to school holidays. I do not rely on DH financially due to this and I am still able to provide my half of the bills so felt it was my decision and he was happy for me to do it too. After everything we went through it just seemed like the right thing for me to do.

My husband's ex has recently started a new job and has to work longer hours. Due to this she has asked if we can increase the time my DSC is at ours by one day/night so with us 4 and her 3. We live close by so logistically this wouldn't be a problem.

However, the day falls on my day off and I am now being asked to facilitate it by being available to take and pick up DSS from school, be around generally if he's off like holidays or sick etc..

I've said no and DH thinks I'm being unreasonable.

I took the drop in hours to spend time with our son, not to look after my step son so my husband's ex could further her career. I love my day with my son and don't want our time being tied to school hours, having to back from wherever if we choose to go out or having to look after DSS too during the school holidays. I know it's just one day but it's important to me.

DH tends to work from home on the days we usually have DSS during the week so nips out to do the school pick ups and drop offs himself but he is required to be in the office the other days so can't do it on this day. I've suggested before and after school club but DSS was upset at the idea as he doesn't like going and DH thinks I'd be mean to make him go when I'm potentially at home or at least off work anyway.

So who's being unreasonable? In my mind this is a problem for DH and his ex to sort and I'm pretty adamant right now that I'm not getting involved.

Exactly!
I worked my ass off for the "luxury" of an established career and decent salary.

It’s an opinion that only the bio parents have to sort out childcare. And it’s biased on the basis of implying step parents have no role to support their partners or stepchildren. It’s “literally what happens” in your world…because in your opinion that’s how it should be.

Yes I was a working mother with four children for decades. You know back before there was any tax free childcare, back before the were any free hours of childcare paid for by the government and childcare costs were still ridiculously expensive. Back when flexible working wasn’t allowed. Back before job shares were not a thing so you couldn’t go back PT, it had to be FT and with no easing into it transition. Back when maternity leave was shit. Back when you had no protection from being sacked for being pregnant. Back when you had no right to pump breastmilk at work (it was at the whim of your boss).

So, yes I have experience. And perhaps because it was so much harder for working mothers back then we had more of a sisterhood approach in that you support each other because that’s how you get through this. I even was part of a childminding cooperative with other parents where we would take turns minding each other’s kids so we could help each other out as needed. One mother was a nurse and her DH was off deployed in a war, so yeah, bring your DD to mine for sleepovers when you have night shifts..I’ll tuck her in, feed her breakfast and get her to school the next morning. No problem what’s one extra child when you already have 4 to get to school anyway. Then in return, she’d pick our kids up from school and have them for the afternoon if I were away on a business trip so my DH could pick them up after work on his way home.

The idea that every two parents must stand alone and do this alone with no help and no support is an opinion and it’s biased by the privilege of never having needed help yourself.

It's not an opinion, it's a fact. It's not a fact that all families even have step parents let alone ones that are responsible for sorting childcare.

Right, so as a parent who understands when you work you need to sort childcare, and as someone who has actually done that, why do you think it should be the responsibility of someone else who is not your child's parent?

Presumably you never foisted your children on some unassuming woman without asking first?

I'm not privileged at all. I've had to PAY for childcare, because my child doesn't have a step mum who I can take advantage of. That's not privilege, at all. And had we not been able to afford it, one of us would have stopped working. Because again, nobody else we can force our child upon.

It's not about not needing help, it's about not having it. Can you comprehend that?

And also what you've described is helping each other. That is not what this is. the ex is not having ops child in return.

It’s an opinion that only the bio parents have to sort out childcare.

That isn't an opinion. That is a fact. It is literally the responsibility of parents to sort out. They can ask whoever they want, and they can pay whoever they want, but they can't insist on someone doing it. Becoming a step-parent doesn't mean you gain another child. Having a step-parent doesn't mean you have a 3rd parent. It just means someone has a wife or husband who isn't the parent. Zero responsibility is transferred on marriage.

You wrote it as an opinion, not a fact.

It’s a privilege to be able to afford childcare. And if you couldn’t have afforded it, saying that one of you would have to stop work well then you were privileged enough to only need one income to survive. For you it was about not needing help.

For the rest of us less privileged beings not affording childcare also means we cant stop work and pay for pour pesky food and heat addictions too….surviving on one income isn’t feasible. So you start to ask for help within your family and wider community. And over time you return the help when you can. You do what you can when you can for others and they do the same for you.

Nope, that’s all opinion. Who is responsible for what, whether a step parent should or should not do x, all opinions. Not facts.

No I don't think you quite get it.

We did not have any help. There was nobody else to have our child. I don't know what you'd have us do?

Either pay, or not work. Those were the opinions. There. Was. Nobody. To. Babysit.

I can't help the wider community with childcare because we work full time. I literally do not have the time to care for other people's children. I don't care for my own because I am at work. Same for many others.

My family all work. My friends work. My child's friends parents work. Because guess what, we all have to!

We wouldn't have survived on one income but that would have been the only choice!

Either you're being deliberately obtuse or you actually live on a different planet.

Id have bloody loved some help. I did not spend my entire wage on childcare because I fucking wanted to. You've really not a fucking clue have you?

You seem to be all for women helping women but only the ones you backwardly see as "priveledged" helping the ones you deem to be "in need" with absolutely no rhyme or reason.

Who's helping op? Oh yes, that'll be no fucker I imagine. She works to pay for her child as do most of us.

It always starts with one party helping the other party first. It’s never if you do x, then I’ll do y. These sorts of things are about family and community, not transactional and not don’t ask unless you can offer in return.

The ex isn't going to offer to look after ops child and if op is in her right mind I imagine she wouldn't accept. This was never going to be a reciprocal arrangement.

Her partner helps her….as both children are his too.
You can work to pay for your child and still need help.

There’s rhyme and reason, the ex has asked the DH for help, ergo she is in need.

Nice crystal ball you have there. Is it always so negative about the future?

Right so op helps the ex, ops husband looks after his own kids (that is categorically NOT helping her out, it's parenting) and the actual mother does fuck all in terms of helping anyone and that's totally fair is it?

No.

If I ask my next door neighbour for a million pounds am I in need? Or am I a cheeky fucker chancing my luck?

It's not negative, it's realistic.

@Discovereads So do you think the ex could have offered to look after the OP's child back when the ex was only working part-time? I mean, if she'd done that then maybe she would be in a better position now to ask it of the OP. Sisters and womenhood n all that.

This is so damn tedious.

One poster hell bent on saying the OP is being unreasonable and writing tortured polemics.

One poster hell bent on saying the mother is being unreasonable.

I’ll say it one more time for the cheap seats @Catfordthefifth : it wasn’t the mother who asked the OP to do the school run for her child, it was the father. Who the OP lives with. At least slag him off as much in your frequent posts.

Meanwhile the OP is possibly is nowhere to be seen. Who knows, she may be reading and rubbing her hands in glee at the argument she started.

@Discovereads

No offence intended, but 9 out of 10 people disagree with you. You’ve given your opinion and op has the right to hear it, or ignore it. Given the stats I suspect she will ignore it.

I agree that when you marry a man with children, you are obligated to treat that child with love, dignity and respect. However, that does not extend to becoming unpaid childcare because your DH failed to make proper arrangements. Unless of course you just enjoy being taken advantage of.

DSS should never know that there was an ‘option’ to go to his stepmother’s. He goes there for half the week anyway and by anyone’s standards that sounds like a nicely blended family. He should go to breakfast and after school club and he’ll have fun playing with the other children there no doubt. It’s not cruel. It’s perfectly normal. Stop trying to guilt op into something she doesn’t want to do, otherwise real resentment could emerge that does in fact spoil the family dynamics.

We all worked FT too. And our parents were all dead or in another country. It’s just my community was more diverse than what yours sounds like.

We had lots of us working various different shifts with weekends and nights all mixed in. There is no childcare centre for a nurse that has to work from 11pm to 11am Thursday/Friday. And her DH, well he’s in Iraq right now. She can’t not work because bills. So her DD came and stayed with us and slept over Thursday night and we took her to school Friday morning. Repeat on different days. I could care for her child because I wasn’t working from 11pm on Thursday to the school drop off at 9am on Friday…..as I’m sure you weren’t.

We had a cooperative and we all posted what we needed and offered to do what we could for what others needed.

This is a case where OP CAN care for her step son. She’s off work that day. She could help. It’s not like your situation where there is no opportunity to help.

And as you say “Id have bloody loved some help.”…yes most of us do appreciate help and what goes around comes around. Helping another mother now, often leads to receiving help back. But that can possibility of reciprocation cannever be given a chance to blossom if the advice when given an opportunity to help is always fuck no, don’t do it.

I haven't once said she was unreasonable to ask. I have however said on her time I personally think it's her responsibility to sort it. Op has said no, end of.

I'm not "slagging" anyone off, I'm saying it's her child and her time and therefore her responsibility. If it was his time, it would be his responsibility.

I doubt she is, somehow. She's probably dealing with her husband who probably has a face like a slapped arse.

You meanwhile, pop up and have a go at people for replying to anyone, for having an opinion and are now criticising op! What is your game here?

Look, life now is not what it was then. Your lovely cooperative sounds wonderful but for most people it is not real life.

Op will not receive any help with her child if she agrees to this. She just won't. You can scream what goes around comes around until you're blue in the face, but it doesn't, in real life.

She isn't in a cooperative. She is doing a favour for a friend, she's being taken advantage of by this child's parents.

I would help a friend, who asked. But again, this is not that.

Surely the point of the cooperative was that it was opt-in, and you didn’t have someone managing your time for you. Presumably, if people didn’t want to be part of it they didn’t have to be.

OP doesn’t want to be providing childcare for her DH and his ex, doesn’t have to. So there you go, end of story.

@Ilovevacations
No offence intended, but 9 out of 10 people disagree with you
Im aware that 249 people have a similar view to mine. So we can’t all be batshit, or unhinged or ridiculous and so on.

However, that does not extend to becoming unpaid childcare because your DH failed to make proper arrangements. Unless of course you just enjoy being taken advantage of.

The mother offered to pay.

DSS should never know that there was an ‘option’ to go to his stepmother’s.

Its his home too, so it’s not “go to his stepmothers” as he lives in that house 4 out of 7 days with his dad. I think he has a right to come home after school to his own home when other family members are present and capable of caring for him.

He should go to breakfast and after school club and he’ll have fun playing with the other children there no doubt.

I don’t think he should. I disagree with your opinion here. No he won’t have fun because he’s upset at the thought of it and has said he’d rather be at home. It’s not just his stepmothers home. It’s his home too. Forcing a child out of their own home outside their regular school day is cruel imho. And for what? So OP can have 11hrs of special alone time with her “real son” instead of 8hrs? Are those few extra hours truly a need worth making another family member miserable over? Will OP and half brother actually suffer if the step son comes home after school like a normal kid would?

Like a normal kid would?

Are the children who go to after school club not normal kids?

That's nice.

I “pop up” as people do on a discussion thread, yes. I criticised you for what you said, not for having an opinion.

I disagree completely that it’s “her time and her child and her responsibility”. Once the father said yes to the extra day and night, it became his responsibility and his time. How difficult is that to grasp? She handed over the baton, he took it voluntarily, The baton is now in his court, to mix metaphors.