To tell you that all these useless breadwinners CAN step up?

[BreadwinneBaker]

I am so sick of reading on here that a posters partner cannot possibly:
Do any overnight feeds
Do housework when not working
Cover illness from nursery or school etc
Be just as competent at childrearing as a SAHP or part timer

I'm a breadwinner with a solid salary, huge (and stressful) senior management responsibilities. And yes. Sometimes I have conflicts which means I need to juggle commitments. My employer is pretty old school where it comes to e.g. emergency leave for covering illness. But unless you work for a truly horrible boss, toxic employer... Just because you're the family breadwinner doesn't mean you get a free pass at being a good parent or spouse!

Why aren't more people demanding and expecting EQUAL leisure time? Downtime?

Being the family breadwinner isn't an excuse in 99% of couples! Unless literally not possible due to E.g. being away with military

Agree with most of.that, but if one parent is a sahp why would the wohp have to take time off work to cover child being off school sick?

YANBU but until men step up and pick up the slack, nothing will change, because women can't force them to do it. Being assertive only changes you, it doesn't change other people.
Society could be restructured to take into account many people have caring responsibilities, or get sick at some point in their lives. For now, its cheaper and easier to depend on free labour. I don't think free labour is a viable long term solution and I'm worried about what the future will bring.

I agree with you up to a point. Lots of men do get away with trotting out that they couldn’t possibly take time off work etc. But, and here’s the big but, sometimes people (men and women) with ‘big’ jobs do work for utterly awful companies/bosses who absolutely expect them to never cover childcare, sick days, etc. Is it right? No. But if they are the breadwinner, and are genuinely worried about losing their job because of taking time off when the kids are sick for example, I do to a point understand it- if they lose their job the family is screwed. So while you’re thinking FFS why can’t he get home to do the kids’ bath tonight, he
might be thinking, I’d really like to get home and do bathtime but x up and coming younger colleague can stay late and impress the boss and I’m worried I’ll look bad for leaving on time. Like I say, it’s NOT RIGHT but does happen.

My husband and I had endless arguments about this when he had a ‘big’ job. And now I do underhand his point of view. Now he has a much more flexible job.

However. Not parenting properly when not at work, having a ‘hobby’ that takes up all weekend, never giving the other partner downtime, not knowing what their kids like/need etc- not ok.

100% agree. I'm a single mum, with a senior, very demanding job.
I have a nanny for childcare, but I do all cooking (I make everything from scratch), take a break every day to feed my twins their lunch, do most dinners and every bath/bedtime.
I do 100% of night wakenings (generally only once a night, apart from when they're ill).
If I can do all this and hold down my job, so can working partners.

The SAHP might also be sick, could be pregnant, might have loads of kids, might have a disabled child and not be able to cope with a sick child as well, might be injured or disabled or a combination of those. Probably loads of reasons I haven’t thought of as well.

Wow you sound amazing.

Yes. Infuriating how often the ‘big important’ job of the husband is nowhere near as stressful or demanding as my job or the job of any of my other female friends (all critical care drs/surgeons etc) and yet every last one of us manages to do hands on parenting stuff as well.

Depends on the job you do. My husband was away for days, even weeks at a time. Difficult for him to cover sickness and start cooking meals if he was the other side of the planet at 30,000 feet !

YANBU OP. It's why I'm a single mum.

Life is literally easier, just me looking after DS than it was with two of us. Ex made everything complicated, was always changing plans at the last moment, moaned about having to do things, or made as much mess as possible in the process.

That's just judgemental. Partner might love to stay home with sick child but to afford a SAHM and time off work in one family is ridiculous. Families are a team effort

I'd love to do more, but I'm currently on another business trip. I miss our kids. I could've refused to go, but I would lose opportunities and influence, and redundancies are on the cards. It's all I can focus on as the breadwinner.

Sometimes this boils down to a lack of understanding and communication. If you're the breadwinner 9-5 and I'm the SAHP (I'm not, but for arguments sake), between 5 and 9 we should split the household/parenting duties. I think, though, the view of the breadwinner is often that their job finishes when they get home and then the rest of the evening/night is their downtime. There is a guy on IG at the mo who talks about the mental load of parenting and how often (not always) dads don't realise that the mental load is often far heavier than the task itself and it definitely gave me the language I needed to communicate with my partner about why I feel like we are not doing things equally. For example - I mostly cook dinner but occasionally DP will say "I'll cook tonight" .... nice, a treat I think. Then will proceed to say, what shall I cook? what have we got in the freezer? how long does this take to cook? can DD have this? will DD eat that? In the end, the actual act of him cooking is done for me but its actually me that's held the mental load of the meal. That's probably a crappy example but I hope you get the gist of it.

My DH did most of the child care and still does most cooking. The only thing he didn't do was night feeds he was willing but he takes so long to come to it was quicker for me to do it. He still takes ages to wake.