SAHM- DH wanting to give me ‘routines’ and ‘duties’

[SummerDuck]

So I’m a SAHM with DS1 (15), DS2 (9) and DD (3). DH works full time. He has recently started moaning about how I’m not doing enough around the house.

DD is at home full time other than being at nursery one day a week. I do most of the cooking, cleaning and general household admin. However, DH has said there is no not enough ‘output’. He therefore wants to introduce ‘routines’ and ‘duties’ whereby he will set out what needs to be done on a particular day and carry out checks upon returning from work.

So Monday will be garden day for example and the lawn will need to be mowed and leaves sweeped. Tuesday will be bathroom cleaning day and so on.

Is this level of micromanagement normal for SAHPs and should I just be grateful?

Looking after your own children and cleaning your own house is simply what the majority of adults do. Offering a salary for it for those who don't also have a paid job would be ridiculous.

It doesn't have any kind of status because it's just living your life.

And yet when I worked and Dh worked we paid a shit load of money to people to provide quality childcare for our three children and paid another bit of money to someone to clean our house every week. To live our lives we had to pay people to do what we couldn't do because we were working.

When a parent stays home and minds children they are relieving the family of that expense. It isn't just "living your life" - well I suppose it is in the same way being a hot shot lawyer is just "living your life" why give status to one and not the other (I know the answer to that!)

and those people very likely went home, cleaned their house and looked after their own children if they had any.

When a parent stays home they are also losing their earning potential which in some cases could cancel out the expense of paid childcare, especially if you factor in potential promotions and the fact that childcare fees don't last forever.

A lawyer is providing a service for someone else just like cleaners, nannies etc which isn't the same as someone who looks after their own child and cleans up their mess in their own house.

'Duties '. ? Seriously.?
We're not in the Victorian age now..how very chauvinistic of him
Id be doing a bit of arse here. Cheeky twat

Arse kicking I meant to say

SAHP is to look after your joint child(ren).

i disagree, especially if the children are mostly older. Even when I was on maternity leave I saw it as my role to do the cooking, cleaning and laundry as I was at home all day.

I think he's approached this badly but if he's working and paying for everything and you aren't (& only have a 3 year old at home who is mostly able to play) then I do think the domestic side of life is 80% yours to bear.

I absolutely agree with you. I returned FT after all my mat leave,it is what I wanted and it retains career momentum. Every time these giving up career threads pop up it’s always same old themes
woman gives up career and never regain lost momentum
man gives up nowt, can’t possibly he’s so terribly busy and important

I think the extensive discussion here demonstrates what, as I understand it, Jordan B Peterson has raised as the dilemma that women are in and which, I think I remember him saying, causes a lot of stress and depression.

I think you'll find there are many, many, many women who have publicly discussed this struggle without the need to cite Jordan B Peterson as some sort of visionary / wise man!

Were the children boxed up and put into the closet during the daytime? Those people hired caregivers, either nannies or a daycare or a childminder, to look after their children during working hours. It is completely ideological to so devalue what a SAHM does that you cannot even admit that there is financial value to looking after children during the workday when it's done by a mother as opposed to a paid caregiver. A mother who looks after her children while her spouse works, is literally saving the family money that would otherwise be spent on childcare.

Very often, when you look at the lifestyle of these men with "big jobs," the only person who cleans up and looks after the children after work is the woman. Even if the woman continues to have a paid job , this imbalance of time/effort spent on unpaid family work after the paid workday is over, is a BIG reason for the salary gap between men and women. Why are you downplaying that as if it's nothing? If it were truly nothing, men would just do it, they would just do their share of the housework and childcare. But they don't. They fob it off on wives because IT'S WORK. They fob it off on wives because time spent on childcare and housework is time taken away from paid work, and because personal effort spent on childcare and housework is personal energy taken away from the relaxing that allows the person to be recuperated for the next day so they can do a great job at work. Men know that looking after a house and kids after the workday is work. The claim that it's just "living your life" is merely an excuse to avoid admitting that such work deserves to be respected and compensated by the other partner.

@aloris it’s not only the fact he’s saying she’s not doing enough to ‘his standard’ and that he wants to set up a task list… it’s the fact he wants to inspect her work that is the worst… so if it’s not good enough according to his douch bag expectations, does she have to re do it?????

Caring for someone else's child isn't the same as caring for your own child. At home, you don't have to follow the EYFS, you don't have Ofsted inspections, you can't nap when your child has their afternoon nap etc it is providing a service to the community.

We live in a very sexist society where women are seen as the default parent and men are seen as the providers, my comments were regarding a pp suggesting that the government should pay SAHP's and I disagreed because all it would do would encourage more inequality. If a woman stays at home, of course her husband should fund her, I never said otherwise.

Personally, I would not be willing to live with an arrangement whereby my DH assigned me "duties" and tried to manage my "performance" as if he were my line manager.

On the other hand, I wouldn't be willing to be a WOHP with a SAHP who I didn't consider to be pulling their weight.

I don't think a SAHP has the right to unilaterally dictate what their workload looks like, so if a couple can't agree between them what is reasonable, the only fair option in my view is for both to share work/earning and domestic/childcare duties 50/50.

A mother who looks after her children while her spouse works, is literally saving the family money that would otherwise be spent on childcare.

This is so often trotted out on here as if it is an undisputable fact. However, a mother is only saving the family money by SAH if she is a relatively low earner and would bring in less than the cost of childcare by working.

Oh no, that's just devaluing a SAHP. 🙄

It's short sighted. It doesn't consider loss of income, earning potential, promotions, pension etc and the fact that childcare fees are temporary.

If she’s high earner the family still have to fork out on childcare.

Yes of course, but there will still be a net financial gain from working so she would not be saving the family any money by SAH.

monsteramunch

And another person who makes the giant leap of leaving the truth and entering the realm of slurring someone by make-believe: You say,
"without the need to cite Jordan B Peterson as some sort of visionary / wise man!"
Where do I call Peterson a visionary or wise man? He just happens to be a Psychologist who is a prolific maker of controversial YouTube videos and provided me with a useful example of the breadth of the topic in hand.

Similarly, earlier, when I was saying that the arguments here have clearly explained how people only gain status in the world from the titles of their jobs and this is linked to the height of their salary, thus a SAHW gets no respect. Thus the only solution, in our current evaluation of the status quo, needs to be to find a way to pay this job very highly. That was simply to bring home the facts. It was not to say that any methods would ever be possible or that they would work, as I tried to reveal by suggesting them. i was not proposing the methods as some liked to think, and jump into 'let's be crushing' mode as a result. They were as an example of the difficulty of giving status to the role of full-time Mother in today's climate of judging by status of salary and job-title. Several people did demonstrate the expertise involved in the roll of the SAHM by wisely pointing out how their return to work after mat leave led to the expensive employment of several people to cover the services they had provided when at home full time.

While society has such upside down values, is snobbish and driven by money, people who have unvalued jobs - no matter how important they are - or very little money are regarded of little importance. Values such as working hard, being conscientious, honest, kind, unselfish, are not important in the status recognition stakes. That is the horrible truth about a materialistic and snobbish world.

This thread popped into my head yesterday and I thought about it and actually agree

Let him make a list of the tasks he thinks go into running the home and family.

Only do those tasks.

Very likely the house will be dirtier and you'll have more downtime. Work to rule! Great revenge on a shitty manager.

This is the only acceptable way to do his trial.
And clearly now that he's your boss, he can fuck off to the spare room right?
It would be improper to sleep with employees...

He is your partner, not your boss. Your "output" as a SAHM is whether your children are happy, fed, clothed, entertained and educated. If he wants a particular "output" on certain days in other areas, tell him to hire a gardener or a cleaner etc to achieve it. Silly man.

Oh come now.
While I don’t blame a mother for wanting to be with her child (I would) she’s not saving anyone any money by having a child. Or by looking after her own child.

By that logic you could say that by cleaning my own bum I’m saving the family a fortune in personal valet fees.