So I’m going to give a slightly different perspective to most of the comments here, and I think it really depends on how you and your partner both deal with money tbh.
Even before my husband and I got married, as soon as we started living together, we set up a joint account for household costs. We would both contribute an equal amount per month to cover anything related to the house or anything we were doing/buying together e.g. date nights, and any money left over from that at the end of the month would go into a savings account to go towards holidays. However, the rest of our finances remained separate. This is because he is quite frugal, and I’m not so careful with my spending, and I didn’t want him to be looking at everything I’m spending each month from combined finances and questioning everything I’m buying while he’s trying so hard to save. This doesn’t mean the money is his money or my money though, it’s still all our money, it’s just managed separately. For example, with his savings, he’s just paid for an extension to our house (for which we have a joint mortgage) and bought a new car in my name. I have a decent amount saved myself, which he has access to, but he never touches it. He also puts a lot of money each month into a private pension, with the view that this will be combined retirement income (I have a decent chunk in my employer pension scheme but for some perspective, my husband’s is 6x that amount, and when doing his financial planning, he combines both figures and uses the total amount to calculate at what age we can both retire - he’s aiming for us to both retire early and at the same time).
That’s the background, and for additional context, when we met, we were both on pretty similar salaries - I was actually probably earning more than him because I was in a commission-based job. However, he worked for a small company and got lucky in that his company has changed hands several times over the years and with each change he’s got fairly big pay rises, so he’s now on twice as much as my full time pay, and three times as much as my now part time pay.
When we had our first baby, we agreed that I would stop contributing towards household costs, and would just cover baby costs. I bought everything we needed for the baby and saved enough to cover my maternity leave. When she was a year old, I went back to work part time, and we moved house and our mortgage and other household bills doubled. My husband still covered all of it, while I took care of childcare costs and all other child-related purchases and activities. These outgoings for me are about a third of what his outgoings are.
Currently when a child turns 3, everyone gets 15 hours of free childcare, and 30 hours if you meet certain eligibility criteria, along with the tax free childcare you can receive from any age. I fell pregnant again when our first daughter was 3, and everything I saved on childcare costs through funding I put into a separate savings account to cover my second maternity leave. I had also been saving a regular monthly amount into my main savings account, which I started diverting into my new maternity fund, and at the same time my employer announced they were increasing maternity pay to 6 months’ full pay. I’m now 4 months into that maternity leave and have more than enough saved to be able to see me through to the end. In the meantime, our mortgage rates are about to skyrocket and we’re soon going to be paying close to double what our original payments were when we moved, and when I go back to work next year, we’re going to have two sets of childcare fees to cover because even though our first will be starting school next month, we’ll still need till pay for wraparound care. This will mean that my husband’s outgoings are going to jump significantly, and I’m unlikely to be able to make any regular monthly saving until I return to work full time (which I plan to do when our second starts school). If anything, I might need to ask him for some additional support, which we’ve already spoken about and he’s fine with.
This is a very long way of saying that separate finances work for us. Neither of us has any debt, we find it easier to budget when we know exactly which costs are being covered by whom, and we’re both able to freely save or spend as much or as little as we want without question from the other. Once I go back to work full time, we’ll go back to using the joint account for all costs, with equal contributions from both, as I’ll be earning more money and childcare costs will be significantly lower.
With regards to the rest of the stuff (housework etc), we both do our share around the house. If anything, my husband probably actually does more. He does most of the cooking and washing up as well as all of the maintenance/DIY jobs. I mostly just clean and do laundry once a week or so. Being on maternity leave isn’t a holiday - it is hard work and you’re on call 24/7. There is no break/downtime. Even when you’re asleep, every squeak coming out of your baby will wake you up and have you on alert while your husband will still be sleeping soundly. If you breast feed, you can’t share feeds. If you bottle feed, no matter how many feeds your husband does, your baby will still want you for comfort more than him.
So, work your finances in whatever way you feel the most comfortable with, but you shouldn’t be taking on more stuff around the house to compensate. If anything, you may need your husband to do more, not less - especially for the first 6 months or so when baby isn’t going to be very mobile and will need a lot of attention