Husband golfing- 3 week old baby

[HuckleberryBlackcurrant]

I had a C-section 3 weeks ago. We have 2 other kids, 4&6. Husband heading off on a golf trip tomorrow, will be gone for 2 days.

Am I right in being upset that he's going? It's an annual thing with some friends, but I missed my annual trip with my friends this year due to just having given birth.

He's been on paternity leave and has been keeping up on the laundry and dishes mostly, and taking on the care of the older 2, letting me nap with baby etc.

I've only just been cleared to start doing any type of housework. I hate to nag, but the bathroom hasn't been cleaned in a month, the carpet hasn't been vacuumed in weeks, kids toys and dirty clothes everywhere, etc. I'm able to do more now, but bending and squatting is still painful, and it's stressing me out thinking of trying to play catch up. It's upsetting because I worked so hard to have everything spotless and up to date before I had the baby and it's all going to rack and ruin now.

He's arranged for my MIL to have the older 2 boys overnight, and she's available in the daytime if I need her. I can't lift my 4yo if he throws a tantrum. That's my main concern about being alone with him. My 6yo will be in school all day Friday.

I just feel like leaving your newly postpartum wife after she has just had a major surgery, to play golf is a bit selfish.

The house wouldn't bother me so much if I knew I could slowly get back on top of it. But we have company coming in a week, who are staying for a week and it's really stressing me out.

I had to grit my teeth watching him pack his golf things tonight. I'm so exhausted and sore, and he's swanning off to play golf. He says not to worry about the housework and he will help when he gets back, which I know he will. But I just feel a bit cheesed off. I think with him being on paternity leave, he really could have been doing more. The house is a state.

The reason I'm not sure if I'm being unreasonable is that I know we are fortunate he has leave. I know many people have to do all this alone.

Have you a friend/sister who could come and stay overnight, have a couple of girly days? Ask a friend to come in and run the hoover round and do a quick flick of the bathroom. Xx

Why doesn't the husband just do it? 🤓
Or invite his friend round to watch the golf and run the hoover around? 🤓

Fuck me. So, to be clear, a 'girly day' according to some involves women gleefully running around cleaning other peoples bathrooms and vacuuming for no payment?

And this is done to enable men to have their 'boy days' (plural) which involve fucking off to play golf and shirk all domestic responsibilities.

If a friend of mine, whose husband was on parental leave, invited me over to clean her fucking bathroom because her husband was too lazy and selfish to do it while she recovered from surgery, I would decline and send her the details of a good divorce lawyer.

Shocking isn’t it in 2023

@SunRainStorm has said it better than I.

Have you shown your husband the thread, OP? Hope he realises that, were he married to any of us, he’d have his arse resoundingly handed to him for trying to pull this kind of shit.

I'm sure she would manage on her own for two days. One of those days the other kids being with mother in law. If it were a regular jolly that he went on then maybe I'd have the hump but he appears to be pulling his weight. It's just two days and will pale into insignificance over all the years of parenting to come. The OP's own girly trip was cancelled for her cos she was pregnant, that can be rearranged for a later date and it will be his turn with three small kids for a couple of days. Three weeks in it wouldn't bother me.

@Lulu49 i will never forget my husband’s flashes of pure, unadulterated selfishness in our son’s early years. We have no family help (our parents are hundreds of miles away and frankly would be fucking useless even if they lived round the corner)

His selfishness definitely contributed to PND from which it took literally years to recover. I’ll never forget it.

It’s not the point whether she will survive, it’s the principle and the sheer audacity to choose a lads holiday, the baby has literally just arrived! I might survive a nuclear attack it doesn’t mean I want this for my life and family. Jesus.

Another example of low expectations of men, why should women come over and help. Surely a bunch of lads coming and doing housework and childcare wouldn’t be classed as a ‘boys night in’! They wouldn’t even bother. They would think you are taking the piss.

I'm sorry but if a friend of mine asked me to clean their bathroom for free because her husband was too lazy to do it then I'd tell them they can fuck right off.

Don't know what 1950's cloud cuckoo land you're living in but in 2023 women don't live like that anymore.

Oh I think you might be married to my husband. Making your wife write you a "to do" list is the ultimate way to skive out of housework, because it forces YOU (wife) to essentially write out an entire protocol of everything you do every day. By the time you finish writing today's list, you might as well have just done all the housework yourself. He doesn't actually need a list to know that if there are urine stains on the toilet and pubic hairs on the bathroom floor, the bathroom is dirty and needs to be cleaned.

"You should have asked." I've also had this neat trick used on me by my dh. This goes along with the idea that he's "helping" you. This strategy for getting out of housework assumes that, even when he is "helping" the responsibility for the job still belongs to you. If he does it wrong, it's partly YOUR fault, for not asking for help or for not giving him specific enough instructions! It saves him the trouble of having to notice when things are dirty, or to actually keep them clean. He can do a half-done job and pat himself on the back for "helping" as if he's given you a massive gift out of the generosity of his heart. It's a way of making sure the rest and leisure time is automatically his, because the unending cr@p work of looking after a house is automatically YOURS. Except for the rare occasion where he will agree to do the few things you can write into a list before you fall asleep from exhaustion after nursing a baby all day and all night.

Great idea ! In fact why not cut out the middle man and get DH to ask some of his female friends to come over and have a couple of girly days cleaning his house whIle he goes off golfing ? I’m sure they won’t mind that at all.

He can explain that although bathroom cleaning is too technically difficult for him to do ( or even see ), it can be done in a quick flick by anyone with a vagina.

Maybe all the WAGS of the golfing boys could get together and have fun flicking, running, popping and dabbing in each others houses while they are away. Because let’s face it, that’s any woman’s idea of fun isn’t it. Girly togetherness cleaning a man’s piss off the floor 🎉

Yet another example of the many, many stories of women whose husbands think they have some sort of exemption from family life when it suits them. I think I would warn young women to be very wary of marrying and having children.

OP I think your husband is a selfish, self-centred pig.

And there the boffins are, scratching their fucking heads about why birth rates across the developed world are dropping.

It’s largely because highly educated women have clocked this kind of shit show for what it is: glorified slave labour.

And if men think that rolling their sleeves up to get stuck in on the fucking drudgery is beneath them, why the fuck should people who wipe the floor with them academically bother to do it either?

i was at a curriculum meeting with my son’s reception teacher, the head teacher and other parents this evening. It started at 1730. Any fathers there? Were they fuck. 💯 % mothers. Even though vast majority of the mothers work too as we have to to afford the fees, don’t we?

2023, ladies. It’s 2023. Depressing.

I am honestly in shock that your husband left you three weeks pp and post surgery. while on Paternity leave. What a selfish man child you have there. Come on OP you can do better than accept this nonsense surely ? His friends were probably also wondering how on earth he managed it! You deserve WAY better than this. And you’ve apologised ?? Seriously ??

I guarantee you OP that your DH's golfing buddies were all "wow, you still came, there is no way I'd have got away with that (done that) with a newborn at home"

I'm grateful to the poster who thought the OP's female friends should come over to clean - sorry have a flick at - the bathroom as I got to read this

Maybe all the WAGS of the golfing boys could get together and have fun flicking, running, popping and dabbing in each others houses while they are away. Because let’s face it, that’s any woman’s idea of fun isn’t it. Girly togetherness cleaning a man’s piss off the floor 🎉

Some of these comments are making me have a rethink! He did spend all day today cleaning haha

Exactly this.

That is a bloody good post, well said. I agree. My dds are refusing to have dc, it’s a mugs game and we get to have it all? Nope, we get to do it all! The two are wildly different 🤯

Expectation versus reality

By even having to write the list that poop stains need to be removed, clothes need to be washed you are taking responsibility for it. You are acknowledging that it’s always your job and it’s a job that never ends, never stops.

I refused to write a list, and said open your god damn eyes, that did the trick. He COULD do it when pushed to try. I was not going to baby him with a colour coded list like his mother.

Quite apart from the terrible example you are setting for your children with your compliance, he will have no respect for you whatsoever after a while.

And while we’re here: mat leave is also fucking boring. A conspiracy of silence for the majority I reckon. Sharp-brained women reduced to wiping arses and singing “wind the bobbin up” at infinitum?

No wonder women get depressed!!!! Anyone would!!!

Wiping the floor academically with my husband is about the only floor wiping I’ll be doing, thanks.

100% correct.

I see it all around me, both within our wider family and friends.

Women that have hard fought for successful careers in their 30's, and either having one and done, or saying no thanks completely to children.

My niece is about to have the one and only grandchild in her family as her two brothers wives have zero interest and are also focused on their very successful careers.

My lovely SIL and her husband are thrilled to be even having one.

Raising children is the hardest job and doing it on your own with a full-time job is even harder again if your partner doesn't pull his weight.

Marriages break up so often and it is women who are left with the greatest load.

It is a sign of basic intelligence IMO to think long and hard before contemplating something that will have such a profound affect on your life and well-being.

The one and done brigade are huge and growing. I have been told of so many women that had their first during Covid and have stopped at one.

Also of several young women who told their familys quite openly that THEY alone were left hugely impacted by having their child, not their husbands, so they had no intention of going again.
One and done, and happy with their choice.

@Piglet89 is correct, a certain breed of women are definitely waking up and more aware of just how utterly frazzled some colleagues and friends are from carrying the load largely alone.

Returning to work full-time after mat leave and juggling a baby too, is often a profound shock to women.

Who can blame them if they say one or done or take a hard swerve altogether.

I certainly don't, and when my daughters tell me it looks too much like hard work, I tell them it is not for the faint hearted and it is perfectly ok to feel its not for them.

Perhaps mine are too young still, but I feel very ambivalent about grandchildren.

I would much rather my children enjoy their one life in whatever way they please, and if that is child free, so be it.

At some point this is going to register with the government, this isn’t just a passing trend. Women are refusing to sacrifice themselves, their careers and their bodies for a life of hardship. It’s happening much more quickly in Asia, but is a global trend almost everywhere.

It’s already landed with economists, whom are becoming alarmed at the drop in birth rate and what that means for pensions and social care.

At some point we will have to entirely restructure society to put value and emphasis, support and resources into maternity and family units or it will literally die a death. The benefits of having a family diminish every passing year, as young women recognise the sheer sacrifices that will be required of them for multiple decades.

Motherhood has been systematically devalued and downgraded for decades. Is anyone really surprised that we have had enough?

I'd go so far as to say centuries.