Do I have unreasonable expectations of SAHP role?

[Babysharkdodo123]

Currently on mat leave with 4 month old. 22 month old in nursery couple of days as no family around to help and wanted to keep routine.

Dog needed to go to vets this morning for routine boosters so I asked DH if he could take her as i would have to juggle both kids and dog. Appointment at 8.30am so before work. He said no "why couldn't I do it as he was at work earning the money" (for ref I only get SMP).

I then got asked what I was doing today (meeting friends new baby) which was met with "oh, I thought you could get through some of the laundry".

So AIBU that household maintenance ie dogs, drs appointments, cleaning, laundry, cooking, grocery shopping should be shared in non working hours? If I was at work and DCs in nursery then no one would be home to do all of these jobs so they'd have to be shared out. Just because I'm on mat leave I don't think it should be expected that I do everything and DH wakes up, leaves and earns money.

OP you are really taking the p**s. Mat leave is a wonderful break … up all night with the baby, waking up 6am with the toddler, on a good day you might fit in personal care between naps, wiping up shit, cleaning vomit, and please don’t discount the joy of your boobs leaking everywhere. Its like 9 months at a spa. But while you’re at it, make sure the laundry doesn’t fill up to an unacceptable level and for gods sake make sure you stay in full isolation wont you, adult conversation only derails the fun 🙄

I've certainly never said it was easy. It wasn't easy. One of my DC has additional needs, which could be extremely hard going. Overall, having a paid job was a billion times easier than being a SAHM. But being a SAHM was a billion times more fun than going to work, and my toddlers were a fuckton more interesting than my ex colleagues.

I absolutely fail to get your point here.

@InchResting . Trying telling that to my husband 😂! If being at home with small children is universally considered so much fun, why do so many men take up all-day hobbies at weekends or engage in child-avoidant tasks to get out of spending time with their offspring 😁?

I offered my DH a choice at the weekend... take the kids for the playground or the washing to the launderette (washing-machine presently broken). Guess which one he chose?

There’s a massive societal influence though. Men are seen as providers, I wonder how many would actually love to stay at home or go part time but it isn’t considered because it just isn’t the thing to do or the woman just assumes it will be her to do it and the man stays quiet.

Men are also more likely to be the main earners.

This is interesting. My experience (having tried for a very short time to work when my first child was a year old) is that looking after children is much, much harder when you don't do it all the time. If that's the only thing you do, you get into a routine with them, and it's not actually that difficult. If you're trying to parachute into a routine that someone else has established (which is what a lot of men have to do), I think it's much harder.

When my children were little and I was with them every single minute of the day (none of them went to nursery), it's hard to describe - but it was as if there was still an invisible umbilical cord. I knew every single thing about them, including the way they breathed differently if something was going to be wrong with them. I do think it's harder to look after children if you are not 100% entwined in that way, and there are very few men who would fall into that category.

I think it's really hard to spend time with small children unless you do it all the time.

There may well be men who would like to have this degree of involvement, but I tend to think (wrongly? Who knows?) that only women go through pregnancy and childbirth and therefore only women really feel this way.

No one likes a nag, but I think men are entitled to set out their boundaries and expectations.
Afterall, men women leave their husband a list of chores to be completed and send them out on errands.
I think it is harsh to criticise a man for copying female behaviour..

So, what you would like is a return to the 1950s?

@InchResting . So children are a delightful hobby for women but a bloody nuisance for men?

And presumably where both parents are back at work and neither is heavily involved in the daily routine, they're just a nuisance all round 😂?

being at home with small children is fun.
Citation needed.

😂

Yeah, my DH went PT recently (just dropping one day). He is our main earner, but my work situation is really complicated whereby on that day he dropped, we were both earning the same net rate for that day and then one whole of that daily rate was going out on nursery for the two kids. Which was ridiculous. Anyway we didn't hear the end of it for months from people absolutely shocked about the decision we took and saying I should have gone even more part time than I already was (and lose my best paying job by dropping that one) or give up work entirely instead. Even though DH was absolutely delighted to drop his hours and have a day with the kids and would have done it years earlier if finances had allowed. We know one other family where the DF works part-time and that's it.

This is a really difficult one and something DH and I have struggled with a bit as I am on Mat Leave too. The thing I find hard is that I do think I should be taking on more of the day to day responsibilities in the house (we do have a cleaner once a week) - but when DD (8months) is having a day where she doesn't nap or won't be put down for 5 minutes or we need to get out of the house for our sanity, keeping on top of everything feels so stressful.

So I don’t think it's unreasonable of your DH to want you to do more around the house than him, but it is unreasonable of him to give you a timeline for this. That said, when you go back to work, you will have two jobs, a DC, and all of the housework to do, so maybe you need to sit down with him and make more of a plan.

Vet appts prob best in evening after DH home from work and fed, one adult stays behind with kids while other takes dog.

Housework I would take on a fair bit, but some elements would be shared.

I still went out, parks, coffee, baby clubs etc but still tried to do a fair bit too as I felt it fair.

The thing is though, you aren’t a SAHM. You’re on mat leave. They’re different. I made the mistake on my first maternity leave of taking on quite a traditional SAHM role - there was a novelty to it at the time. I did the majority of household chores and admin and cooking and shopping etc (which was fairly easy with one baby). But when I went back to work it was a really hard transition to move back to sharing things more equally.

Agree

Precisely.

No one said a parent can't put washing on because a toddler can't have ten minutes without enriching experiences. The point is that toddlers tend to get into danger or mischief or do something like puke, pee, scream or smear mess everywhere if you take your eyes off them; add a dog and a baby into the mix and hanging up the washing is very unlikely indeed to take just ten minutes. The amount of coordination and planning it takes means it's usually far more an efficient use of limited time and energy to do it when the other parent is watching the children and dog. Of course there will be some days when it's easier, but you can't predict it.

No. Children are a bundle of fun for whichever parent spends all their time with them, which is more likely to be a woman (for social and biological reasons).

And, yes, if you believe MN, then children are just a nuisance all round if both parents go back to work. If you look at all the threads about how inconvenient children are when they are ill/have INSET days/have school holidays etc, you'll find that this is the common theme.

Either way I don’t see how sticking on a wash means the OP can’t see her friend.Edited

Neither do I. In fact she may have intended to.

But when her husband asked what she was doing that day and she told him she was meeting a friend he didn't say "do you think you'll have time to stick on a load before you go" but "oh, I thought you could get through some of the laundry". Maybe you don't see that as him saying "well I think you should stay home and do the laundry instead" but I certainly do and I bet the OP did.

And this is exactly the kind of MN attitude I was posting about previously. No one is suggesting mat leave is a holiday or a break. Or that OP doesn’t see friends. But it is perfectly reasonable to expect that of partner is working full time (which is also not a holiday?!) that OP can look after children, keep on top of house / laundry, and see friends. Countless women have done this in the past and countless more do it today. Spending 8+ hours bonding with baby and socialising, then expecting him to take the dog to the vet before work is taking the piss out of her partner. I don’t blame him for sounding a bit fed up.

How amazing it is that for some people (men), producing babies actually means that their lives get easier and they have less general life crap to deal with than ever before!
The baby handily comes with a service human who will see to all of the man's needs, even down to taking his dog to the vet. And all in exchange for a bit of sperm! Bravo ladies! 👏

And a woman on mat leave isn’t dealing with workplace crap… when she goes back to work the household / kids / general life crap should be split equally between them. Or if she chooses to be a SAHP after mat leave then her job is to deal with the day to day running of a household and kids.

Nope, bollocks to that.
A full time job is only 40 hours per week.
If looking after tiny babies, toddlers, dogs and houses is so easy, it should be fine for someone only working 40 hours to get involved during the many hours a week they are not at work. Not a big deal.
If looking after tiny babies, toddlers, dogs and houses is hard work, then it's certainly unreasonable to expect one person to manage it all 24/7 and the parent who only works 40 hours outside the home can get involved during the many hours a week they are not at work. Not a big deal.
My mat leave was primarily for my babies, not to turn DH into a pampered prince who suddenly could not operate the washing machine or hoover since he had fathered a child.

There are so many posts on MN about division of household chores. So many of these posters seem to have a dog and all the extra work that goes with it. Just why? Can’t you wait until your kids are older to get one?

when she goes back to work the household / kids / general life crap should be split equally between them

But this very rarely happens. Once this crap is unloaded onto the woman on maternity leave, men tend not to take it all back.

That's why I'm amazed that everyone is so exercised about a woman on mat leave 'apparently not pulling her weight' 🙄. It is such a short period of time, she's just given birth, she's finished being pregnant for up to 9 months, usually she's being kept awake at night and in this case, there's another child in the picture as well.

Surely it is not asking too much for her partner to step up a bit at this time!!! And cut her some slack. And do their fair share like any other adult would have to do, working or not.

Instead, partners usually step down. And they don't step up again when the mat leave ends.