to not give up my Saturdays?

[Frey11]

My husband shares a daughter with his ex who does a hobby. She has practice during the week, which DH and ex take her to depending who's night it is and at the weekend she has a game on a Saturday. The time varies but it's typically around mid day and takes at least a couple of hours.

My husband has always worked Saturday days, he has a day off in the week and works Saturday. We have SD 2 nights a week, one in the week and at the weekend it alternates one week Saturday night with DH collecting on his way home from work and the next weekend it's Sunday night.

SDs mum has just changed jobs which requires her to also work Saturdays. This was never mentioned to us until she'd already taken the job and I'm now being asked to have SD every Saturday and take her to said game. This means my whole day revolves around this as it's always in the middle of the day.

I also have two pre school children and work all week myself. This is my time with them to do things we don't get to do in the week, see friends, soft play etc..

AIBU to not want to do this every Saturday?

Are the posters who think OP should step up also of the opinion that step parents should have more legal rights?

I think you can relax. Your scenario is not going to eventuate, the child is going to grow up and think neither of my TWO parents supported my hobby I loved.
it’s the dads turn really.

The fact is that SMs end up as human shields that prevent children from recognising the extent to which their parents let them down.

You see it all the time on here from former SC who blame their SM because their father didn’t step up. And first wives who blame the SM for their ex’s inadequacies.

In this case, the father has never stepped up to take his daughter to her sport. And now the mother has decided that she’d rather work on a Saturday too. But somehow people seem to think it’s a SM drawing boundaries around not being an
unpaid nanny/housekeeper that people want to focus on with a ‘won’t anyone think of the SC’ argument.

It would be better if, in general, we held parents to account for this. And especially fathers. Fathers really should be taking responsibility for looking after their children, and not palming it off on to the nearest woman.

The problem here is that the child's mother has decided to take on paid work at a time when her daughter is neither at school nor having contact time with her dad, and instead of doing what most parents in this situation have to do and sorting out some sort of childcare, she is expecting her ex husband's new wife to provide it for free.

Yes. This.

It is 100 per cent the mothers responsibility to source adequate childcare on HER contact time. Sure, she can ASK the other parent respectfully but if it can't be accommodated, then it's her problem to resolve. Not the step mother.

But it's not just an occasional thing, is it?

The sports fixtures are regular ones, on Saturdays, and the parents are both working on Saturdays. They don't have a childcare solution for their daughter. They think the OP is their solution.

That means it will in fact be every Saturday unless she puts her foot down and says, "No, I am not doing it."

What happens the other 70% of the time if both parents are working and they haven't sorted out any childcare?

30% of the time is still a lot. Nearly 1/3 of your Saturdays taken up with something your husband’s ex just decided to drop on you with no consultation.

The parents need to figure out something for the other 70%. So they may as well sort out 100% of it.

Sounds like you are another parent who has offloaded childcare to the step-mother.

it also sounds like people pleasing, not least because the argument there mistakes women setting clear boundaries rather than martyring themselves taking on responsibility for all childcare as ‘selfishness’.

The reason that I would just step onto the gap and spend every Saturday running around after my stepdaughter is such terrible advice is that it would inevitably lead to resentment. Resentment is dreadful for any relationship.

The kind of logic at work here leads to exactly the kind of resentment that we see time and time again on SM threads. That resentment where the stepchild and/or their mother feels like the problem to a SM but actually it’s a husband/partner problem. He’s happy for her to be the collective free nanny/general dogsbody and uses her fear of being one of those horrible, selfish stepmothers to ensure he doesn’t have to parent properly or make proper arrangements with (or even say no to) his ex.

Even here, where the immediate problem is the ex making a unilateral decision about not having the SD on Saturdays any more, it becomes the SM’s problem because her husband has decided it’s his wife’s problem to solve. He makes no changes to his life and may even employ the totally hypocritical ‘you knew I had a child; this is what you signed up to’ argument to try to manipulate her into doing it.

Let’s all stop encouraging women to act in people pleasing ways. And demonising women who advocate for boundary setting behaviour instead.

I agree with everyone who says 30% is a lot. I think depending on the sport the younger DC might well be fine with this amount of involvement, OP to the contrary. My much younger sibs got a kick out of doing chores with me, FGS. Also it isn’t really ‘all day’ as first claimed. It is something like 12.30-2.30 plus travel.

If I did not have young kids of my own, probably I would feel genuinely fine about doing it once a month. I agree that leaves many open weeks; that’s why I was prompting OP to have the child care option as a ready comeback (at others’expense) on any conversation about how essential she is.

You've no basis at all to imagine the DC might be fine with 30%, though. OP has specifically told us they wouldn't enjoy hanging around on the sidelines, and we have no information about what facilities might be available near the various locations the matches take place. She may not even know that herself.

Also, the 'give or take an hour' and the hobby being in the middle part of the day means the day is taken over. There's not a lot going to be doable on either side, even assuming the 2 year old could cope with whatever can be fit into the couple of spare hours either side as well as the ferrying to the activity and hanging around.

This is even before we start to consider things like classmates birthday parties, which assuming the older preschool aged DC is 3 or 4 will be starting up soon if they've not already.

All of this feeds into why I suggested she bring up the possibility of childcare as a response to any pressure put on her, as did other PPs. Deafening silence on the point.

Which is fine, but if you think that's a sufficiently good point in itself then you can make it without vague, unsupported guesses about how the DC would be fine with 30%.

Additionally, your suggestion that OP take on part of the responsibility ignores the likelihood that her older DC is likely to have regular invitations on Saturdays in the near future. You've also not answered the question about what happens if OP takes on your suggested 30% and the parents don't/can't source childcare for the rest of the time. Because mission creep is a very real possibility here.

Obv she needs a backbone. I never said she should do 30%; I was speaking for myself. I was very explicit on that point.

OP was silent or negative on every single suggestion made. They were all good willed attempts to mitigate the effect on a young girl’s feelings of her mother’s screw up. One can continue basically to side with her on principle whilst noting this.

Maybe she’s not taking responsibility for any aspect of solving the problem. Including thinking up solutions.

not least because with CFs, they’ll not just be grateful fit what you did. They’ll push for more. She may end up having to find the childcare. Make sure she’s available around. And so on.

it’s fine to set a boundary and say ‘not my monkeys; not my circus’ in entirety.

If your point is that it’s is not in any way your problem then there is no need to engage with all the solutions offered. They all start from the assumption that she needs to do anything at all.

She doesn’t need to bring up any solution as a response. That assumes responsibility, of which, she has none.

Ok, OP 'needs a backbone'. I expect most of us will agree with you on that part.

How will this look if, having already taken some of the responsibility in the same way you reckon you'd step up in that situation, the parents go for a cobbled together rota-esque solution rather than formal childcare, and people start cancelling because someone's got covid/at a wedding/on holiday? Which is liable to happen at some point. What if your 30% guess was completely wrong and the younger DC are not in fact fine with it, but arrangements have already been made based on OPs participation?

Obviously if forced ho choose OP puts her own DC first. And the backbone helps her to hold her boundaries.

We must agree to disagree on the question of whether an hour’s thought would be appropriate on her part, from multiple perspectives - chiefly IMO because a child’s feelings are in the mix.

I have a two year old. He eats his lunch at about 12 and then he naps for a couple of hours.

12:30-2:30 plus travel time is basically the window of time where being at home is more or less non negotiable for us. Occasionally if there is something like a family get together he will eat lunch with everyone and skip his nap and we will just face the consequences later.

There is zero chance I would agree to an arrangement which would mean my toddler couldn't have his lunch and his nap every Saturday, or even one Saturday in three. Zero.

And as soon as he and his sister get past the nap stage I expect they will be at the stage of wanting to go to parties or do hobbies of their own on Saturdays.

@MargotBamborough Context is everything. I have included several further posts

I know. I just still don't see how the OP agreeing to do this some of the time is workable.

If the child's parents sort out some proper childcare to take her to her sports fixtures every week then the OP should not need to do this ever. If they don't, she will be expected to do it every time, won't she?

Backbone. I think as with other PPs we need to mainly agree to disagree. Glad we agree on the possibility of child care as an option.

It's more that there's no reason to suppose an hour's thought is going to achieve anything, and it could make the situation worse.

Well we seem to have got a lot further in a few minutes of thinking than OP did