To ask dh to help out occasionally when he is wfh

[Desupi]

Dh and I have a 9 month old daughter. We both work from home, me full time, and him 2 days a week and 3 in the office.

We are in the fortunate position to have my mum looking after our daughter most days. We do pay her £300 a month which I understand is not very much in the grand scheme of things.

In my job I am required to control the business phone line and inbox for around 15 hours a week. During the times when I am doing this, or have lots of meetings, I do try and make sure I have my mum on hand, but not always if it is going to be quiet.

My mum lives 12 miles away so getting a baby who hates car rides into the car and driving that far in rush hour with her screaming is quite stressful, so if I CAN avoid having her look after little one I always do that.

My main gripe is that on the days that I decide not to have my mum help out, I do sometimes ask dh if he can watch our daughter for 30 mins if I get an unexpected meeting request or call from someone. He normally has an issue with it and says "I am working, you should have asked your mum to help today!". He does probably have more of an 'important' job than me, but a lot of the time when I walk in the office he has youtube/ a game on his other screen!

Since I returned to work his working week has not changed AT ALL unlike mine. I organised the childcare with my mum for a low price, I take our daughter there, I wfh either WHILST looking after our daughter, or in my parents house with my daughter downstairs where my lunchbreaks are basically used to give my mum a break. We pay 50/50 on bills so its not even like he pays more.

He doesn't get the guilt of not wanting to burn his mum out and not wanting to take the p* with her kindness, and having the stress of taxiing a screaming baby around.

So AIBU to ask him to occasionally step in to care for our daughter every now and then during the week?

Would you bring your baby to the office for an 8 hour shift?
Well then she shouldn't be at home with you both.
Sort childcare that ISN'T in your home.

This might work when she is 9 months. Good luck in a year when she is toddling, trashing your office and calling 'mammy' every 2 minutes.

WFH and childcare don't go hand in hand. In fact, in my old job I was forced to put DC into nursery if I wanted to WFH for 1 day a week.

Agree with others that you need proper childcare in place. It’s not just your responsibility to organise it though!

On another note - my eldest hated car journeys as a baby. We switched car seats to the Cybex Sirona at around 6 months and it made a world of difference!

I mean you don’t really need to ask this question do you?
honestly though the only way forward really is to put your child on nursery a few days a week when your mom can’t have her. But you should be splitting the load of course, that’s why I chose to be single with a 2 and 3 year old because I was doing it all anyway so what was the point.

You've ended up in a situation where you're the default parent, as many women do. The responsibility ends up falling on you to arrange childcare, ferry child here and there, make sure she is cared for appropriately, and at the same time carry on working the same amount as him as if nothing has changed. Meanwhile he can game and watch YouTube and make you feel unreasonable when it is not YOUR FAULT ALONE that there is no childcare for her that day.

The amount of people here telling you that YOU need to sort childcare is miserable. It really grinds my gears. It's always the women who have to find childcare. The man is working too. What was his childcare plan for that? Oh yeah. You were.

He's equally capable of sorting childcare jfc.

Wfh is still working so nursery or other alternatives, as we who don't wfh have to do. You're very lucky to have the help so I would consider provision. When you're both in meetings and baby is screaming, neither are getting your full attention and it's far from ideal, very far!

Agree, the grievance of having to give up the many perks which many of us have never had. Xx

People are very annoyed OP I suspect because there is a part of them which is envious that they can’t do the same. I’m pretty sure if all the people who are outraged could get away with working and getting paid “full time hours” to do very little, still perform well at their job and avoid childcare costs they would also do the same.

You’ve not stated whether your employer knows that you’re looking after your child during work hours - as likely they don’t - and I agree with PP that long term it is unlikely to be unsustainable so realistically something needs to change there anyway. However I know quite a few people who do what you’re doing as childcare is extortionate, not everyone has family help closeby there is a cost of living crisis and many people don’t want to give up working and claim benefits.

Anyhoo back to your AIBU. I think you’re unreasonable to be annoyed that your husband can’t just watch your child for 30mins if his job doesn’t allow him to. My husband wfh and whilst he does scroll on YT/ BBC news occasionally etc still needs to be available for meetings etc so I couldn’t just unexpectedly ask him to look after our child for 30mins if not prearranged.

I can understand your frustration at being the only one who has arranged childcare and with your concerns re your Mum doing childcare. However you came to his current arrangement it’s clearly not working. You need to sit down with husband and come up with a long term plan - see what his solutions are. Could he do the commute and work from your parents home some days? Could your child stay over one night at your parents so you don’t have to do a commute one of the days? Agree that formal childcare may end up being needed long term as you going down to 4 days a week will not solve your issue.

I am kind of siding with your husband, if you are working from home, child are should be taken off, you shouldn't mind your kids when you are working.

@strungouteyes - in this case though, the OP has said her Mum will have the little one, but is then moaning about her dh not looking after her during his working hours, when she has "decided not to take her".

I completely agree with equal parenting, but that isn't what is being discussed here.

I'm wondering if you're the wife of one of my colleagues! His wife quite frequently dumps the baby on him as she has a meeting or appointment. It's really unprofessional and impacting his work, he's going to go through capability proceedings shortly due to it.

My company is very relaxed when it comes to kids at home when we're working, but there are limits, and that limit is toddlers and babies. You can't do anything productive at work whilst caring for them.

YABU massively unreasonable.

Having never been in a position to be able to work from home, I struggle to understand the concept of are you "working from home" or are you "looking after your child"? Surely you can't do both or is that a thing?

What is your job @Desupi

To be able to have 25hrs a week spare /not really working if looking after a baby /toddler is amazing

Sure many mums would like a job like this

If your boss truly doesn't mind you wfh with no childcare for the other 25hrs amazing

And maybe they can make sure you have arranged time for calls for the other 15 and arrange paid childcare

With respect, I think you're creating a rod for your own back. Don't try and do both work and childcare. It's not worth it, and you, your child, and your job will suffer, and it sounds like your partner too in this scenario. Stop trying to do it all, choose one, if you need to work full-time, get full-time childcare. If you can compress or go part-time with your job, then do that and ensure you give your full attention to work when you're at work and child when you're with child. It's not easy, I get it, you will work it out.

You can’t work from home with a 9 month old. You need childcare.

You need proper childcare arrangements. How are you looking after a 9 month old and doing your job properly? Most jobs don’t allow you to do that not even when your child is ill and sleeping most of the time.

This. You are giving fuel to those who say wfh is used for cover for a lot of non paid work

I thought you meant spending five minutes to put a wash on, or loading the dishwasher. Half an hour to watch your DD isn't acceptable if he's WFH - or you are, unless it's really an emergency. You are paid to work, sorry.

I am always surprised when someone says they’re wfh whilst looking after their child? Surely it just means you can’t give 100% to either your job or parenting?

Yes, you’re being unreasonable to expect someone to randomly take over being responsible for a very young child during the middle of their working day.

Most jobs expect you to be doing your job (or at a very minimum fully available to do it) during working time. Yours sounds like an unusual one, and that’s great for practicality but you can’t project that set up into other more normal jobs.

However, what’s also unreasonable is splitting all bills 50/50 but not the other things that contribute to managing family life. So if you’re paying half, you potentially should also be going halves on everything else. Like childcare during working hours, childcare logistics, laundry, cooking, shopping etc.

In reality that doesntnwork for most people and a more realistic split in accepting that one person does more paid work and covers more of the bills and the other does more parenting and domestic work and covers less of the bills.

It might also be realistic to plan ahead with partner on days you’re both working from home and arrange for him to time a lunch break for a time you need to have a meeting and tag team child for that chunk of time.

(and yes the YouTube or game thing is massively frustrating, but you can ignore that/ stop straight away in favour of doing work whereas you can’t ignore a child).

Are there any jobs going? Is it fully remote? 😂🙏🏻

Sounds like somebody from the daily fail making rubbish up about people not working when wfh just to try and incite more rage.

No wonder WFH has such a bad reputation, it means Work not look after your baby, you need to make proper childcare arrangements and not expect your DH to also look after your baby.

He is unreasonable to expect you to sort the childcare for your shared childcare but you are both unreasonable not to have a proper childcare plan. My parents use to do some days of childcare for me but it was a regular day / time with nursery other days - ie all planned out around working hours. No one can work whilst doing childcare

Good point!!