Stay at home husband - are my expectations too high ?

[greyA]

Long story short, OH and I have a beautiful daughter age 6 and had a beautiful baby boy 11 months ago- shortly after he was born my husband was taken unexpectedly ill, he caught sepsis and ended up spending time in ICU and his recovery has been slow due to ongoing fatigue. He’s now in the process of being medically retired from work and will likely get a (£25k ish ) payout. I had to return to work when my son was 6 weeks old and have been working ever since. I’m fortunate that I earn a good wage and I can support us all on it but AIBU to expect my husband to do the bulk of the chores / childcare if he isn’t going back to work ? Currently I’m WFH but also juggling our children, cooking, cleaning etc - spent yesterday cleaning the bathroom, mopping floors and meal prepping. I’m really unwell with a cold right now, I’ve worked all day flat out, cooked dinner for everyone and bathed both kids and my husband just got annoyed at me when I said I was going to go for a bath and leave him to clear up. What’s reasonable to expect from him if he’s at home all day? When I was a SAHM to our daughter I did everything.

I appreciate he's still recovering from sepsis but you said he has enough energy to do DIY and tinkering with things that interest him and that he wasn't particularly hands on with household chores before his illness, so I'd hazard a guess that laziness plays a big part here.
Surely if he can do DIY then he can shove some dinner on, do a load of washing, settle the baby down for their nap?
He's being completely unreasonable towards you.
Maybe ask him how he'd feel if the tables were turned? If he was working full time and STILL having to do all household chores and childcare and then you moaned at him when he was told to tidy up as well while you go for a leisurely bath. It might make him open his eyes a bit.

In those circumstances I would expect all the child care during work hours, a quick tidy at the end of the day, a couple of loads of washing a week and dinner every week night. A bit of extra house work on the weekends while you spend time with the kids.
If he isn’t looking after the kids while you are working can you work from the office instead?

What else does he do with his time? Does he do activities which are as physically demanding as those you want him to undertake?

For starters, he needs to take baby with him when he's running errands. You are working and can't afford to lose your job.

You need to give him a list of all the tasks that need doing and when. Perhaps start of by giving him half the load and reduce your input iver a few months, so he is doing it all. Just like a trainee starting at work.

Goodness me, that's extraordinary! The dads I know are not like this. I'm somewhat amazed by this. I would have zero respect for a bloke who had never managed to take his own child out alone, although the mum not wanting to be without him is a little concerning-at 2, surely she's had some time away from her child? Does she manage to go in the bath/shower??

Putting the car seats down isn't the same, it's a practical issue I'd prefer someone to know how to do if necessary, but possibly not essential, but then you could say the same about taking out the toddler!

You know, it isn't that surprising or even difficult to get to that same place.

Firstly, it's not that he's never alone with the baby, it's that he's never OUT alone with the baby. She's at home and he works. He probably leaves for work around 7 and gets home around 7 on a day where there are no delays of any kind or anything out of the ordinary. He works 5-6 days a week. That means that he gets home at dinner/bath/bedtime.

Then when he isn't working, they spend that time as a 3. So no, he's never been out with the baby alone. He might have by now if they had a different lifestyle but they don't.

I am a SAHD to two DCs, now aged seven and four. Have been since shortly after DC1 was born.

It's a bit difficult to compare because I don't know how your DH is coping with his illness and how much it genuinely affects him, but I did and still do everything in the house and to do with the children: all cooking, cleaning, pickups/dropoffs, life admin, laundry. We share bedtime routines. My wife will pitch in at weekends with light cleaning and gardening, or she'll take the bins out if I'm tied up with cooking dinner, but it's essentially a case of she has a job, I look after everything else.

It helped that my wife had to go to the office pre-pandemic when DC1 was younger, so there was no place to hide for me even if I had wanted to. If he's physically up to it, I'd strongly suggest that you WFH less if this is an option for you. But I'd also lived by myself for years before marriage and children and it would have never occurred to me to opt out of basic life chores like cooking or cleaning. It also helps that I am, by a considerable distance, the better cook.

More recently, I've had a lot of personal distractions which could creep and occupy a lot of my time - my father died last year and sorting his affairs out is a gargantuan effort, and I'm the sole carer for another relative in their nineties, in rapidly declining health. So occasionally the washing up will pile up, or the kitchen floor might be overdue a mop, but I get it done eventually. FWIW, I had to spend long periods out of the country when DF died and my wife did not pick up the slack, but employed a cleaner instead.

This might out me a bit, but there are several other Dads in one of my DC's class who will occasionally meet at the pub with the kids after school on a Friday.

There is one who I suspect very much views looking after children as 'wife work' but he just couldn't resist coming along, parking his Range Rover on the double yellows so we could all see it from the beer garden, and showing off his trophy baby. He then kept trying to hold the baby in what was an extremely unnatural position, mainly so he could flash his Rolex Daytona at us while keeping his T-shirt logo on display too. You probably all know the type.

Baby then crapped in its nappy. And, depressingly inevitably, he called his wife to come and change it. His elder DC was then five, and he clearly had no clue how to look after either of them on his own.

His wife might also view it as women's work. It isn't always a man imposing his traditional values on a woman. Just as often, two people with traditional values find that commonality a core foundation for a fulfilling relationship.

It can be patronising when anyone assumes that a woman has been coerced into a lifestyle she doesn't want. What I will say is that people generally don't appreciate the downsides of their choices and so vent about them. But if you gave a lot of them the choice to be with someone who has different values, they wouldn't.

Context is needed for his illness. I’m an ICU nurse. Sepsis and how ill someone is depends on the source of it, any pre existing conditions, how long the patient was hospitalised for, age, and how many organs/what support was required. Basically it can be anything from very treatable with basic treatment to life threatening with long term complications including death and permanent disability.

If it was the former, I’d expect someone who was young and fit and well previously to be back to relative full function or close to after 7 months. If it was a more serious form where the patient was seriously ill with a prolonged admission +/- had pre existing co morbidities, then recovery can quite literally take years. And even then the patient is likely to have long term after effects and never regain the same full function.

So it’s hard to say without knowing the context of the illness. People who are recovering from serious illness can look well on the outside but feel quite the opposite on the inside.

I'll hazard a guess that the delicate little flower isn't too ill or exhausted to manage sex? But OP probably is!!

If he isn't well enough to fulfil his duties as a stay at home parent then you will have to outsource some things. As an employer I wouldn't be impressed if you were caring for your 11 month old during work hours and it's your only income as a family. If DH can't care for your son you need childcare. Do you need a cleaner? It seems reasonable that DH do meal planning and an online shop to be delivered. What easy meals/batch cooking can be done at the weekend? Can DH research this and shop for it and you make it on the weekend? Outsource everything you can for the time being and as DH recovers then he can then take on more tasks. Of course this will cost money and if he has an issue with this then what is his proposed solution? You don't have the capacity to keep going with the current state.

Well if he's feeling the opposite on the inside he can deprioritise his hobbies and expend his limited energy on tiding away after the dinner the OP has cooked. The fact he has the energy for the things he enjoys doing, but not to run a mop rounds suggests to me he has a severe case of laziness

I missed the part about energy expending hobbies. What are they? If he’s out playing golf or whatever, then yes he’s taking the piss. But I didn’t see that in the original post?

it was in one of the follow-ups that he is happy to do his own things, but not the stuff the OP actually needs help with - tried to attached a screenshot, but it wont go with the quote- update 4 I think. He's happy to do DIY just not housework

greyA · Yesterday 20:12

He’s being medically retired as opposed to being made redundant as he wasn’t able to commit to a timescale of when he would feel well enough to return. I’m not an ogre nor do I have impossibly high standards but I am working all day in a very high pressure job, getting up with the baby at night, looking after the baby whilst trying to work so he can run errands, I’m food shopping, cooking, cleaning. All attempts at gently helping him take charge have failed and even when I am on my knees like I am today he still has a knack of making me feel bad. I also did everything for the first 4 months after he came out of hospital - I didn’t ask him to lift a finger and just wanted him to concentrate on feeling better. He’s happy and well enough to do DIY or tinker with things he just doesn’t seem to want to do housework.

Wow she had done everything all day and just expected him to clear up while she had a bath. Regardless of how he’s feeling he’s surely well enough to to do something! If he’s incapable of doing one task in a day he should really be in a nursing home, this poor woman cannot work full time, look after two kids and him! If it’s just he doesn’t want to help, maybe tell him you’re giving up work and you’ll have to manage on benefits, see what he says to that. It seems like he expects you to do what you did when he was working full time, if so that’s really not on!

What's his social life like?

So he's doing all the kid stuff Mon to Fri?

I understand he's in recovery but presumably he can clean up after dinner without exhausting himself!

I think you need to sit down with him and have an adult, non- confrontational talk. Explain to him that working full time means you just don’t have the time or energy to do everything else and see what he feels able to take on. If you’re on a good wage could you farm out the cleaning /ironing and get gusto/hello fresh if he’s not a great cook?

May be consider buying in some daily help while your child is young. This would reduce pressure on the household.

If he's fit and well, yes I'd be expecting him to do the lions share of childcare, cooking and cleaning.

In your shoes op I'd expect him to cook most nights - and you share the clean up and putting the dc to bed with him 50/50
I'd also expect the house to have been cleaned by him every week - top to bottom
I'd expect him to do all the washing of the clothes, ironing and putting away
I'd also be expecting him to do the lions share of the life admin.

When you have finished work, the ad hoc stuff would be split 50/50 and you'd both get a lie in on a weekend, but things like taking the dc out, feeding them, cooking, bed time on a weekend would be 50/50

Your dh is taking the piss!

While you are at work, whether at home or an office, you should only be working. He should do all the child care and any household task that needs doing.

Once you are at home, it should be equal.

I work 14 hours over 2 nights so I can mainly be home. Some days are harder to get stuff done with a toddler but I do the main bulk.

I do not do his washing though at all.

Why would you do that when you've got a fit and healthy man who's not working in the house. The op has already said he's recovered

The thing that sticks out to me is the part where you always find him WATCHING TV in the day during the baby’s nap - but meanwhile YOU are the one doing all the chores? In addition to working??? What kind of man can sit and watch TV in the daytime while you’re working and paying all the bills and doing all the housework and cooking and shopping?

I’ve got three children and outside of the newborn phase when I was recovering from birth I honestly don’t think I’ve EVER felt I had time to sit and watch TV and chill while a baby is napping!!

If as OP states he is recovered and ‘well enough to do DIY’ and his position is that he ‘wants to be a stay at home parent’ rather than getting another job, then he needs to bloody do the job of being a stay at home parent. Including all chores, cooking, laundry, life admin, mental load. What part of that job is sitting on his arse watching TV during the day? Why isn’t he at least using that time to put a wash on, order a supermarket ship delivery, prep the dinner, load the dishwasher? That’s bare minimum - before you even consider all the cleaning of the house and the admin of running a household, having a toddler/ planning activities for them.

Sorry but he is taking the absolute piss here, I absolutely would not tolerate this in a partner. I am not exaggerating when I say that I would leave my husband if he did this. YANBU OP

For a happy marriage and home for my child. Not every person finds doing domestic chores easy especially if they have been unwell or otherwise stressed. The OP probably knows if in general her marriage is worth it.