Stay at home parent looking forward to retirement

[Equalitystreets]

One partner is and has always been the sole breadwinner.

Other is a stay at home parent who as the children have gotten older has gradually had more free time during the day.

They always share the household chores equally.

When the children go to University, the stay at home parent has said they will be retiring and ‘they can’t wait’.

The partner with the job has at least another 15 years of work to do (and all their retirement funding will come from this partner’s investments, or investments set up in the stay at home parent’s name that were set up and funded by the working partner).

Is the stay at home partner being reasonable to declare their job is completed when the children are 18, even if the other partner has another 15 years of work to do?

It isn't. It's a battle between working people and people who think that having been a parent of young children at some point in the past means you can stay at home forever. There's very little (I havent seen any though I havent read every post) criticism of stay at home parents who actually have kids at home that need any looking after.

Yes, this is what I meant.

The thinking that the “provider” has signed up for the next 15 years, he hasn’t it’s employment at will he could burn out tomorrow and quit.

He could also get sick, get fired, his employer could go bust.

And having another person in the workforce would not only take the financial pressure off him, it can give you access to sickness benefit, death-in-service, certain types of paid leave. It gives you a cushion against life events which as you get older is a great thing.

I've reported you for your personal attack on me.

I will use any term that I please. As a sahm, that's my right.

So having done the job of raising children means you're now entitled to rest and relax and enjoy the downtime - well that applies to both parents then, no?

They agreed that one spouse is at home raising the family. Other spouse agreed to work and finance raising said family. Kids have been raised and left home. They've both done their job. SAHM has obviously stopped SAHMing, you can't be a stay at home mother if there are no kids in that home. And working parent can also stop financing the family, including the former SAHM.

It does sound from the posters who think it is justified to retire because a parents' job (even of adult dcs) is never done or staying unemployed just in case somebody has a crisis or needs exceptional care have had their worlds shrunken so much from being a SAHM that any ounce of work appears toxic.

I don't understand why you did 50% of housework if you were working.

When the children go to University, the stay at home parent has said they will be retiring and ‘they can’t wait’.

I would be saying, 'retiring from what? So, what exactly are you going to stop doing?'

If they are expecting you to continue working outside the home for fifteen more years whilst they don't do any more housework, then that is bonkers. Do they think you will do it all after work whilst they do nothing?

Surely, you have been married long enough to have some sort of idea what they mean here!

If both parties are happy with the arrangement then yes, it sounds wonderful

Sounds like it’s not a retirement for sahp, it’s redundancy! They need to contribute meaningfully to the household on comparable terms.

Whilst this is entirely up to the couple to decide frankly IMO the SAHP has been a lazy arsehole ever since the children went to school.

I think negotiating the sahp to either get a part time job ( bearing in mind all the years out of work will mean a much more uninteresting job in all probability) and increase of percentage of household jobs or taking on all household jobs with a plan for you to go part time when it feels right and take back on your share of household jobs once retired.

eh?

Indeed.
Posters likemumofoneAlonebutokay are very keen to emphasise the load, including the mental load SAHM's have but never consider the load the "provider" has.

It does rather smack of I have had our life the way I want it up to now (With wife at home doing the child rearing) and now I want to retire early, so you are going to have to magic a career from nothing to facilitate me!

I VERY much doubt he does 50/50 - many men seem to think they are far more helpful then they are, there is a lot more to do than anyone realises if they have never done it. He has minimised her contribution all the way through, which is a red flag.

We also don’t know what was agreed at the beginning, she may have been sad to give up her job etc but it wasn’t feasible with their lives/his job etc.

Id love to hear the other side this particular story.

I VERY much doubt he does 50/50 -

Why should he? He's at work 5 days a week.

He shouldn’t be doing 50/50 but shouldn’t claim he is to get sympathy on here.

We all start from somewhere and magic a career out of nothing (whether that’s after school, after uni or after raising kids). Lack of work history is not a get-out-clause to looking for work or changing career.

Also I’m sure OP made lifestyle and financial sacrifices to being the sole earner. Maybe he also wanted to be around the kids more as well but his partners salary wasn’t high enough to justify a reduction in his hours. Like you say we don’t know the full details.

Obviously OP would be unreasonable if he wasn’t willing to finance/ support the training and time it would take to get his partner meaningfully back into the workplace. But from the sounds of it, his partner is unwilling to engage in the discussion at all, so it hasn’t even got that far.

SAHP is a lazy fucker! Only doing half the chores! Expecting 15 years in a life of luxury while you toil away until retirement, and you’re supporting them financially all this time. Crikey they’ve got it made. No wonder the resentment is building.

My friend was in your position. The resentment built to the point she had an affair with a colleague, left the SAHP to his own devices and married her AP. She feels she’s in a much more equal relationship now and is a lot happier. A cautionary tale.

The OP doesn't at any point say anything that suggests they want to retire early. (I don't think it's been stated clearly anywhere that the OP is a man, although they may well be).

And perhaps you shouldnt automatically assume that things the OP states clearly and ambiguously are lies, just because...I don't know, because what?

How do you know they aren’t? We don’t even know it’s a man, that’s an assumption.

there are ways to share anyway. Dh hates housework, so he hired a cleaner to do his share- while the cleaner was in he did a few hours overtime to pay for it. Seeing as his hourly rate was higher than the cleaner it’s not an unreasonable choice. So all I had to do was keep on top of the day to day mess as my 50%.

I suspect OP is a woman.

Because they think OP is a man and men are incapable of doing 50/50 of the housework apparently.

Or because it means the at home person is, god forbid, actually in the wrong and that doesn't suit their argument.

This thread is just another attempt to get out the SAHM-obsessed posters in full force for the bank holiday, so they can declare how much housework random people should be doing - always in percentage form - alongside the other riveting existential question of "What is a SAHM."

The OP, doesn't even say how old they are and who is male or female or whether the 'kids' are 30 or 18.

OP, if you want to know what your partner means by 'retire' - well, just ask them. Nobody knows on here.