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?

What are they actually retiring from? They haven’t worked to be able to retire!

100% agree!

Tricky. You've had huge benefits from having a SAHP - you have presumably not had to alter your work at all for pickups/dropoffs, never had to take a day off work at short notice due to an ill child.

Your partner hasn't had the opportunity to build their career.

What skills do they have? What job could they reasonably get and how does it differ in status to what they did before they gave up work?

Could the discussion be about starting to acquire some skills for future work rather than rushing out to get the first (presumably minimum wage unskilled) job that comes along?

I'd be pissed off in your position too.

Surely this should be a joint and considered decision? Not a unilateral one by the person who does not earn anything. I would consider it to be financial abuse if they persisted in thinking it was a decision they could make alone without my consent (and one that I would be required to fund for the rest of my life). On that basis I would be considering how to financially and legally separate myself from that person.

Indeed once the kids are at school being a housekeeept and sahp isn’t a full time job and I couldn’t have lived like that

I guess one thing is that sone women feel very insecure and worthless at this stage - that feeling of inadequacy can hold them back form looking for work- and a face of bravado leadS to the I don’t care attitude

Has working partner asked sahm to get a job? Then working parent could drop to part time?

The SAHP is a lazy entitled fucker who needs to pull their finger out by getting a job or at least do 100% of the housework if the other half is working.

This was my ex. Very high earning, workaholic but it did enable me to be a sahm (thanks to a very generous child support). He’s nothing without his work and will work till he drops. Mind you he stopped child support and started giving it to the kids instead in their mid teens so it was lucky I had gone back to work otherwise I woukd have been totally fucked.

It was really lovely being a sahm, I loved every minute as I had worked many years before having children, but I would never recommend being solely dependent on someone else for your finances, it puts you in a very vulnerable position and no matter how valuable your home contribution is you are second in the pecking order.

This x1000.

Why continue supporting an arrogant leech?

Those aren’t “huge benefits.”

The sahp has benefited greatly from having all their & their offsprings needs covered for nearly 20 years, in exchange for doing low skill chores.

They don't "Need" to do anything if the sort. Stop being bossy.
Retirement means they can do as they please.
I plan on doing a lot of pottering and never having to speak to Joe Public ever again.

I think it all comes down to... is the working partner content for the non working partner to continue to not contribute financially?
I personally couldn't work another 15 years to support a partner who has 'retired' from not working. It's got to be a joint decision and not just what the non working partner wants.

They always share the household chores equally.

I would be amazed if all the chores are shared equally when one person is at home all day.

This would be my guess:

• You’re the man, she’s the woman
• You underestimate the amount she does to run the household
• You had a vague expectation that when you retired, she would carry on doing the same chores she’s always done whereas you would just relax and she has pushed back against that.

Very common in more traditional set ups for the man to retire and expect to never lift a finger again and the woman to never really ‘retire’ because she’s expected to carry on doing everything around the home she’s always done.

I would be very interested to hear her side of the story.

What’s the difference between being a SAHP with no kids there and retirement? Not obvious to me. Even in retirement people need to do their own chores.

So is the question, should the SAHP now be getting a job? After 20+ years in which it suited the other parent that they give up their work to look after kids and probably killed their career as a result. I guess it’s a conversation to be had. The only people I’ve known in this situation got quite bored of doing nothing fairly quickly. But I’d think its hard to find an employer willing to take on 50-somethings with no recent work experience.

Your post is nothing more than a list of guesses based on your personal prejudices.

Perhaps we could turn your comment on it's head:

• You had a vague expectation that when you retired, she would carry on doing the same chores she’s always done whereas you would just relax and she has pushed back against that.

The SAHP has a definite expectation that when he/she 'retires' from not working, the working partner would carry on working full time to support him/her as they have always done whereas he/she would just relax. That's based on what it actually says in the OP rather than my own imagination.

This is the same as me. But the child benefit contribution stops at 12

True but I had more than one child so ended up with sufficient stamps.

Me too. I intend to Potter in the garden, lunch with friends and spend time in France when I retire next year, aged 66. I'll have worked for 38 years as well as having 8 glorious years as a SAHM. My DH may retire with me.

The op's partner is regarding retirement as the period after the dc go to university, having not worked and parented and expecting the op to work for another 15 years. Rather different scenarios I would venture.

Why would they drop to part time? They don't indicate they want to. As long as the other partner contributes something they seem perfectly happy to carry on working full time until normal retirement - they just don't want to be the only one doing anything.

I get the feeling that this is a same sex couple and they are both women and I think that OP is telling the truth about the 50/50 split of domestic chores.

I'm not sure what OP's partner is retiring from tbh. You either take retirement from paid employment or you reach state pension age, neither of which is the case here.

What do you mean "when you retired, she would carry on" - the OP has not retired and has no intention of doing so for some time. There's no question of the OP "just relaxing".

The partner has declared that now the kids have left home she is retired, and doesn't need to work or do anything any more, while the OP continues to go out to work and do their share of the household chores.

Retiring from what exactly?

So freaking tired of these tropes that "the SAHP sacrificed their career..." and "the SAHP facilitated the breadwinner's career." Both are utter bullshit.

Every SAHM I have ever known was champing at the bit to quit work, hated working, was half-hearted in trying to establish a career when single because they wanted to find a provider and be an SAHP.

If women really want a career, they will have one. One person I know has TWO children with Cornelia de Lange syndrome; they are basically teenage toddlers in diapers and pushchairs, a HUGE amount of caregiving. She has a fulltime job as a newspaper editor and just earned her master's degree. Her spouse is in the same field, which is very demanding timewise and not very well paid.

As to facilitating the partner's career, again, bullshit. A high achiever is going to achieve either way, whether it's childed, childfree, childed and partnered or childed and hiring help. Not having to do school runs or take sick days for ill offspring does not a career make.

And they forget the drag on the budget that an SAHP is: having to provide all housing/appliances/furnishings/maintenance/heat/electricity, all food, beverage, takeaway, dining out, all personal care, sundries, clothing, shoes and accessories, all tech, gadgets, devices, subscriptions, all transport/auto/repairs, auto insurance, fuel, all other types of insurance, travel, leisure, gifts, Christmas if celebrated, hobbies, entertainment, etc., just for the SAHP. Plus sufficient retirement savings.

Then all of the above plus sport and extracurriculars, possibly tuition, uni savings, etc. for the offspring.

Plus the breadwinner may have a few desires of his/her own, such as hobbies, travel, sport, etc.

The SAH is getting an exellent deal to have all of the above provided merely for doing housework and school runs. They are not "sacrificing" anything because people who really, really want a career manage to have one.

I know a specialist immunologist who has two young kids, sees patients, runs and fundraises for her huge research lab, is a long-distance runner, teaches yoga and operates an organic livestock farm with her lawyer spouse. They have no domestic staff and only a couple of seasonal helpers on the farm; they are up at 4am every day. She didn't feel the need to be an SAH just because she had children and a working spouse.

Interesting to read comments about an entitled and lazy leech (I totally agree), but just a few months back there was a post from sahm who bemoaned that her NHS consultant husband who worked away (so they would live comfortably) and only came home for week-ends, only let her have one full day off - Saturday or Sunday whilst he looked after the children and that on Friday and Sunday he was doing work admin in his study and that woman was told that the consultant 'should pull his socks up' and be a proper parent. Some even advised to 're-evaluate whether to stay in the relationship. So it is surprising and good to see that this time the general opinion seems to be more varied!

Your guess is based on nothing but sexism though. Just because OP is saying they do 50/50 with chores, you're assuming that they are a man.

My assumption is that they are either both women or OP is a woman.

The beverages! 😂