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?

Absolutely. Unless your children have SEN, complex needs etc then the idea that an 18-21 needs so much parenting that it sucks the soul of you is an embarrassment. If you're university age children are so demanding and needing so much parenting at home, then you've quite frankly failed as a parent to give them independent living and thinking skills. It's hardly a ringing endorsement for being a stay at home then being in the best interests for the a child.

And I totally agree about the posts about normal mundane tasks suddenly being stretched out to take all the day. There was a post this week with a SAHM describing her day and justification about why she couldn't possibly work while her kids were at school and it involved tasks like taking the bins out, vacuuming and having to dismantle the hoover every time she vacuumed to empty it and having to dust every nook and cranny of the house daily. Absolutely ridiculous.

It has it's risks as anything in life does. In the grand scheme of things I haven't been married that long and worst case scenario I will go back to how I lived before, on welfare. Just being honest Mumsnetters will hate me for it and I get that, the thought of their tax money etc but when it's my husband funding it it really is none of their business*. They only get mad because they don't actually like being burnt out.

*using "I and my" but obviously this goes for any situation with a married couple where only one is the breadwinner

You sound like a loving and kind person that is perhaps fed up more by the talk of retirement than actually forcing your dp to get a job at this difficult point in her life.

Perhaps she can take on more tasks at home? Maybe she can do start a small business or consider a holiday let business or similar. There might be a compromise that works in the longer term.

Why are the household chores split 50/50 when one partner is out of the house full time working and the SAHP doesn’t have fairly young children to care for ?
The SAHP ought to get most ,if not all , of those jobs done ?
When the children are pre school and at home being looked after by the SAHP most of the time , I understand that chores will need to be divided up differently as the job of the SAHP is primarily to look after , educate and entertain the children .
When the children are at school then the SAHP can be expected to do more while still understanding that the SAHP will likely have to stop whatever they’re doing to start school run and ferrying around / looking after / supervising the school age children about 2.30 pm till whenever bedtime is .
( it’s just my experience that I had to start heading off to collect youngest early as it was a long walk ! )

They might be fully supported and enjoy their job.

It's what the OP is about. We actually don't know if OP is a man or a woman but either way, they now want the other person to work after all of these years.

It would be different if the working person was happy with it.

SAHPs don't get paid in cash no, but they get paid in kind surely, being fully funded for however many years?
A paid job is just as life sucking as staying at home can be, and work stress doesn't end when you "clock off."
If I was the OP (working) I would be looking to split, cut my losses with a divorce and find someone who could contribute to their own retirement and not see me as a meal ticket/ mug until I drop dead.

That’s not true for a lot of posters.

I can’t imagine anything less personally fulfilling than finding things to do in the house all day whilst my partner works. Some women have their own ambitions outside of running the house, and that’s not unreasonable.

I am genuinely not jealous, or bitter. I like working, I like making my own money, and I like that household responsibilities are shared. I may be tired, but I’d be bored as a “home maker” and don’t see it as just my responsibility to make that home.

I don’t buy into the idea that being a homemaker is full time work. It’s not, or the rest of us wouldn’t manage it around work.

And I genuinely cannot imagine anything more soul destroying or tedious than being a “lady of leisure.” I like having purpose beyond the home and going for coffee.

We’re not all jealous of people who don’t work, because lots of women want to.

I agree that going off to uni does not end the role of the mother. Mine followed through on my demand that they did not come home with a suitcase of washing. They also were good at feeding themselves. I worked full-time and was doing a phd but there were still some parental duties. The duties often involved taking them to shopping centres or making encouraging noises when they talked about their assignments. There was a need to be emotionally available. Not hugely time consuming but i had not got to the end of my role as a mother. Both came home for a while. I have recently been renamed “Granny”. So happily still no retirement in our house.

I don't think anybody has said we stop being parents when kids are adults. We are saying that it is in fact possible to work and still make encouraging noises when DC call. It's not a 24/7 full on job.

I very much doubt most people just spend all day in the house! They go to the gym, do the gardening, meet friends, they may study or have hobbies and look after the house, dc when home and are the organiser. Many pay cleaners, PAs, gardeners and decorators to do exactly what a home person might do on a daily/weekly basis. What is the difference?

The difference between earning a living and going to the gym?

I don’t think that question needs answering tbh 😂

Exactly.

You'd think that in 2025, it wouldn't still be an assumption that all women ultimately want to be 'homemakers'.

Exactly.

She's going to be a millstone around his/her neck for the next 40 or 50 years? I think not.

Once kids are in school, assuming no special medical needs, there is zero excuse for an able adult to not earn her own livelihood and contribute to the support of her offspring.

I was talking about the other stuff. My cleaner is paid £25 and my decorator is £180 a day. Gardening is £280 a day, this all adds up if it’s outsourced, so it is of value. Particularly if you have a large house and garden.

You do know this isn't all about you right? Again, you are talking about females making all the sacrifices when the sexes here have not bee disclosed.

You are fortunate to apparently have such choices. Your partner less so, it seems. He has to, in your own words, 'run himself into the ground and an early grave' so that you can relax.

By the way, I strongly suspect that this is OP is the female in the relationship so she apparently has to run herself into an early grave to that her husband can relax and 'retire' at 50ish just because he cared for his own children full time for a few years 15-20 years ago.

Different couples make different decisions and that is absolutely fine if both are genuinely content with the arrangement and both look after and care for the other. That early isn't the case here, although @Equalitystreets has said that she wants to be pragmatic.

But then he wouldn't be providing you with food, transport/auto/fuel, tech and devices, clothing, personal care and sundries, and so on.

SAHM are a big financial burden; once those costs are out of the budget they free up funds for childminders and nannies.

Clearly there is a bit of a gaping hole in comprehension exhibited by certain posters!

I work part-time and buy my clothes with that money. I don't drive and have had the same phone for over six years which I bought before I married (so technically YOU bought it with your taxes😏).
If I died tomorrow a childminder would cost way more than I could earn working fulltime

Perhaps op dp will invoice for everything they do and then they can earn the salary expected of them on here.

The difference is that they are providing a service? They aren't cleaning their own house etc.

The people on here getting upset over nothing. 😂

If it suits both the stay at home partner and the partner who works and provides.its no one else's business.

We do those jobs ourselves. But I certainly wouldn’t be the “hired help” in my own home.

Are you a wife, or his cleaner/nanny? Not for me thank you.

Plus if we can accept that SAHPs go to the gym, socialise, commit time to hobbies - I’m definitely not paying someone to do that.

Thank you for recognising the value of all these tasks! My recent home projects during the 2 1/2 hours I am alone daily have included scrubbing down and re-painting our whole back garden fence (20 panels), gate and shed door. I’ve also sanded down and painted our new bannister and front door canopy. I have 2 large, landscaped gardens which are my absolute pride and joy, and really do need daily/weekly attention. I never had time for this in the same way whilst working FT, and it is joyous.

My cleaning is also extremely thorough. I have very specific weekly, monthly and seasonal tasks which I follow, as I love my home and adore cleanliness, tidiness and order. I always cleaned whilst working FT, but at the weekend when I was tireder, but now I have really got this house running exactly how I want it.

I always knew I could save our family a lot of money myself, but I was delighted to see a female CEO recently advertise explicitly for a SAHP to run her household for her. I read the job description, and she was offering to pay between £80-100K! Which is over double what I earned as a teacher. I read her job description and was like ‘that’s literally what I do every day/week!’ She was even offering to throw in a car and paid holidays! Delighted to see somebody so explicitly showing their understanding and value of what a SAHP really does ‘do all day’ 😊