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 a ridiculous and offensive comment.

Given that most SAHPs meal plan, do the weekly shop and cook, surely you wouldn’t genuinely begrudge them eating the meal? 😂 You do realise they have time to shop in person at cheaper supermarkets at the best times for the bargains? More time to cook from scratch and minimise food waste? I can shop for £70 per week for a family if 4. I don’t like takeaways/fast food. I know others who actually grow all their own food, saving their families loads!

We don’t need to run 2 cars like we would if we both worked. I actually prefer walking, and walk everywhere with my children as I adore the exercise and quality conversation.

I have a very efficient capsule wardrobe (you arguably spend far more on professional clothing when working), and ask my husband, mother, brother and sister for new clothes/toiletries/make up for birthday/Christmas presents, which they bought me when I was working too. Or do I not even deserve a present? 😂

Our hairdresser comes to our house and costs £24 for me & both children. I do my own nails/hair dye very cheaply.

I never buy a hot drink out, I make my own at home or take a flask.

I save my family an absolute fortune with my cleaning/DIY/painting and decorating skills. I hunt out all the best deals, and book up all our days out/experiences for the absolute best prices.

A LOT of assumptions you have made about SAHPs!!!

Keep telling yourself that.

Working parents do all of that AND bring in income to the family.

I have always worked fulltime and still manage to meal plan, shop frugally for grocery items, find a cost-effective hairdresser, do DIY and so on.

The fact is that supporting an adult dependent is expensive. SAHP are not working for free, they are working for myriad benefits that most adults fund themselves.

Try going to Tesco and asking them for free food and beverage because you spent the day cleaning and doing DIY. See how fast you are laughed out of the store. The purchasing power generated by doing housework is ZERO. The purchasing power of someone who works for income is not ZERO.

I found being a sahm changed drastically with the age changes. Before primary it is a relentless 24/7 job (especially as a single parent with no breaks at all). I would go to bed exhausted and spent many a night crying on the stairs because they wouldn’t sleep or stay in their beds and would run around causing havoc. That really was trenches stuff.

When they started school it was a lot easier during the day but there was still daily school gate commitments with no appropriately timed jobs local to me (I don’t live in a city or big town), So I was lucky I was always there for sick days, school holidays etc. Once at school I did enjoy the daytime though and never got bored, had a great friend in similar position so we met up a lot. I’ve been very bored in some jobs though and have been known to retire to the ladies and sit on the loo (lid down) and just ‘rest my eyes’ as I get a big slump mid afternoon. I did go back to work but I loved being home with no one telling me what to do. To be honest in all the jobs I’ve had it’s only ever been about the people, I didn't actually give a shit about the actual ‘work’.

But you would be gaining skills, work history, a professional network/contacts, pension contributions, etc. all of which will contribute to your supporting your family over the long run and not being a burden in retirement.

it's incredibly short-sighted to focus on the short-term view of childcare costs v income. Working is an investment. Not working is allowing yourself to slip further and further behind every year.

Trust me, nobody could clean our home to the exacting standards that I do, because it’s my home and I love it. I wouldn’t entrust this to anybody whether working or not 😂 My best friend actually just sacked her ‘professional’ cleaner, as she spied on her due to her poor cleaning, and caught her out leaving half hour early regularly. I know I do a far, far better job than many of the so called ‘professionals’ 😂

So the partner that went out to work and enjoyed never having to worry about childcare/holidays/sickness etc and was quite happy for the other partner to take on the responsibilities whilst they needed childcare, is now expecting the other partner to return to the workplace after 18+ years because they are no longer required?
Realistically what are they expecting them to do? Will the SAHP be able to get any more than minimum wage?

And here we are again posters listing a set of tasks undertaken to nth degree because they have the time to do so
You have the time because you do not work. Time to faff about and time to brag about your oh so exacting standards. All enabled by fact you’re literally stretching time seeking tasks that are then deemed essential. Domestic chore rebranded as work to justify the faff

Being at home is only a problem if one (or both) partners think it is. If it’s not then it doesn’t matter and they can faff away.

So the partner who has had their entire life funded thinks this should continue even if they are no longer doing their childcare provision part, and haven't done for a while? Not to mention the working partner in this case has always done 50-50 household tasks.

I will keep telling myself that thanks, because I am not misogynistic, I value work which has always traditionally been done my women. I value the work of unpaid carers/volunteers, and don’t want to live in a society where we only value people who work for money. Ask yourself - if you are so happy with your own life and choices, then why so much bitterness towards SAHPs?

Genuinely why does it bother you? Are there not plenty of paid jobs being done by inefficient time wasters? Jobs that TBH society really wouldn’t notice much if they existed or not?

I wouldn't have a cleaner either. I still think it's silly when some people compare them to someone cleaning their own house.

But genuinely why though? Why does me cleaning my own home really matter less in principle than if I popped next door and cleaned my neighbour’s home to the same standard but just happened to get paid for it? I try as hard whether I’m paid or not 🤷🏻‍♀️

They seem to be confused as to the definition of “retirement”.

You do not retire (necessarily) when a task is finished. You retire (generally) when you have sufficient funds such that you don’t need to work again - albeit plenty carry on for various reasons.

In this case, quite clearly, they should find another job to do, and then perhaps their partner doesn’t need to work as long.

Exactly.

No one is owed a living. If one has planned and saved, one can retire whenever one feels ready.

One can't retire on the breadwinner's dime unless the breadwinner is happy for that to happen. She/he who pays the piper calls the tune. End of.

So what would your DP say if you agreed that retirement was a great idea, now your family was raised & said you were also giving up work? Would you have enough money? I suspect not.

On the other hand, after decades of being a SAHP I imagine your DP would not easily be able to walk into a well paid, fulfilling job. Working a boring, minimum wage job when you don’t really need the money would be soul destroying.

I think you need to have a proper talk & see what compromise looks like. Are you thinking that if DP gets a job you will be able to retire earlier? Or have a better standard of living now? Or just resentful that they get to choose how to spend their day & you don’t?

Maybe a compromise would be for DP to update their skills & find something part-time, whilst taking on the majority of the housework.

Because you are cleaning your own (or a family members) mess in your own house? It's also something the vast majority of people do, even if they also work.

Cleaning up your own mess is just what most adults do.

If you and your DH are happy with this arrangement, that's great. It apparently works for you all.
However, this is not about you and what you do. Just because you are a conscientious mother and housewife, it does not follow that every partner who does not work is the same. This particular house person (I suspect a male person) is clearly not and their partner is not happy with the arrangement so your arrangements are irrelevant.

what’s wrong with a minimum wage job?

some of my best jobs were the bar and shop jobs I had when I was a student. No responsibility, pitch up, have a laugh with colleagues, go home.

anyway as I said before, even a min wage job will be 25k a year. That over 10
years is 250k, which is a huge difference to the pension pot. Would mean your spouse can retire much earlier, or you would have a significantly better quality of retirement.

The bile on this thread seems to have convinced the op it isn’t worth the risk to his marriage and life. So it looks like you have only served to offer op an insight into get true resentment and misery looks like.

Good luck with that.

When you nip to the shops, do you take money your provider earned, or do you tell the shopkeeper "well I did the school run and cleaned the toilet and dusted the lounge, so please give me some meat, bread, butter and a bottle of wine" ???

Do you think anyone on the planet, including the businesses that furnish your consumables, your tech, your fuel, your clothing, etc., give a flying fuck about the value of housework? It takes money to survive in 2025 and expecting someone else to earn all of the money you need, for decades on end, is really taking the piss.

And it's not misogynistic to say that women should support themselves.

You haven’t included taxes, NI or any of the expenditures needed with work. It will be nothing like this amount.

Is it entire life though (sorry, I might have missed that part). I had my children late so I had actually put in 25 years in the labour force before I became a sahm, which I was for 15/16 years then went back to work. Altogether I’ve put in 32 years in the workplace, which is probably nearly longer than some posters have been alive. So yes sometimes I watched Netflix in the day and ‘lunched’ with my friend but I felt I had already paid my dues and if I wanted to put my feet up, with a bar of chocolate and a box set I was going to 😁

Thank you for at least acknowledging that I am conscientious, I genuinely appreciate that (I find assumptions about SAHPs being lazy quite distressing, as I try really hard at all aspects of this role, just as I did when studying or working).

I actually only started going into this level of detail in response to some other posters being incredibly rude about SAHPs.

It depends what the SAH parent means by 'retirement.'
A stay at home parent works, but is just not in 'paid employment'. (Although the savings in expensive childcare are like a salary!)
When children leave home , both parents' roles change, but they are still parents, always.
What does 'retirement' mean here, please?