Male colleague needs part time working mum to take care of 1 child

[colleg]

I was talking to a colleague recently and it came up that we both had sons who are 3 years old. I also have a 5 year old daughter.

my colleague was saying that he could never do the job ( the same job I do ), if his wife didn’t work very very part time around the needs of their 3 year old.

I was pretty shocked he said that to me. Isn’t it funny how a man can take such huge liberties and convince his wife that she can’t possibly work full time / she has to be the full time default parent for their 1 child, while there’s a woman standing next to him, who has two kids, does the same job as him and is also the default parent !

and before you start, no the child does not have special needs. It really does seem that this colleague needs his wife’s support to do the job I do, with two kids in tow.

it’s a high pressured job, but it’s a desk job. We aren’t going out to fields, farming the land or working in construction. We aren’t nurses or doctors on shift work. We have a 9-5 desk job in essence. And we also work from home, for most of the week.

I had this same thought while reading a Mumsnet thread when one woman said there was no way she could take a job because her DH earns £80k and in order to do a job on such a high salary he needed complete support at home - all the cooking, cleaning, childcare sorted by her.

I earn £95k and thought "wow, I wish my partner thought I had such a big job that I couldn't possibly do any housework"

It's entirely a male/sexism thing.

I think YABU that you assume that his wife has been tricked/fooled/convinced into working part-time/doing more of the childcare. On the one hand, many women want to work but I think all things being equal, there are a lot of women (who probably won't admit it because of the backlash) who would like to be SAHM or at least work part-time. I was definitely one of those.

I don't see the point of this thread,

The OP makes out like her child has to sit in the office reception all day, or under her desk, while she checks on them every 5 minutes, hoping for the best in between emails.

No. The 3 year-old is in childcare while she does her 9-5. She does no childcare in this time. She is the same as anyone else in the office in this respect,

The only difference is, while the colleague is doing his 9-5, his child is with his wife, not a childminder.

That's all he's saying. He didn't say anything about a 'big job.' That's the OP inventing words that were never said due to her own issues.

Difference is he knows his child the ops colleague needs to get to know his son. That's probably why the op is posting she has had enough of listening to him and wonders what other women think. I think judging by the responses we are to tolerant than what we should be

Same way I did when my two were in nursery. Drop off from 8, pick up at 5.30.

The fact the wife is with the child in the day, doesn't mean the DH does nothing with his child when he gets home. Working in an office and parenting are not mutually exclusive!

Why do people assume that just because a woman is a SAHM, they do everything 24/7? It just means they have the child/ren in the day. As soon as the other parent is home, they both get on with whatever needs doing.

OP, I think I get it.

If your DH was hit by the proverbial bus tomorrow and died, chances are your life would change very little, in terms of the practical impact. You'd still keep on working and being the default parent for your kids.

But if your colleague's wife was to suddenly die, his life would change massively. He'd have to either reduce his hours at work, or find/pay for daycare. And he'd have to get used to being a parent, let alone the default parent - which means actually getting to know his child!

What barriers do women have to earning more?

By the same token, OP’s husband would be absolutely stuffed if she, the default parent and a full-time wage earner, popped her clogs.

You can't make this up. That's how women think and then later on they wonder why they have no pension.

He would find a woman to play stepmother to his child or hand the child to his mother. You think he will play single daddy for long.

Edit: problem is we enable these feckless men. We give birth to them and teach them how to be feckless by doing everything for them. Women are more than happy to play maid to their husbands and sons.

I’d like to know the answer to this too…

@colleg but your DH relies on you having the job you have doesn't he? Why does he get that choice?

I know what statistics say, but in all the jobs I have seen in real life (small sample, I know), women doing the same job and same hours / commitment as men were earning the same, if not more.

Women working LESS were earning less. It's not that outrageous.

It is a bit of an annoying thing for your colleague to say but him and his wife have presumably made a joint decision to sacrifice extra income for her being at home more. As long as both are happy, they don’t need to justify it (he sounds like he was trying to - which is the annoying bit!)

Are you happy with your own household set-up? Does your husband significantly out-earn you given you’re the default parent? Do you feel you do too much and it’s impacting on your enjoyment of life?

Im not intending to ask intrusive questions. But when someone else’s choices (that don’t affect you) start to irritate you - often there is a message there. And if the message is “Why am I doing so much when this joker has a wife running around after him at home?” That is a message for your own DH.

But I do 100% agree with you that 9/10 women do a LOT more than men in a family. And it’s due to sexist rubbish about a woman’s role that belongs in the past. And it is highly irritating to see, even when it doesn’t impact you

It sounds much less likely, though, given that her DH appears to actually know his children...

Based upon what? OP has said nothing much of her DH, beyond that she is the default parent and that he "isn't physically there to do a lot of things". I don't know why you assume he is any better of dad...

I interpreted the 'get used to him' remark as meaning, get used to him picking the child up and dropping him off, eg, the new routine. Not literally, child barely recognises parent and would have a melt-down if this semi-stranger suddenly turned up at his nursery without warning.

In which case, neither set of fathers 'know' their kids in that sense because they don't do the grunt work and both default to the mother.

I imagine a thread could just as easily have been started by the colleague's wife:

Don't you think this situation is incredibly unfair?

My husband and his colleague both work high-pressure 9-5 jobs from home with some flexibility. Because of the nature of our husbands' jobs, both myself and my husband's colleague' agreed to become the default parent.

To accommodate our young child's schedule and family life, I decided to go part-time for the foreseeable future. This means I can do all the nursery pick-ups and drop-offs and I have some downtime and better quality of life due to only working part-time. I am very happy with this arrangement and my husband acknowledges my contribution and is appreciative. We both feel a lot less frazzled than if we were both working full-time and trying to juggle the childcare arrangements between us.

However, the husband of the colleague works a field job that takes him away from the home from early til late and can never take on any of the grunt work associated with childcare. Like me, his wife has to do all of that. But! her husband has also prevailed on her to work FULL-TIME. She has to do all the pick ups and drop offs and associated grunt work AND work full time whilst he gets to check out of it all.

Because my husband has a flexible job, he could in theory pick up some of the nursery runs if I need time off or was ill. Her husband can't/won't do that.

How is this fair? Why do men think they have the right to do this??

When DD was little I couldn't have done my job without DP being around to pick up the slack when I wasn't there. Equally DP couldn't have done hers without me being around.

We could only afford childcare 3 days a week so would have been screwed if we'd both had to work Mon-Fri. Instead DP worked Wed-Sun.

Funnily enough, neither of us is incapable of looking after our child, we just couldn't be in two places at once.

I just think if doing it yourself is so hard stop whining about it?? She posts these instagram stories about ‘my toddler at 5am’ and it’s a clip of Godzilla etc yeah haha funny but all our toddlers are the same if you need a break have a break why go on like someone’s holding a gun to your bonce until you set up a Rice Krispies and paint tray in your white kitchen

My brother is on about 90k and yes once a month or so he goes away for a night but there’s nothing stopping him from coaching his sons footie team, cooking nearly every night, doing laundry ironing parents evenings etc

I think women say these things to try and prove something to themselves

He's obviously a bit dense if he knows your situation and still came out with that line as a non joke

Who supports you, fairies?

Exactly. If OP is frazzled working 9-5 and doing 'everything' for 2 DC while her husband does a physical job 'in the fields' (god knows what this even means), then it's HER DH who is the problem and needs to step up. No use blaming some man in the office, because he is happy for his wife to be very part-time. Go part-time yourself OP if it bothers you so much. Tell your DH to get out of these far-away fields and earn more money elsewhere.

How though? Has OP got permission from her manager to do so? Quite often we see on mn people working from home taking liberties while wfh..taking breaks to play with their dogs etc. We don't know if OP has her employers permission. We don't know if her male colleague has got permission to up and leave to do a nursery pick up. I am surprised at how there are so many assumptions about this male colleague based on a few sentences he uttered. OP is very "look at me , look how better I am " but she doesn't know anything about his/his wife's life and their circumstances. Maybe the wife is happy working part-time hours so that she can spend time with her dc instead of placing them in childcare. For all we know OPs DH might be having a colleague saying the same thing about him. Judge not others..and all that

This is it. To be fair it works well for some women to not work and enjoy a much higher salary than they could earn themselves. Men don’t tend to get away with this