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.

To me his initial comment seems like a compliment to his wife, saying how he wouldn't be able to do it without her.
Mumsnet is always for man bashing.
You know nothing about their circumstances. Maybe she wanted to go part time/not work (I know that is what I wanted).
Also there are plenty of women who are happy to go down the career route and offload childcare to others - I worked with one women where both her and her husband worked full time, leaving childcare to her mum (this was taking children to nursery/school and pick ups and looking after them after pick up time, so yes she wasn't having them all day, but she was the one doing all the running around, while also working part time herself! The mum once said she did the school pick up once and no one knew who she was and thought she was the child's sister as she had never done it before!).

I get it!
When I was single, long ago before any real WFH dynamic, I told an older male colleague I'd asked to work from home on the next day for a washing machine delivery.
Why he says, don't you have someone who can do that for you?
Funnily enough, I didn't have a wife.

I do get what you are saying but I often say the same. I am the highest earner, in a desk job, and I often say I couldn’t do it without my DH working part time - and our kids are teenagers. And yes, I could do it, of course I could, but it makes life so very much easier than I don’t have to.

The only other of my colleagues who I have ever heard say the same thing is another female, very high earner, desk job (and I am really not sure why that makes any difference!) colleague. Her DH doesn’t work at all. And I am very sure she couldn’t do what she does without that arrangement. So I don’t think it’s a male- female divide any more.

I couldn’t do my job without DH and his job supporting it. I suppose I better apologise for that then.

This.

I chose to look after the dc when they were little with full support from dh.
I have friends whose dh has always stayed at home to look after the children. It's a choice.
It's a positive thing that a couple discusses it and decides what works for them as a family. You've tried to switch it round to be a negative.

I get it OP. I don’t know why others are being so obtuse.

I do find it laughable and I think it’s a deeper symptom of the misogyny rife in our society - at least he recognises it though. Most men wouldn’t admit it and would frame it as doing their wife a favour.

OP isn’t talking about situations where a woman happily wants to be a SAHM. She’s talking about situations you see on here all the time where a woman is either working full time running herself ragged because her husband can’t possibly do any more, or women who want to go back to work but can’t find a suitable part time job which they need because men like OP’s colleague are adamant they need their wife to not work full time (while probably not paying into her pension either).

I get it OP. I work FT, default parent, and in a similar scenario to yours the male colleague said to me ‘god, my wife could just never do what you do’. Do they realise what a thinly veiled insult it is??
I am lucky that our workplace is flexible, I do a few drop offs/pick ups, I’ve never missed a play or sports day etc. But I also find it infuriating when my male counterparts act like they can’t do the same job without someone doing everything else for them back home.

Who looks after your child then when you are working ? Who ever is doing that is also working

so it’s nothing to do with working or not

I could get where you are coming from, until you said that you are the default parent because your husbands job is actually more demanding and needs to be prioritised.

Does your husband do the nursery drop off/pick ups?
Does your husband take a day off work when the children are inevitably off sick from nursery? Or do you keep them at home with you, while working a full time job as well?

I suppose it depends on how he is framing it. If they don’t want their child in full-time child care, then one of them had to give up something. If it means their life is that bit easier and not hectic mornings and evenings revolving around drop off and pick up every work day, covering for sickness etc. Then what he is saying makes sense.

If he is saying he couldn’t possibly do drop offs etc around his hours, he couldn’t possibly do bedtimes etc because of his job, how he needs hours of downtime then yes he is in the wrong.

But your DH has gone for a job that makes it difficult to be the default parent.

Presumably, childcare costs would be paid out of the household income, rather than her own wage.

I get it.

its a fallacy, that helps all of them to opt out of the hard bits of family life.

There’s nothing to suggest this women isn’t happy to be a sahm.

I get what you’re saying, but without knowing whether his wife is happy about it or not I think you might be over-interpreting.

For example. My dad helps me by cutting my lawn. I might say to my friend “I could never manage to keep on top of the house without my dad’s help in the garden” and she might get all uppity because HER father doesn’t help her and Of Course I could manage/ should do more myself.

But that’s not the point is it really? I daresay I could manage the job but right now I really appreciate my dad doing it and the thought of doing it all myself feels overwhelming. But yes if I had to, I suppose I could. I’m not using the housework as a way to justify not doing the garden, or to manipulate my father into doing it for me though (as he very kindly offered, and enjoys gardening) as you’re accusing the husband of doing with work.

Also sounds like the husband IS doing the pick-ups etc while his wife is away. So it’s not like he’s being completely literal when he says he ‘couldn’t’. He’s just acknowledging how much harder it is.

I get you OP. H s saying that he couldn't possibly work AND do day to day parenting. He obviously just doesn't want to.

@colleg I get it. I’m on the leadership team
in Financial Services, one of two women (other one is childless and no caring responsibilities). The men are great but invariably have a SAHP or one working v part time. They are really supportive of me needing flexibility but it’s not something they relate to as someone else picks up the flack/no thought to why I can’t accept a 5pm mtg at short notice.

That said, I have a DH who pulls his weight.

If you are in full time work you are obviously paying others to do some of the things that your colleague’s wife is doing, childcare at the bare minimum. I stayed home with mine bar done wfh I could don’t nap times, evenings because i didn’t want them in childcare and my ex had a 12 hour a day crazy job. It’s not right or wrong but they choose to organise their lives without lots of paid childcare

For me it’s not about doing the job though, it’s about all the hone stuff that unfortunately in my experience a lot of men still don’t want to think about/get involved in/do. I still think many women go part time or don’t work very because they know they’ll be doing 2 jobs - working full time and all the house/children stuff. Many men still think they get a badge for ‘helping’ with doing maybe the odd pickup and putting the recycling out.

I know lots of Mumsnetters have great partners however I still feel for many wonen it’s not having it all, it’s doing it all.

I think the issue here is that you think that the only "hard" work is physical to do with location or amount of actually moving your body.
That's not the case for everyone, and maybe his message is that his job burns him out to the extent that he needs downtime and he's grateful to his wife for allowing that.

Maybe that can make you feel resentful that you're doing so much more, but with a two parent family you get more flexibility to trade off work and family time.

I agree that it's a shame that he doesn't have a strong relationship with his child, but maybe he will develop that in time.

Twas ever thus. Is he also 'babysitting' while his wife's away rather than 'parenting'. Heard that one SO many times.

Hit a nerve lol

You probably did, yes. But that does tend to be the point of thoroughly unpleasant posts, doesn’t it?

Yanbu op. The number of men who are far too busy with their oh so important man-jobs to pick up kids, lift fingers. Their female colleagues otoh manage.

We tried to both work full time and found it too difficult as a family, with one child. The work life balance was out of kilter.