Mortgage free but DH wont let me give up work

[ChristmasSpirit99]

Hi all,
Just looking for advice. We are very fortunate to recently become mortgage free, due to a mix of my husbands savings, stocks & wage. We both work full time & are older parents… we have 2.5 & 3.5 year olds who are at nursery. Im generally shattered working full time & looking after kids when we have them, I asked my husband if I could give up work as we dont really need my salary. He got extremely annoyed & said absolutely not, the spare cash is needed for major works on the house & the kids futures. It was only due to his hard work that we’re here. Im just annoyed & disappointed, what do you think? Is he right? Xx

What a bizarrely patronising and misogynist take on reducing working hours when the children are small. Opting out of financial responsibility is nothing to do with it nor is feels. Opting into childcare is a perfectly normal thing for a parent to want to do and it’s sad that misogyny has messed with women’s heads so that they can’t see that.

Anyone who is a parent has the right to say they would like to spend more time with the kids when they’re small. It’s between the couple to work out if that’s viable for them.

Or maybe just drop to part time instead of being a martyr? Can sense there is more to this here..

Well, that's my point. It's up to the couple to work it out between them, and her husband isn't on board. It's fine for her to be disappointed, but she can't just demand that he goes along with it.

It's perfectly reasonable to want to give up work in order to spend more time with your children, or indeed, to spend time doing anything the heck you like, but it isn't reasonable to make that decision unilaterally while expecting someone else to fund your choices.

If the H decided that, as a parent, he wanted to spend more time with his children, and that the whole family would have to accept a less comfortable lifestyle and greater financial insecurity in order to facilitate his choice, would you feel that she was being unreasonable to say that she didn't want this?

Suggest that you drop two days, and he drops one, giving you more time to do housework etc, and more time to relax as a family. It’s not fair if you work full time AND pick up ALL the housework/ childcare as well.

sounds as though he needs to do his share of the housework and kid wrangling.

Why not suggest each of you go down to 4 days? pick different days so you can reduce childcare costs.

Try getting your DH to do half of caring for kids and dropping off to nursery first. Then you would be less exhausted. Once he's realised how tired you get suggest you drop one day a week and would offer to go back to doing more for DC. You do still need to pay half towards your DC needs surely you wouldn't want to leave the full pressure of providing to your DH.

I would definitely make sure you always have an independent income.

But surely there's a compromise where you work part time? Or both of you drop to 4 days a week?

I can't believe the replies. You are working full-time and also doing all the childcare. I only had one child and at the pre-school age it was full on - you have two pre-school age children! With no mortgage you could take the kids out of nursery and look after them yourself while your husband goes out to work and take on all the housework.

Your contribution will be massive and frankly I can't believe here comparing it to their husband sitting on his arse or doing hobbies.

My husband was delighted we could afford for me to be at home with our child.

Fucking hell!

You are not being selfish OP
Could you consider part time work?

I think you should work part time and have a couple of days with the kids. This won’t be less exhausting at all! Unless you have a very manual labour stressful job. But what you earn on the 4/5th day of the week will be swallowed up by nursery fees and this time when your kids is little is so precious. I only work 3.5 days compressed into 3. It’s tough but my funded childcare only covers two days. If I worked full time the extra two days a week at nursery would cancel out the extra £1000 I’d make a month (70k salary fte) so I’d be sticking my child in nursery instead of enjoying his childhood and making magical memories for him for no reason at all.
I would crunch the numbers and go back to husband showing nursery savings and the benefits of time with their parent during these early years

No, you are not selfish. Spending day times with your children is the best thing you can do rather putting them in nursery’s etc every day.
You won’t get this time back. And the benifits in most cases of kids having their mum when small is immeasurable (for both mum and child) despite what working mums will have you believe.
We’ve been conditioned to believe that as a mother, working and letting someone else look after, teach and spend time all day with your child (whilst you spend the tail and stressful end of the day both tired and exhausted with them) is normal.
Its not. Having a child, and looking after them until they are old enough to look after themselves is normal. Sadly society currently pushes exactly the opposite via capitalism. Extremely sad in my opinion when mums of younger kids in particular are prevented from actually looking after their own kids.
So no, you are not unreasonable at all.

My rationale for saying op should not give up work entirel, but rather drop to part time, is because I wouldn't want to be financially dependent on any man, but certainly wouldn't want to be financially dependent on a man like ops husband

and DH can say no to financing OPs choice.

I know it’s not fashionable on here but your kids are only young once. If you don’t need the extra money I think it would be fine to reduce your work hours and just use free childcare hours for the days you do work. Especially if your wage doesn’t cover the extra cost of childcare. What is the point of beating yourself and your children with a stick for the sake of work till you drop culture?!

Presumably your work over the past however many decades has been as hard as his with the only difference being pay? So your husband is bang out of order to say that your financial position as a family is ‘no thanks to you.’ Has he never heard of the gender pay gap? Ask him what the pay gap is at his company.

If you can’t come to an agreement on this, I’d be handing over half the household jobs, life admin and school runs till he learns some gratitude.

There are sometimes other ways of arranging family life than putting children into childcare from just after birth to 18 and both parents ‘equally’ working outside the home.

Another man thinking that because he earns more he gets the right to sit on his arse when he's home. I hope that you are not going to say you are still 'on' 24/7 at weekends while he 'needs' his down-time after a hard week. Split the housework/childcare/mental load down the middle, then see how you feel.

I have a bit more sympathy as a single mum who works full time and has a 2 year old. It is so exhausting working full time with young children and also you miss out on precious time with them when you're only home to do the slog work. Also if you're on a small salary is it even covering expenses of full time nursery? I think it sounds like you're doing more than your fair share at home plus your husband expects you to work the same hours. Would he consider doing more in the house if he wants you to continue as is?

Personally I think a good balance would be to look at part time so you still get some free hours at nursery but then have more time with the kids. It'll still be hard because time off with kids is not time off, but maybe it'll take the edge off.

Does DH do half the housework, childcare, running around etc etc?

If it's a perfectly equal split of all the work then I get your DH's point. I suspect it isn't though and you are doing most of the home stuff and childcare as he thinks he earns a big salary so he shouldn't have to do anything.

I would say fine I will stay working full time but we can get a cleaner at least to take the pressure off. If your salary is small do you see much of it after nursery fees? If your wage equals the nursery fees can you take them out and just put them in for the free 16 hours a week?

I'll wager OP has done a shit-tonne of solo parenting and housekeeping which allowed him to earn that money unencumbered

Well exactly

My brother is the only worker with sahm and he has someone to do all the school pick up, cook all his meals, clean his house, do and iron all his laundry, organize the kids activities, do their home work with them …. I am jealous of him having a life in full time wife! If my son is a decent earner and has a hard working sahm and nurturing wife I wouldn’t mind as long as they’re both happy. I am breaking my back with burnout doing it all. Nothing wrong with dividing labour into a team if you’re a couple.

My friends (before they ever began TTC) arranged for jobs on opposite shifts. They raised two boys without ever paying for childcare. She worked days and he worked 6pm-2am. They were low earners but managed what they had very well, and didn't look for handouts.

Going 50/50 on kid and household stuff is fair if you are both full time. Probably a better option may be to drop to part time ideally school hours once they are in school so you don’t need childcare, you can use that after school period for household admin etc too

Childcare is free for 30 hours now for most people so this is irrelevant to the status quo for most people

There are indeed other ways of organising family life, but the default is that both parents are equally responsible for everything - earning a living, housework, childcare etc. This means that alternative arrangements need to be agreed and negotiated between both parties.

It sounds like the OP is currently doing more than her fair share of the childcare (assuming that her H isn't working much longer hours in order to earn his higher salary), so they have already moved away from the default position. If she isn't happy with the current set-up, then she can of course push to go back to the default (50/50 responsibility for everything) or she can negotiate a different split that suits her better. However, she can only do the latter if her H is willing to go along with what she proposes.