to feel resentful I’ve used my AL for childcare while DH saves his for child-free time?

[CrazyCatMom]

I am absolutely knackered and so overstimulated I could scream.
Nursery is closed over Christmas, so I’ve had to book annual leave to care for my 21-month-old full time. I work in healthcare, so my job is already exhausting and emotionally draining, and this leave is meant to be precious recovery time… except it hasn’t been a break at all. It’s been relentless toddler care, no downtime, no switch-off.
Meanwhile my husband, who works in sport, has been at work every single day between Christmas and New Year. He’s deliberately saved his annual leave so he can take it later for child-free time.
What’s making this harder to swallow is that I’m the breadwinner. I earn roughly double his salary, cover the majority of the mortgage and bills, pay all of the nursery fees — and yet I’m also the one covering the bulk of the childcare, including taking annual leave when nursery is shut.
It feels like my annual leave is automatically assumed to be for childcare, while his is protected for rest and enjoyment. I know nursery closures aren’t his fault, but the imbalance feels really unfair, especially when I’m already carrying most of the financial load as well.
I’m resentful, touched-out and completely fed up with being the default parent who absorbs the impact of childcare logistics on top of everything else.
Not sure if this is an AIBU or just a vent, but I’m so tired of this dynamic and don’t know how to make it feel more equal.

But there have only been three working days since Boxing Day, and you had one of those "off".

You should absolutely plan this better in future so DH takes on an equal amount of the mental and physical load, whether that means splitting the days you take off, or taking days off together so neither of you need to be alone with your child you can take time to do things as a family.

I'm not belittling what you've been through over the last five days. It must have been awful. But communicate and plan better and it need never happen again. Importantly, don't be resentful unless DH refuses to share the load, as that way lies madness and probably no more children.

We had absolutely no help with childcare outside of nursery. We both did condensed hours and had a three day weekend. I was always off on Monday days, OH on Fridays, both did childcare on that day. When DC were very small, it felt like we tagged teamed with very little time together, it was relentless.

It would have been wholly unacceptable for one of us to work over Christmas without checking in with the other person. We have the same pending money and time off. As it goes, I worked a lot over Christmas but took over as soon as work finished.

You both need to schedule time off. We use an electronic calendar. If one of us wants a weekend away, the other one has a pass out for later that year. Your DH needs to schedule some make up time looking after your DC. You do not have enough annual leave to cover your DC time off from nursery or school.

Urgh I recall now ExH gleefully explaining how he’d actually been working lots of overtime and accrued the TOIL to enable him to watch all the rugby World Cup games on the big screen in the park. Our DC was under 2 so all those early starts and skipped nursery runs/late finishes and missed bedtimes I’d assumed had been work pressures were actually him exploiting my free childcare so he could have child free pints in the sun wtaf?!

I used to book random days off but not tell him after that- if I told him he’d expect me to pick up extra chores or do all the nursery runs, it was the only way I got proper rest. We divorced because he managed to schedule in a girlfriend!!

Please tell us you don't also take all the unpaid leave to do childcare when your child is too ill for nursery?

Anyway, this can be easily solved by USING YOUR WORDS. Start of new year, time to sit down together with your calendars and plan out 2026.

I mean that’s the other approach OP- he’s now first line of defence when DC is sick. Also if you’ve got any big DIY projects you can tell him he’s the one with the free time so get cracking…

Is it worth trying to get him to pull his weight?
Why not just divorce him and use his lack of participation as grounds?

Can we take it from the statement that it. is not something "I'll be doing" that you haven't actually had children or been in this situation (of being the breadwinner and working full-time)? And that in OP's situation you'd be happy to do all the childcare while your husband can have a nice relaxing time in summer when the child is at nursery?

As YOU are the main breadwinner then HE needs to be the one to sacrifice his time off etc to do the childcare which is what happens in every other normal relationship! If he loses his job over this then it isn’t a problem as you cover all the bills anyway

We are a couple who always take annual leave together and spend it doing family things :) We sent our kids to a childminder who is open all year round so we didn’t have to worry about term time and once our son was old enough to go to pre-school/school he started attending holiday clubs as well.

I can’t relate to either parent in this scenario.

I’ve got 2 young children. If I was unfortunate enough to be forced to work, then any time off I had I’d be desperate to spend with them.

My DH is the breadwinner, but gets ample time off work as a teacher. He spends all of his school holidays engaging with our children, playing board gages, Lego, football, going on walks, picnics, day trips, etc. It wouldn’t cross his mind to use childcare when he’s off work, so yeah, neither of us can relate to the husband in this scenario.

We love family time but we do split annual leave as our kids like downtime over doing holiday programs all holidays, I expect most kids do?? I can’t prioritise having both of us at home over giving our dc some unstructured time, so we do some together and some separately to benefit the dc, that seems the best approach for our dc.

Absolutely! Mine said to me last year re the holidays ‘tell me what you need’ and I lost it- it’s not about the bare minimum you have to commit to your family nor is it about what I’ve sorted and then tell him. He can be a dad and husband and think himself with his own brain about what’s best for his kids, then talk to me about it.

But you’re both in a situation where you have a lot of free time. If both of you were working full time 9-5 with 21-25 days leave to cover school holidays your lives would be vastly different.
Sometimes parents need a break and that’s ok. If you have a few days off using childcare so you can go back to the office feeling rested isn’t a bad thing.

This

Is it a communication issue?
This is the first year you've needed to think about this, and his default attitude has been pretty selfish.
I think I'd be telling him that it isn't going to be like this for future nursery closures, as this isn't fair at all, and you expected more thought from him. You're exhausted and that's his attitude.
You should make it absolutely clear

Exactly, but better for young children if parents can cut back on working hours and go without a few things in order to spend more time together whilst they are young. Then annual leave is for family time not time to recover from being so knackered. I’d rather reduce working hours than time with my children. Its a short season where they are young, and pretty obvious no parent will have anywhere near the same amount of free time regardless for hobbies/exercise/self-care/socialising than they had pre-children, it’s an unrealistic expectation, especially if you have multiple under-5s. Those things will naturally increase as they get older, it’s all hands on deck initially.

YABU for not discussing this before getting to this point, and for not discussing it now. You've just assumed this, and assumed that then gotten the arses and booked AL without even saying "what are we doing?"

Change the title of your OP to Dear Husband, change “my 21 month year old” to “our 21 month year old” (your language here is quite telling). Then print the whole thing off and hand it to him.

Whether he wanted a child is irrelevant, he has a child and so needs to consider their needs and plan accordingly.

No point telling us - tell him. You know its not right, its not a fair split.

Either he shapes up or ships out

I came to say the same thing, but you've put it far better (and more politely) than I could have.

This is so true, we often hear about men with Big Jobs/high earnings, leaving the child’s mother to do the bulk of the childcare. But the OP has ended up with the Big Job AND all the childcare. - this needs sorting!

OP has left the building 🤷🏼‍♀️

FGS. We didn't argue about it, at all and certainly not in front of the DC. I was a perfectly present mum for the entirety of the 3 years i spent at home, we did all the things that people do: crafts, playgroups etc.

I had bad PND and a lot of the times i was going through the motions. I have talked about this with my now adult DC as they have a friend going through similar. I have offered tips and advice and sympathy - and of course they wanted to know how i know so much about it.

Luckily for me, my DH then took parental leave for a couple of years, and it got a lot easier for ALL of us. But the key for our home life was that we discussed who would be doing what and when, and yes sometimes i did more for a few weeks and sometimes he did. The key was a calendar and discussion

So again: all the sanctimonious "oh i can't imagine HOW someone couldn't love every second of it" can get in the sea.

I don't know why you didn't discuss this before Christmas, or even before having a child together.
You made assumptions, and presumably so did he, so I think you are both unreasonable.
Have a discussion now about what you expect going forward.