AIBU to expect my husband to look after baby without it being a favour to me?

[Bumpyroads]

Asked my husband to hold our baby while I cooked dinner. I had already started cooki g but had baby in the carrier and was clearly stressed. He looked after him for 25 minutes max! He now says I should respect him more with how hard he works as he was helping me out.
He said i should have said something along the lines of "i know youve had a really hard day but please can you hold the baby" ie i have to preface asking him with saying how much i value how hard he works.

He now says he doesn't want the dinner I cooked and was going to put it in the bin(i told him no ill save it for tomorrow). He then tipped the beer I bought him earlier down the drain, something I bought him because I knew he'd had a hard day.

Im really tired of him saying im the primary carer for the children its not that hard, I have it easy. He works so hard if I ask anything of him he will say but yours the primary carer and I go to work.

Am I being unreasonable? Am I just lazy and need to suck it up as actually being a stay at home mum is easy. Am I supposed to be super mum doing it all with no complaints?
For context 10 month old still wakes several times a night so I am exhausted and he is an extremely difficult/clingy baby so getting house stuff dont if difficult.
Also husband does do stuff around the house but honestly it seem like I have to be so appreciative as if he's doing me a favour not that its just one of those things because its a shared effort.

Sorry rambling..
Anyway
unreasonable - suck it up you stay at home all day thats easy and you need to appreciate he has worked hard all day.
Not unreasonable- your not asking too much and even though he's at work he should still help without it feeling like a favour

Or something in the middle

Leave. This will only get worse.

He is a misogynist who sees household tasks and childcare as women's work, which is why he frames it as helping you out. I don't think this is unusual in men whose wives are SAHM as they can easily compartmentalise it into home vs work, even if they behaved as equal partners before kids came along. Patriarchy is alive and kicking.

This. OP, you need to put your pov to him now before it gets any worse. At the very least don't have another child until he understands that he needs to pull his weight at home. You're a team within the family.

So this isn’t something that cropped up with your first baby. You have 3 so you knew what he was like. Same old same old. Also why a third child when you have MH issues and he is carrying the financial load of 5 people. You both are very much to blame for this situation you’re in.

My ex used to say he was 'babysitting' if I was going out. Part of the reason he's an ex. What do you want from posting op you have confirmation from many he is behaving terribly so are you going to address it or carry on feeling miserable

I find Alex Trippier's stuff helpful from a man's perspective so you could ask him to check it out. However it's quite unlikely that he'll change, as, as pointed out in the video, he has to decide to make that decision to be an equal partner. And up to this point he has decided consistently not to do that. https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1afcB5y7EW/

I assume he must do some kind of heavy manual labour with all the reference to hard work and exhaustion and to be fair I have no experience of that but I can tell you that when I went back to work after baby number two and was running a company with 55 employees and a 3 million turnover (30 years ago) and coming home to relieve the nanny and take over care the second I got in, - and I was expressing at work, - it was a lot less exhausting than before I went back and was at home with the baby 24/7! At work I only had to do one thing at a time most of the time. I drank tea and ate sandwiches, admittedly at my desk. I went for a wee whenever I needed to and I interacted with other adults.

He’s being an absolute wanker. How long is his working day compared to yours? When do you clock off? He’s selfish and or thick not to see this for himself.

It is utterly baffling to me op how you don’t know that he’s vile.
what a nasty nasty person he is.
it isn’t about how much he does op, it’s about how he speaks to you so nastily and dismissively

he is utterly awful and if any of my daughters end up with men like this, I will cry my heart out.

no, it’s not salvageable op, he’s vile.

im so sorry for you that you didn’t know this and thought the way he speaks to you is acceptable.

I think you’ll probably find that your mental health would improve significantly by going back to work full time as well - and ensuring your (abusive, hopefully soon to be ex) husband pulls his weight with 50% childcare, housework, chores, life admin and school/nursery runs.

So he enjoys the optics of having a cute wife and children, speaking highly of you to others and enjoying the image of being a husband and father, while treating your wellbeing as less important behind closed doors?
That doesn't sound great. It's like he values the role you play in his life more than your actual happiness and emotional wellbeing. Being praised publicly is not the same as being cared for privately. A healthy relationship is one where your feelings, needs and wellbeing are treated as equally important, both in public and at home.

Absolutely

90% of the time - yes.
but I’ll keep going for the 10% for whom the penny does drop.
and hope that for the 90%, it’s started a ball rolling, and they’ll maybe reach out to family/friends/women’s aid in their own time. Hopefully as soon as possible.

You are the primary carer for the baby whilst he is at work. After work time you should share everything 50/50. Unless of course he works 24 hours a day.

I'd start by asking him if he realises how hypocritical he is sounding. He can't feed the baby dinner because he is much more tired than you because he works out the home amd you have it easy looking after kids. But on the other hand, doing a bit of childcare is so tiring that he can't possibly do it after a day at work, as its just too much. If it was that easy that being a sahp was a piece of piss, it would be no problem to help out. If it was that hard that doing 20 min would finish him off, then he should be helping.

Would he take the attitude that he does at home at work? Say he was working on a project but it wasn't his main work and it was someone else's full time role. And every time they asked him to do some work (which was part of his normal role, for a few hours a week) he said 'but you're the project lead! I'm only partly responsible here, so you should do everything by default! Why aren't you being more grateful to me? This project is so easy, you've got it good working on it full time...but spending half an hour on it will be too difficult for me, I'm so tired from my other projects'. I doubt it, he would come across as difficult, petty, point scoring, unhelpful and insulting to the other persons role.

I don't know what he thought having kids would be like but most people understand that being a parent, even if you work full time, means that when you're at home you have to parent. It's not fair that you work 24 hours a day, getting up in the night, continuing at the weekend, while he just works 9-5 and gets the rest of the time off by default unless you beg him, at which point he will begrudgingly 'help while belittling your efforts.

I'd be telling him you do appreciate everything he does but it doesn't feel like jt goes both ways. You feel unappreciated. How would he feel if you made it clear his job was so easy that it was pretty much a holiday and anyone could do it. Why does he think it's fair that because you're the primary carer when he is not here, that you should be the sole carer by default when you're both there. Why does he think it's fair that you work 24 hours a day 7 days a week and he does 9 til 5 on 5 days. If he is constantly too tired and stressed that he can't do normal adult and parent stuff outside of work, what is he doing to address this, as the majority of working parents manage to do do stuff with their kids when they get home.

I'd be asking him what he thinks should change as having sole responsibility for parenting all thr time is making you ill. I'd tell him I'm thinking of 3 options:
He starts respecting your role and doing his share of parenting and house stuff at evenings and weekends, or
He supports you improving your mental health and getting back into work. This means you will have to share everything outside work - pick ups drop offs sick days, mental load (sorting hair cuts, clothes, shoes, meal prep), parenting, house chores, as you will no longer be the primary parent
If he can't agree to either of these you split as the respect has gone, and at least you will get a break of every other weekend, or if he wants 50 50 care you can use this time to retain and get on with a new job / life

He sounds like a useless lazy cunt.

God forbid, if you died, he would need to be the primary and ONLY parent.

I’m sorry but this man doesn’t love you or your children.

You deserve so so so much better.

So looking after a baby isn’t that hard but it’s also so hard he can’t fucking do it? What a loser. Please just go out tomorrow for the morning and let him see how hard it is.

I have recently gone back to work part time, my youngest is 15m, and it’s an adjustment and I am tired although my job is desk based so not physically demanding at all. I still maintain being a SAHM with 2u2 was harder, I cannot imagine coming home from work and not wanting to see my babies!

So…..

You have not had sex for 19 months….. why?
You have mental health issues that are severe enough to prevent you from working. What steps have you taken to deal with this?
What is your plan for your future, given what you know your husband to be like?

Why, given all of the above, did you choose to have THREE children?

None of this changes the fact that your husband is a Class One asshole. This is who he is, and he won’t change. So you have to find a way to cope, with or without him.

Time after time I see these posts and every time I think of the same action
1 Obtain rocket
2 Locate Husbands arsenal
3 Insert rocket

Looking after children is bloody hard work and if he isn't going to at least try and share the load then he deserves nothing but utter contempt.

How do these useless men always find a woman to shack up with them? I truly don’t get it.

Mine did the same, throwing his dinner v and wine away- cutting off his nose to spite his face.
Such ridiculous childish behavior who do they think they are hurting by doing that??
You have to not give a shit. Another bloody useless childish husband

Because they find someone who enables them. No one needs or should be having 3 children when there's big problems here. But yet again it’s never any thought given to the children involved.

I assume they find vulnerable women with low self esteem who just want to be loved.

These women are magnets for useless selfish men who provide them with homes and sex but offer no emotional intimacy or appreciation.

This isn’t normal you know that?

I had a mix of WOHM and SAHM. friends when my children were little. They all had actually engaged fathers and husbands who just got stuck in with parenting 50/50 when they were around.

The only one who didn’t do 50/50 after work was bitched about solidly by husbands and wives alike and he was a complete outlier and even he improved after getting a few too many jibes about his uselessness from all directions and he wasn’t anywhere near what you are describing.

He’s not kind and caring to you though.

This comic is quite a good way of explaining to men that being the stay-at-home parent is not easy or relaxing:

https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/

I think men (and women) are sooo conditioned with the idea that man's work is super important and women's home and child care isn't, despite the fact the man's work can't happen without it. He needs to respect that you do a lot and that, while he can 'turn off' from his day job, you can't and you need him to help on top of his work because he is a parent too, and his life doesn't get to stay the same while yours changes completely.