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

After trying to talk to him I can see most of you are right. His mindset will not change. Its a hard truth and I feel lost, upset and scared for the future. Unfortunately I have found myself in a situation where I rely on him and will find it hard to get out. I also rightly or not love him. My self esteem is so low. I've got in bed with the baby now and will probably have a good cry and sleep on it

Children? More than one?

You've fallen into the biggest trap, OP. Time to start climbing out of it.

He uses the term "you're the primary carer" towards me all the time and it honestly makes my blood boil.

The response to this is “you’d better hope I don’t get a better offer and leave you to it. You’ll be fucked.”

They don't reveal themselves upfront.

OP, if he had no wife and kids, he'd still have to go to work... because that's what fit and able grown ups do.

Please do! And let us know what the useless waste of space has to say. Also suggest showing it to his family and friends. Bet he won't want that!

It's unbelievable, isn't it? So many threads about selfish, nasty, bullying, arrogant men.
I can't believe the bar is so low.

Upfront? 3 babies in 8 years. I can’t imagine he was a model father with 1 and 2 and has had a huge personality change since number 3.

You can't live like this. It's no life, and it's a horrible environment for your children.
It's tough, but you're going to have to make plans to end it.
Do you have any family support?

Can’t say i’m surprised his reaction. I was a single
parent to 3 kids, imagine if I came home everyday and thought my job was done. Sadly he won’t
change, your choice how to proceed now.

Wow he sounds awful. Put the man in the bin.

Throwing food in the bin and pouring beer down the drain to punish you for the audacity to ask him to hold his own child?? Sounds abusive to me, not just useless…

he clearly doesn’t respect you at all and is incredibly resentful of the fact you don’t work.

IMO you need to get to a place where you can get back to work. You cannot rely on this “man”.

OP, my hubby and I had our first baby together last October. My DH then had a massive stroke just four days later.

Things have been tough but we’ve split it mostly equally, once his recovery started. He’s still not the same and his brain just doesn’t compute tasks that need doing, he’s constantly forgetting them. Despite that, today, I took our little one on a walk to release some pressure at being the person with the mental load of looking after her, keeping the household going and sorting a full house renovation to boot - I’d been getting down as the bit we’re living in has become dirty since I started weaning. I’ve lost all my cleaning time to food prep now.

I came home to the bedroom having been completely deep-cleaned - dusted, wiped, tidied, hoovered - the works. I could have cried - he’d done it even without needing to be asked because he could tell I was reaching my limit with everything.

Let me just say this again: my DH, who works very long hours and has had a massive stroke, took the time to clean one of our main rooms in the house, because it needed doing. He also puts our little one down to bed every night and often gets up with her through the night. And he spends hours looking after her while I do shit, because he’s her parent too. Your DH is being a complete dick on this.

Final point. Your DH has a full time job - his job. You have a full time job - you raise the children and sort out the house while he’s at his job. When he’s not at work: you split household responsibilities 50:50. Because that’s only fair, right? He’s not helping you out - he’s merely pulling his sodding weight. Saints alive, he’s being a useless man.

With men like this when they say "I work hard" it implies that you dont.

And isnt it amazing that when you are doing it its "not that hard" but if you said enough, and left for the day, he would totally fall apart.

Its the lack of respect for everything that you do that would piss me off. Do you have older kids? If not then stop with the cooking. He doesnt want to "help you out" when you are cooking his dinner? Fine. He cooks his own dinner. He resents feeding the baby when you hang the washing out? OK. Do you own fucking washing. See how easy it is when he is doing all for himself. ETA I see that you have older kids, so you feed them and yourself before he gets home.

Oh and FYI, you dont rely on him. You just think you do. I thought I needed my ex until he did something that meant I had no choice but to manage on my own as he wasnt allowed anywhere near me. I wont say it was easy but it was nowhere near as hard as I thought it would be. And my mental health improved no end....funny that.

You husband is an absolute loser. Sorry, OP.

Is he at work 24 hours a day? No. Yet he expects you to be.
Sorry OP, you've got a right arsehole there.

What a cunt. When I was on mat leave DH came home from work every day and took over care for DS so I could rest. He made dinner for us all every night (still does). He made me a lunch for the next day so I wouldn’t have to worry about it. I did more of the night wakes as I was breastfeeding, but once I started pumping too he’d take a shift from 7pm until midnight or 1am so I could get a block of sleep. Now I’m back at work he has DS for a full day a week when I’m working, and does at least 50% of the care in the mornings and evenings or when we’re both off. He adores spending time with DS, in fact he’s going away for work for 2 weeks soon and it’s breaking his heart that he won’t see him for so long.

I cannot fathom that in 2026 there are men who refuse to take care of their children’s basic needs. Actually I can, as a colleague is one of them, boasts that he’s never changed a nappy. He’s widely considered a complete arsehole, by both male and female colleagues.

OP I agree with PPs that your mental health may well improve if you weren’t tethered to someone who treats you and your children with such disdain.

What did you do for work before your mental health issues OP? Because I think it’s actually quite dangerous for PPs to tell you to just leave him (although that needs to be the end goal, he’s an abusive misogynist and that isn’t going to change). I think at the moment, with 3 small kids including a ?1 month old baby (I might be wrong with this but you said you conceived 10 months ago) you need to spend a bit of time sorting yourself out first otherwise you’ll become completely unstuck. Make sure your mental health is being treated and managed. Then afterwards, getting back to work when baby is a bit older needs to be the main priority. Would you be able to afford to buy somewhere locally from the proceeds of your joint house?

‘We’ve built a lovely life together’ … you’re cooking a meal literally wearing a baby, because its own father won’t hold him. Perhaps it’s a one off.

You may be the primary carer for the children but you are not the primary carer for him.

Look after the children and stop looking after him. he can make his own dinner, do his own washing and do half of all the general household tasks.

If he gets to rest in the evenings, you get to rest when the baby is napping (assuming the older ones are at preschool/school.

Stop killing yourself trying to do everything. It is not all your responsibility.

Or

LTB because he sounds like an abusive manchild.

YABU for putting up with this bullshit

"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,"

I actually found that rather chilling. He's controlling and manipulative, not to mention sexist, lazy, arrogant, condescending, I could go on.

I would suggest secretly meeting with a shit hot solicitor to find out where you'd stand, also do the benefit and CMS calculator things.

If you've got it in writing from him that you're the primary carer, that would work to your benefit if you'd want to be the resident parent.

You will get lots of advice and support from people on here if you are considering leaving him.

Men like him are vile, and I'd urge you not to waste your life by spending it stayed married to him.

Whatever you do though, if you decide to leave him, do not tell him your plans, hit him with the divorce papers as soon as you have all your ducks in a row. "the divorce came out of nowhere" will be his new mantra.

@Bumpyroads

A wise MNer said on a thread I was on "Some men want to be a husband and father, others want a wife and kids". Unfortunately, you have the latter.

At this point you have a decision to make: stay or go. Remember that you don't have to decide this tomorrow. Take your time, think your options through. Pick a friend or relative in whom you trust to keep your confidence and confide in them. If you think counseling will help you, get it. And I don't mean counseling to 'fix you'. I mean counseling to help you sort the wheat from the chaff and come to the best decision for you. Because the right decision for you will be the right decision for your DC.

Has having a baby made his work harder?

You are being abused. Contact Womens Aid and they can help you leave your abusive partner.

Another man using his job like this. He would have a job whether you were there or not.