AIBU to feel overwhelmed by the unequal mental load at home?

[rollinginthedeepsea]

DH & I have been together 11 years & have 2 DC (4yrs and a baby). Took a long (& difficult) time to have DC, forever grateful to have them. I am struggling with the mental load of motherhood and the now inequality in our marriage. We used to both work FT and share looking after house (it was probably 60/40 with me doing a bit more chores/life admin)
Now it’s 80/20 and I am at my limit to fit in looking after children, house, washing, dinner, walking the dog, cleaning with him. DH is good with children but not taking mental load off. He asks me for everything, shall I put this in fridge…shall I put a clean top on the baby etc . He says he’s trying to get better and is trying to learn how to but will always says I’m criticising or nagging. He’s at breaking point with me ‘having a go at him’ and is thinking of leaving. I’ve tried to highlight the inequality by telling him a lot …I’ve done the dishwasher 5 times this week, can you do it /The bins need to be taken out etc. which I can see is nagging but I’ve been trying to show him how much I do in the hope he gets it and does more to make it feel more 50/50. But I’ve done the opposite. I’ve highlighted so much and complained that he now wants to leave me. I really don’t want to split. Am I resigned to just doing it all in the hope it gets easier when children get more independent/in school?

My concern is that if he is threatening to leave that he wants you to do everything and the threat is to make you comply. That's very unusual for someone with such a small baby.

I'd go straight to suggesting marriage counselling. This is a huge deal and I don't think you can resolve it on your own if someone is issuing threats. I would also start thinking through a plan for being on your own. He does not seem willing to compromise and that's a concern

As terrible as it sounds the only way this has ever changed for me or any other woman I know is to return to full time work. Not part time. Full time. He will probably go back to doing 60/40 again. I don't regret the wonderful time spent with my children but gong PT after having children ruined our marriage. It became a 1950's marriage and there was a lack of respect that came with it. Men do not respect housework and parenting their children as 'real work'.

He will. He absolutely will. If you have even one day off a week he will think that means you should do everything. The only way is to return full time. Perhaps look into that.

We call it “subcontracting out your thinking.”

The list thing and dividing up the chores was what really helped us to improve things.

We are well past the younger years now and still yesterday DH asked me should he throw out a rusty wire hanger. I just don’t even respond anymore, it is so unnecessary.

It so great that there are a growing amount of women that recognise that men ask inane questions to keep up a pretence of helplessness. I had to have a conversation with my husband last week as I was sick of doing all the thinking in the household, and having to contribute to tasks that he started that really only take one person to do.

Keep fighting ladies, they'll learn eventually!!

(Save the NAMALTs - not interested)

I would make some lists to stick on the fridge - daily tasks, weekly tasks, what needs to be in the nappy bag, what the 4-year-old needs for outings/school/activities e.g. swimming. Make sure you include everything you do, and make them as detailed as needed, for example instead of just 'laundry' list all the steps - wash (include different machine settings if needed), hang on washing line or whatever your indoor drying solution is for rainy days, then put away. Laminate the lists and keep a whiteboard pen next to them so you can tick off jobs as you complete them, make a note that you need more nappies for the bag, etc. He will have no excuse for not knowing what needs to be done if it's all there, and may start to gain more of an appreciation for all the things you do that he's probably not even aware of because they're just always done.
Yes it's treating him like a child to spell it all out, but he's not going to just magically change and this way any time he asks what or how to do something you can just refer him to the lists.

Can you afford a cleaner OP? It would be cheaper than a divorce!

How did that ever start?

OP, maternity leave often traps women like this. It’s meant to be there to support you to recover from growing and birthing your baby, not to enable you to be a cleaner/housekeeper.

You have a 4 year old. He’s had chance to learn already. You need to stop enabling him to be so pathetic. No, he may not do things the same way you do but he’s a grown man and perfectly capable of learning how to keep a child alive. Stop
putting up with this sexist shit. In our house, unless it needs specific genitalia to undertake the job, it’s everyone’s job.

I went back to work part time when DD was 9 months, only one 'day' a week on the weekend, but a 12 hour shift up to an hour and a half commuting and often late finishes, so an average 14 hour day. Apart from pumping enough milk for the day until DD was 1 and could have cows milk, i left him to it.

He never picked up his fair share of mental, emotional, housework load in other areas, and we are divorce now, but he is a good dad, because i didn't give him the choice not to be.

I do think finding a way to step back is the key, I'm just not sure how you pull it off in all areas of life, and for most women who aren't out of the house for 14 hours straight.

I do think finding a way to step back is the key, I'm just not sure how you pull it off in all areas of life, and for most women who aren't out of the house for 14 hours straight.

Ideally, you don’t start it in the first place so there is nothing to step back from. In my case, as per my username, it took 9 years for DH to demonstrate to me that he was a capable adult and would be an equal parent that would support me to return to work full time and pursue my career just as he expected to. When DD came along DH was working away 5.5 days a week but when he was at home he was fully responsible for DD for several hours a day and whatever housework needed doing we shared (I did next to none during the week). So there was never any expectation I would be doing it all, and I never did. When DH returned home permanently 18 months later he became the default parent (and still is 14 years on). Good job because my job means I travel a lot (have done for about 5 years now) and it wouldn’t be any good if he couldn’t do anything.

Well of course ideally you don't start it in the first place, but multiple mumsnet threads on this topic and divorce statistics clearly demonstrate that this is a common problem.
Some of us don't have 9 years to trial run a husband before kids. Some men change when kids come along.
You sound smug and sanctimonious.

I don’t answer fucking stupid questions or questions where it’s clear someone can’t be arsed to think and wants to outsource it.

i agree with a Pp upthread that no matter what they say, it’s a power imbalance in their favour. Losing your shit can work as it makes them realise that they are in fact disposable and replaceable. It’s when they feel they have the upper hand in all things they don’t make an effort.

which is another reason why I am glad I went back to FT work.

You're not nagging! You're reminding him of his responsibilities. If he doesn't do it that's his fault - don't let that come back to you as 'nagging'. It's a misogynistic word that men use when their laziness is called out.

Well, maybe something that will impact your entire future is worth taking some time to think about, isn’t it?

Usually threads about women considering going part time after children descend into rants about “feminism means women get to choose”. That’s not my definition of feminism, but if it’s what women are choosing time and time again, having multiple children with disinterested/seemingly incapable men, there needs to be some recognition of that.

OP had 6 years (at least) before her first child and recognises she was doing more before that. It became more imbalanced after DC1, but still she opted to have another child and expect something different to happen. She’s become chief question answerer to a grown man who presumably manages the demands of his jobs without needing to ask 50 questions an hour like a maniacal toddler to do so. OP needs to get tough.

My husband and I have set jobs.

And not the "I do everything and he cuts the lawn and takes the bins out" bollocks that I see on here all the time.

I do polishing, hoovering, tidy up the kitchen and the majority of the washing, empty the bins more than him, sort recycling.

On a Friday he cleans the bathroom, changes the bed sheets, washes them and he cooks every night, so he does the shopping as well.

We both have full time jobs

If we had children then we would share, bath and bedtime, school pick up and drop offs, but we are older so all our children are adults and we got together and married later

Om the basis of your recommendation I just listened to her being interviewed on a podcast while doing my bank holiday house clean. I think she has changed my life!. Applying a project management approach to domestic life (concept, planning, execution) triggered the epiphany that DH only does the execution bit. So claims to do loads (and seems to do loads) but does no conceptualising or planning. There is so much room in his head compared to me!

I desperately want to get the 100 cards but my funds are low.

I work with a lot of younger women who all complain about their husbands and how useless they are. However, what they mean by useless is - the husbands don’t do x, y, z the way they would.

If you want your husband to do stuff, you have have to let him do it his way.

I hate this approach that makes out women are all unreasonable shrews with exacting standards. Whilst there are undoubtedly cases where this is true, I think most women want basic partnership and competence.

https://www.reddit.com/r/FairPlayLife/comments/1bokdb6/digital_fair_play_template/

There are some links to a personal spreadsheet lists of the cards on here.

He sounds like a man child. How can he not see the things that need doing?
Im so happier now I live alone. Been seeing someone for a while now and whenever he is at my house he always finds something that needs fixing and fixes it. I never ask him to and tell him he doesn’t need to but he seems to enjoy taking small jobs off me!

The answer to all those questions is "I don't know, what do you think?"

You need to stop answering the questions as a first step.
And more importantly, you have to accept whatever decision DH makes, even if it is not what you would have chosen.

Let the bin overflow. Keep your mouth closed on that topic.
Whatever you do, don't deal with the bin yourself if it has been agreed that it is his job.
Sooner or later, either he will step up, or you will decide you can no longer live with his disgusting standards.

The answer is that you always say to him "I don't know".
You have to train yourself out of answering.

So he asks you about the duvet cover.
"I don't know".
"But you must know, what size is it?"
"I don't know"
"Well how can I tell the difference?"
"I don't know. I'm sure you can figure it out".
Then you leave the room.
Don't give an inch.
It will be painful to start with, but eventually it will get better.

Absolutely, @CookingFatCat , stop knowing the answers!

I have a few vague answers I give, variations on- oh, I’m not sure, what do you think? It takes no effort and it shifts the thinking back to him.

At a pinch I get direct- use your own brain, mine’s busy!

It’s massively shifted people away from me as the fount of all knowledge.

I’ll also agree it’s hard to find things that I’ve ‘hidden in the usual place, right at the front of where they’re always kept’. That’s made him look harder in future, as well.

They think it’s easy ‘women’s work’, so don’t give any time or effort to it and don’t value yours.

issue with offloading the mental load is that the same things may not matter to him. But if you stop answering and picking up the slack, things will definitely improve

Yes it is partly the maternity leave, or returning part time, so the default split is no longer 50/50 but some nebulous, undefined, constantly-argued-over split.
Schedules and clear responsibilities help, e.g. she always does all laundry, he always does all food shopping, then not treading on each other's 'turf'.

The mental load thing I think starts with a new mother being 'in-charge' of the newborn. She is doing the feeding (if breastfeeding), so knows when baby is hungry, and it all grows from there. The father starts deferring to her expertise, asking for her advice and input, asking what he should do and when, then asking permission to do anything with the baby, and it spirals, and can even eventually expand to every part of the housework as well as the childcare.

First-time mothers need to be warned about this trap: the baby is not purely their own to be the boss of and the expert in. The father has an equal say, and an equal responsibility. It goes against a mother's instincts to be less protective and less involved, particularly when the baby is tiny, but it is important for setting the tone, now that (nearly all) mothers can't stay home and not work until the youngest child is 16 years old.