WIBU to divorce due to DH quitting his job whilst I’m a SAHM?

[Ilovechristmasssssssssssss]

We have young children under the age of 5.

I’m a SAHM whilst DH works (which we are both in agreement with). He has a high earning role, but has been increasingly unhappy with the politics of the job.

He came home and announced that he is quitting tomorrow. Nothing lined up but says he will ‘make it work’. Worst case scenario we will have to sell our home and downsize.

Despite him having a well paid role, we have zero savings as our outgoings are high and due to some other factors. We have a minimum debt payment of £3,000 per month (DH brings home approx £10,000 per month).

I am considering telling him that it’s over between us if he does this. I am fed up of picking up everything family-wise for him to just throw our lives into turmoil like this.

It's a straw man argument which is why it gets ignored.

Because OP and any other Mother or Father are PARENTS and not being employed to do anything.

Saying 'well if you had to employ someone to do it it would cost..' are bollocks arguments because they are things people choose to do for themselves and the people they are related to that benefit them but for some reason, some Mums seem to think it's a demonstration of their financial worth to their family or society.

It isn't.

Anyone posting anywhere about choosing to get a dog and saying well it would cost £K to employ someone to feed them, take them on walks, take them to their vet apps would be laughed off the site.

Same as a single non-working person saying well I shop, cook clean and feed for myself, take myself to appts, handle all 'the mental load' of remembering to go to things and remember people's birthdays so if I had to employ someone to do all that it would cost £k would similarly be laughed off the site.

Somehow it's supposed to be taken seriously when a SAHM says their 'labour' would cost £ ridiculous amount a year. It's your DC FFS, you're no more 'labouring' than anyone looking after themselves or a pet.

And if a man claimed he was sacrificing by looking after his own kids, driving them places, cooking meals, putting furniture together, cleaning or whatever else he does, he'd have his arse handed to him even if his wife was a SAHM while he works and told that's parenting and being a grown up in a relationship.

These figures are calculated by matching the extensive, multi-role daily tasks of a homemaker against the current competitive market replacement costs for those services
Also, if you want to cost the things that sap do, it's only fair to cost what working parents do in addition at home. Each meal cooked, each time they take their child to bed, each lawn moaned etc....

That means that most working parent is worth a lot more than their pay check and still much more than the sahp!

Sit down and talk to him about his options. He needs to stay in his job until he's found something more suitable to him. You say they wouldn't want him to leave, which makes me think he's good at what he does. This means he hopefully wouldn't have a problem finding another job.

Sometimes in life, it doesn't matter if you "don't like the politics". When you have a family, you absolutely have to be bringing money in.

The debt needs dealing with ASAP, which I'm sure you know, and then you will both have a little more breathing space.

Not sure divorce will benefit you. Surely your debt is shared, you have no job so how do you see yourself getting a house? Surely the house you currently live in would need to be sold and any money paid back to the mortgage provider. You won't get a mortgage with no job. Sounds like you have no savings.

You seem very deluded over it all. You have no idea what he earns as no access to the account he pays money to. You go round spending money willy nilly by the sounds of it. You want your child to go to private school.

As others have said if this is real you need to get a grip on finances and come back to the real world.

Yes but at least they have no debt. FWIW nursery staff aren't strangers.

Or a baby that feeds every 2 hours? Or child wakes in the night etc..? I wouldn’t describe these as crisis

Also makes me question how to stay at home. Mums, raise their daughters. Do you tell them that they need to go to school? Get educated and then focus on staying at home. I can't understand the conversation. I do understand that my own partner stays at home, but that was something that was agreed between us and she had the finances to stay at home. We both did if I stopped working. It definitely wouldn't sink us, and she knows everything about our finances. It's just, you're basically a dependent because you're talking about things as though they're the priorities in life, but actually the priorities for us are a home food electricity. And access to parental care, your husband is able to provide his children with food.A home and electricity you cannot provide any of those things.So who's the one that is being kind of inconsistent or bringing less to the table its you.

Yeah, but you're talking about a period in time that ends.When the child is about four, the poster has said that the child has just under five.You're not talking about a baby.You're not talking about maternity leave, you're not talking about any of those six, you can't talk about other facts that aren't relevant to this op, because it just becomes nonsensical.

Yes I accept that for sure, of course lone parents have to do all these things and it’s not easy. I parented alone for about a year and it’s hard. I’m not a full SAHM as I work part time but I hate the fact that people disregard it. It makes his life a lot easier as he doesn’t have to think. And he has never had to miss work for an ill child who the childminder won’t take for two days because they were sick etc. I do think it has an impact because it impacts on women who have children and work and still bear the brunt of picking up after the kids, the sick days, the cancelled after school clubs, the inset days, etc. So if it impacts working women, it would be bound to impact a lone male parent who has to pick up all that slack.

I just don’t like the way people talk about SAHP. We work now but as I said, our mothers, grandmothers, great grandmothers often didn’t (some did of course) and we don’t speak badly about them.

Not in this thread, which is why it’s been raised.

24hr on call is very expensive, 3x one worker

Sink about it like this, if they did divorce, and her husband was to meet another woman that actually worked and was able to contribute to the household, maybe not as much as him, but some think as well.Wouldn't he be in a better position?Isn't divorce?Actually the best outcome for him

Obviously DH doesn't do nothing. We both work and both equally do domestic stuff.

But if the argument isn't that SAHM do all this 'so their partners can work' but instead 'so their partners don't have to get off their arses at home' it doesn't sound so compelling a case, does it?

OP - what did you do pre kids?

Have you had therapy? Highly recommend starting or making the time individually and with your husband

You should definitely divorce him. This doesn’t sound like a healthy marriage at all.

I have always worked and progressed my career, as has DH, so that we can each afford to take care of our children if the other can’t. There have been times over the years when either one of us has wanted or needed a change of direction and as we are a team, the other one has picked up the slack financially, emotionally and practically. Because that’s what a marriage is.

This is interesting - the only heated discussion my DH and I had was over life insurance for me, when the children were young. I explained that in order to continue to do his job and further is career in the event of my death, he would need a comparable life insurance policy to his own. Our kids were 4 and 1 at the time and he scoffed. Even his dad wasn’t brave enough to do that. My DH also travels continually for his job and in the present month will only be home 6 nights this month, barely scraping it in from the airport on DS’s A level results day. I may have torn a strip off him over that as there is not much I ask him to block his calendar out for.

Anyway, I explained that nannies generally only work 40-48hour weeks, so given he leaves the house at 6am and doesn’t return until 7pm when not travelling, he would actually need 1.5 permanent nannies to cover his working week. Given he travels much of the time, he would need overnight nanny care, so this would mean an on call night nanny. (So 2.5 nannies, with night time rates for the overnight work). I also explained that nannies, unlike aupairs, do not do laundry and housework. Given that they also need holiday , so would likely sub for each other, they nonetheless might not be able to do sick cover, so he’d need to have a paid subscription to an on-call nanny service for evening/night and sickness cover. Nannies do not work when they are sick, so if your kids get norovirus consecutively and then their carer gets it [ie usually me] you need someone immediately. They will launder the kids clothing and prepare their meals, and tidy their rooms, but they generally do not touch adult laundry or household cleaning, nor do they do the online shop or school related admin. They don’t wait in for the British Gas repairman when it goes caput or needs servicing, they don’t pop to the drycleaners or take shoes to be resoled etc. They do not have legal consent to represent you as a parent should one of your kids fall over in football/iceskating, breaks an arm and need to go to hospital for xrays and surgery… they can’t help. So he would need a PT PA to do all this - or quit his job for a family friendly role.

So on the back of an envelope, given my DH was not actually as senior 17 years ago as he is now, we worked out that he would need about over £100k back then to hire in the services that I do for free, and allow for this to be spent over over about 8-10 years. It cost almost as much to replace me as he was earning at the time. His family live 4hours drive away so not exactly near in an emergency.

He took out life insurance for me, though. It may not be ‘skilled’ work that no-one else can do, but the issue is that SAHM’s are present, adaptable to any task required, and legally responsible for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, even when sick, because they are not bound by employment law. Paying other people to fulfil that function costs a fortune.

Potty training? There are lots of things that need someone to be there. This
thread is about a DH who does nothing but his job…to provide financially ..and unilaterally announced he is going to stop …creating a crisis

Doesn't sound like his job is worth the stress or unhappiness, but clearly your reaction shows where your priorities lie, money and lifestyle over husbands wellbeing. Many people quit their jobs and survive and personally if it was my other half I would support this completely. Equally one of the best times in life to have more at time at home with the kids.

Why don't you suggest he gets signed off whilst he considers his options? It sounds like he's under a lot of stress and perhaps a few weeks away from the office politics, focusing on how to handle office politics (whether with books or counselling, or just being able to step away for a few days) will help him establish his own strengths or find some tactics to handle it, or look around and update his CV. Respectfully, if you haven't been in his earnings league or working for his employer, it's likely that things seem easier for him to tolerate to you because you're not the one experiencing it. Check his contract, he's probably entitled to full pay if signed off. I'd certainly say if he's at the point of walking away despite the effects on his family that qualifies as being stressed enough to be signed off.

I'm sorry, but you don't do these services for free. You maintain your household because it's your responsibility as an adult now. Ever you can financially do that, or you can do that through working the home. But you working at home doesn't make you magically superior to your husband also actually his position, and what he's able to do. Materially changes the life you're able to have. You working at home, doesn't materially? Change to life that you're able to have. It doesn't allow your kids to have a second parent who can support a house deposit. It doesn't pay for school fees. It doesn't pay for holidays. It doesn't pay for a medical treatment that isn't on the N. HS your whole family is literally dependent on what he can do, so trying to equalise it with what you do doesn't even make any sense, because logically, if your husband stops working, you have a problem. But whether or not he married you, he would have been able to achieve career success. I just sorry, it sounds quite personal.But to me, if my wife ever said that the only reason I was successful in my career was because she stayed at home, I would be furious.It's just it's so insulting

I'm not understanding why it's embarrassing and basic. Is it not correct that buying in all those services would cost a huge amount? I thought that that was an undeniable fact.

Not in this thread, which is why it’s been raised
We don't know for sure though do we! Is OP doing all the DIY, mowing the loan, dealing with trade people etc... I bet not. sahms can have quite an over inflated views of what doing every means. We already know she's not managing the finances!

I am very confused, you have a baby and a toddler, no wait a baby and an almost 5 year old … and for some reason you are paying school fees but are full time looking after kids but one is in school?

Huh? We are talking about a specific DH who does nothing

Even so your argument fails ..SAHM do enable their partners to work ..not simply about their sitting up home…but things like school drop off or pick ups, sick days etc…and so much more..not just housework

Yes, but that's not actually what people who don't have SAHP do so it's a meaningless figure. It would not suddenly save us £50k a year for a live-in chef if one of us gave up work because, like almost all households where both parents work, we cook ourselves anyway.

This assumes he a) wants to talk about it and b) is at least somewhat amenable to being told what to do, when it’s the opposite of what he wants to do.

the problem with talking everything out is relationships involve 2 people and sometimes 1 just won’t do it. This is particularly likely for people who ie build up £150k debt without talking about it