@Pippa12 Patriarchy really hurts men. As a sex class, the male gender expectations of patriarchy crush men: it makes them emotionally stunted; performative and lacking authenticity and self-actualization; deeply competitive with and focused on other men; unable to forge warm trusting relationships with humans in general; unable to reach out for help when life has brought them to their knees.
I have a lot of sympathy for men. I clearly see the cage they're in.
But I have much more sympathy for the similarly caged women and children who are brutalised in droves by men, here in the UK and all over the world. Domestic and sexual abuse, and other mistreatment, of women and children is a horrendous epidemic, has always been a horrendous epidemic, and will stay a horrendous epidemic until the forces driving patriarchy are tackled and quenched. It's a miserable destructive system.
For concrete change to emerge, men have to be an active and militant part of that resistance. But at present they are almost to a man not fighting against patriarchy, they are fighting FOR patriarchy. It suits them to be able to dominate and feel superior to women and children, and other men, because of the advantages. In particular, they get a female slave who is their allocated vagina; who will feather and smooth their life like a curling sweeper; who will do all the shit labour for nothing, who will have and raise the kids and try ceaselessly to ensure they do well in life; who will do all the mental, emotional, social, and familial labour that makes the man look good and better than other men. And instead of valuing this person who does so much for others, men as a sex class feel entitled to all this labour AND they inherently look down on women as a sex class: they devalue female hard work and emotional skills and the unique and heavy burdens of motherhood while grotesquely overestimating their own contributions to the family and the world. And a lot of men actively hate women and will harm and exploit them and vulnerable children without a smidgin of conscience if they can get away with it.
Women are now increasingly able to get out of the economic chokehold that every single society in the world has put on women. These women, they're looking around and saying, "I do NOT like how men treat me, treat us women. I want to find a mate, but that mate has to step up and put his shoulder to the wheel with me. I do not accept to be treated badly. I do not accept to do all the mental and emotional relational work. I do not accept that my partner does not pull his weight domestically, because that is stealing my time and energy. I do not accept that I do all the childcare, because they are his children too. And I do not accept that on top of having to run my own life and that of my child, I also have to mother a grown man."
This is what a lot of MNers are saying. It's not man-hating (an empty cliche), it is resisting entitled and engrained male behaviours that take advantage of women and hurt them and their children. And that hurt men themselves!
In this particular case, maybe OP's H IS depressed. Maybe life as a father isn't what he was expecting; he didn't realise it would be this hard and brutal and grinding. Maybe becoming a father has discombobulated him because he didn't have a good role model himself, or it's brought up painful feelings from his own childhood. Maybe being the only income earner is oppressive to him. Maybe he's deeply immature and this life is boring and he feels trapped and wants to leave.
BUT. He came home and told her he doesn't want to be with her and their child. That's a very alienating and selfish and cruel act. And he has left all the hard domestic and childcare work to her. And he didn't want her to go back to work when she offered.
Even if he WAS depressed, he's already shown himself to be very self-indulgent. And to ask OP to indulge him even more will NOT serve either him or her, and especially not their child. Boundaries are needed, because women are not rehabilitation centres for men: men need to step up and take action so that they are the best they can be for the people around them. Like most women do.
I personally think he's cheating - it is well known to induce this kind of male mopeyness.