What does your husband do to help out at home?

[Brewster]

What does your hubby do to make you feel like you are a team?
how does he pull his weight when at home?

Dh runs his own business from home. He works hard and does well and he thinks I don't appreciate his work at all sometimes because I expect him to also do some housework.
I am a sahm to 3 children, 2 at school during the day.
I do all the shopping, meal planning, cooking (even on weekends), I do all the washing, all the cleaning (even on weekends)
Dh does DIY occasionally, some kinds of family admin (car mot etc) and he sometimes loads/unloads the dishwasher (twice a week max I'd say)
He baths the children most nights
He does take over and do the basics when I am ill
He thinks he does a lot. I think it's not very even. We argue about it fairly frequently, never resolving it!

He does half the childcare, half the cooking and shopping, officially half the housework but there are aspects of that I do more of and aspects he does more of. We do argue about housework, he's much messier than I am so we have different ideas about what's a suitable amount of housework to be doing half of.
He does half the wage-earning too.

My hubby is so different to his own father - his dad only learned to make a cuppa after he retired!

My children are older now - the eldest has left home, one is a teenager and one is approaching 7. He unloads the dishwasher before going to work in the morning, he gets up in the night more often than I do if DS3 wakes up for some reason. He will cook if I'm not at home, he will do laundry if I'm getting behind and loads the dishwasher every night. He also feeds the cats (not a small job with seven of them) and medicates the one who needs it, he also empties bins and puts the wheelie bins out as required. We take it in turns to make sure DS3 gets to bed on time which sometimes includes hearing him read. I generally do the food shopping, cooking, laundry and cleaning etc but I work a lot less hours than he does. He's capable of doing all of it if required though and does so willingly most of the time. When the kids were babies he would do his share of night duty etc.

My DH works really hard at work - long hours and lots of travelling. It means we can afford a cleaner and gardener and that I am more than happy to look after things at home apart from our finances. He does the dishwasher at the weekends and helps cook and shop when he is off work. We both respect and appreciate each other. It works for us.

I think I should show my husband this post!

I'm a SAHM and my husband gets up to go to work and makes me a cup of tea and the baby's milk. He'll give her a kiss but apparently doesn't have time to change nappies etc.

He has always cooked more than I have, but I've been making an effort to cook more. I find this hard with a baby constantly demanding my attention. He gets home around 5.30-6pm will and will cook if I haven't. He does bath the baby, and sort of cleans up after dinner if I cook (loading the dishwasher!), but that is about it. He spends most evenings on and off his computer playing games, telling me he 'won't be long,' but doing little else.

He's supposed to do bins and clear the garden of dog mess! But that rarely happens. Oh, and walk the dogs, as they are pretty crazy and I can't manage them and a pushchair. Again, that doesn't happen too often and I feel incredibly guilty about this. He occasionally hoovers but I normally have to make him do anything else. I find him more difficult than having a baby! Weekends are not much better!

Think I might show my dh thus too. He's so fucking lazy compared to your lovely dh's/dp's.

He does the bins.

and on Saturday, he got the Hoover out and made a hash of cleaning. The kitchen work top was fine, the floor wasn't. There was mud in the hallway. He did the dining room, and left the living room Hoover on, Hoover off! Hoover on, Hoover off. That's all I heard for over an hour.

He will get dd's ready for bed though, but that's if he's home in time. And takes them out Saturday morning so I can have a lie in.

Rarely cooks. Never tidies.

I do however, will never puck the lazy toads clothes off the floor to wash them, so he does his laundry as I refuse. Though, I end up hanging it up, and folding it. I never iron his stuff.

Lots. I work 2 or 3 backshifts per week so he has Ds (homework, shower, school clothes, packed lunch etc) to look after as well as the house.
He often works a 6 day week too.

He probably does more around the home than I do and he works longer hours than me. I don't get it when people talk about men "helping". We are not living in the 1950s. This is alien to me.

My DH washes his plate after his evening meal and does bathtime. Apart from the odd toy-tidying that is about it. Reading this post has made me green with envy. However I am a sahm and he works about 50 hours p/w so I wouldnt expect him to do much. He will be getting a kick up the arse when I return to work that's for sure!

My DH works a week on/off rotation (working offshore). He works 12 hour shifts each day he's working, which is pretty grim. However, before DD he would come home and it would be feet up for the week. And guess what?

It still is.

I do the laundry, wash dishes, wash and sterilise bottles, prepare feeds, clean kitchen, clean bathroom, dust, vacuum, clean windows, food shop, general tidying, emptying bins, taking bins out. He rarely changes a nappy by himself (WTF), on a good day he will feed her once or twice, hardly ever baths her now, doesn't dress her in the mornings, can't be bothered playing with her and doesn't settle her for naps/bedtime.

For the record, I'm not a SAHM, I'm on mat leave and will be returning to work later on in the year. As a nurse, I work 12 hour shifts also, and did them right up until I finished at 37 weeks, again with little housework input from DH.

He has always been lazy and I knew he wouldn't become a domestic god as soon as DD arrived but I really believed fatherhood would make him step up, at least with the parenting side. I was very wrong.

My DH is an angel - we split the household chores - he does laundry, I do food shopping / cooking. He does rubbish and recycling, I do dishwasher. We have a cleaner once a fortnight. He has been doing more since I've been pregnant and I'm sure he will step up even more when the LO comes to support me when BFing.

We both work full time on our own business so we are a team in every sense. It's why I married him!

Weesazz - I've posted earlier on and I have a willingly helpful DH, however, I think if you've had a pattern in your relationship before kids whereby the bloke did hee haw and you picked up all the slack, you can't expect them suddenly to change when you have kids.

They will not see the need for change and will continue being lazy unless you tell them otherwise.

Ideally, you need to prep them before the birth (e.g. after the baby is born you'll need to do a, b and c) and then once the baby arrives, keep them to it, remind them, ask them to do stuff. Don't get peed off when they don't do what you think they shoudl be doing, treat them like an idiot, assume they have the memory of a goldfish and simply ask them, and keep asking them until eventually you have them trained.

Some men (like my DH) love the family life and want a partnership, others want their mothers cleaning up after their arse all the time, you have to decide what you want, discuss it with him, tell him what you're not happy with and then get him to do the tasks you do.

He will forget (intentionallly..) and not do things, do not lose the plot when this happens (he's hoping you'll get peed off with him not doing things or doing it wrong that you'll stop asking) keep asking/reminding him.

You now have 2 children, but you need one of them to be a grown up - the training has to start now....

Dh doesn't help out. We are a partnership and share everything equally - parenting, household chores and fun times. I work ft in a high pressure job so I simply couldn't do it all without him. We each step into various roles as and when needed.

And we're raising our ds to help around the house too - there's no way I'm going to turn out a lazy male chauvinist who is unable to boil and egg and thinks the washing fairies replace his dirty undies with clean ones.

Eletheomel - you've hit the nail on the head, some men want the family life and partnership and others want the mothers to clean up after them. I could kick myself for thinking his laziness would somehow right itself.

I do keep asking/telling him to do stuff but it either is ignored or results in an argument, usually with him lamenting about how his life has changed so much and that I nag him...that makes me so angry, because nothing has changed for him, while mines has overhauled (as I fully expected it to and despite low mood and anxiety have embraced motherhood).

What saddens me more than the housework issue is the hands-off parenting - he is in an enviable position of having a whole week at home to be a father which many men don't have the luxury of, yet doesn't want to be involved. Some days I can't even bear to look at him.