Partner’s Response to Night-Out Childcare

[CopingStrategies]

We’ve been together for 15 years and have have one child, a 12 year old daughter. We both work full time on roughly equivalent pay. I am a lecturer in music. My partner works in Health & Social Care.

I rehearse one evening a week most weeks, and also lecture one evening a week term time, and gig up to a couple of nights a month, mostly less. Other than that, I never go out on my own.

Whenever my parter wants to go out drinking with friends I support that and offer to drive them.

Occasionally a date clashes where they are booked to go out and I have a gig. My solution has been to use ask my parents, to whom our daughter is devoted, and they are always willing, obliging and loving to a fault.

The issue is that, when this happens, my partner becomes incandescent with rage on the grounds that, because my partner looks after her when I am out, I should look after her my partner is out, not “palm her off” on my parents.

The upshot of this is that I am now experiencing increasingly acute panic attack symptoms whenever I need to even broach the subject of comparing calendars.

Is my view (that if the solution exists, and our daughter and my parents are happy with it, then there simply is no issue) a gross simplification?

It feels like my partner is striving for parity ahead of pragmatism, but I appreciate dads sometimes see things differently from mums.

Please help. Thank you.

It`s nothing todo with yp what you do with your dd END OF.
Sounds like a selfish bully.

Your partner sounds bonkers.

Is it that they resent you going out? I don’t get their objection to grandparents babysitting?

You say she does more housework than you. Do you think she’s resentful about this and her resentment is coming out in anger when you go out?

What’s the rest of your relationship like?

If she’s not resentful, she’s an angry, controlling nutcase and you need to think seriously about your future together. Your 12yo will be more than aware of her mother’s anger.

Are you been paid for gigs. Or is it a hobby?

Either way once a year sounds an extreme reaction.

I would be with a 12 year old looking at reconnecting in terms of going out . Otherwise you are going to be sat at home starting at each other very soon.

Fri and Sat night I'd start training the 12 year old up to be a roadie 🤷🏽‍♀️

It does seem a bit strange, that she doesn't like your daughter being looked after by devoted grandparents (trying to lose the abbreviations!). Many families - single parents, two parents, those where children have two sets of households - cope with the help of grandparents, many of whom are retired and are delighted to help. I wonder whether your partner has a problem with your parents which she has been trying to hide? And I also wonder whether you have really tried to have a proper, long and uninterrupted conversation with her (not just over text or over a bowl of cereal!). Perhaps as with all these things, if you can get to the bottom of it - and find the real reason for her outbursts, you might at least understand her perspective. But if she refuses to budge then I'd be inclined to say to you - stop driving her to her evenings out, and tell her that you will organise for your daughter to go to her grandparents' on your gig or work event evenings unless you can see in the calendar that she will be available to look after her. As someone else quite rightly wrote on here, your daughter won't need childcare in a couple of years' time, so if you are still together (hope so!) then all this will be a non-issue. Good luck!

OP, I’m not sure why you keep telling us you weren’t trying to hide the fact that you’re a man taking about your female partner. Nobody routinely refers to their other half as ‘they’ rather than he or she. It’s fine, lots of people do it, but you don’t need to deny it - it makes you look disingenuous.

There is a definite MN tendency to assume if a partner is being unreasonable they must be a man.

Isn’t it more that 90%+ of posters here are female? So the natural assumption would be that OP is a woman, unless we’re told otherwise.

It's rather worrying that your partner is regularly 'incandescent with rage' about this – or about anything.
Also that you never go out on your own beyond what you describe here.

I'd be ashamed of myself if I was giving my DP panic attack symptoms.

I mean, at the very least stop offering to drive your partner and friends around.

You go out, she looks after kid
She goes out, you look after kid
You both go out, grandparents look after kid.

Sounds ideal to me!

I do hear about rubbish dads who are never alone with their kids, and when the wife is out they ALWAYS go to their parents, but that doesn't sound like the case.

Did that used to be the case?

Either way, "rage" is a shitty way to react and she should sort herself out

I would be concerned that someone who works in Health and social care gets incandescent with rage

Hi,
In all honesty I think your partner needs a kick up the arse. You both need a frank discussion and if you both can't agree then agree to disagree. It's not the end of the world if dates clash. It just happens. It's life.

I get one night off a year. I kid you not.
All the best. Hope you both figure it out.

How does your partner get on with your parents in general? There are a lot of women on Mumsnet it seems who do not have good relationships with their in-laws. Is that the case here? Maybe she doesn't want your mother and father looking after her daughter if she doesn't like them for some reason?

Hmm..I don't know, it sounds like there just might be another side to this story. How often are you looking after your daughter as compared to her?

Do you spend much quality time with your child? Could she be thinking you're trying to avoid it?

How strange to write two long posts without mentioning the gender of your partner...accidentally. I'm not sure why you tried to do that but the answer is still the same anyway. I'm just wondering if you do enough one on one time with your daughter ornof you don't, is your wife trying to get you to do more? I can't really see a reason why she would be full of rage.

There is absolutely no good reason or excuse for her behaviour and ridiculous demand that one of you must always stay in with your child. And she has anger management issues.

this ^
Her thinking is bonkers.

Hi all, thank you again for the support.

First, to the couple of posters apparently fixed on the idea I'm trying to hide gender: I wasn't. There is no rarity in using a pronoun: "they" is a perfectly usual terms for one's spouse. DW or DH isn't, but that seems to pass without comment! Anyway, irrelevant, but I would respectfully add that the posts do little to dissipate the anti-man perception that some of you indicted exists (or is perceived to exist) in some quarters on mumsnet. :-)

Second, on hobby vs work. While they are paid, they are not my main source of income: lecturing in music is, but obviously music is not merely a theoretical enterprise, so staying playing and current is mandatory to be an effective practitioner. So, yes, it's not equivalent to the boozer, or even Saturday football.

Third, on time parity. We both spend every evening and every weekend with our daughter, doing homework and having fun. The only time I don't is one half-evening a week I work late, and one half-evening rehearsing, plus of course the gigs, max 24 per year.

Forth, on chore parity. It's a reasonable, but limited criticism. To be sure, I do do a large fraction of my fair share(!)––tidying, school runs, driving, homework, bins, shopping, hanging laundry out, logistics (bills etc), DIY/'man' stuff (sorry!). However, she does a lot more cooking than me. Not all. But a lot more. And more laundry too. But I still don't think that justifies her behaviour in this regard.

Fifth, on my parents. I think she likes them (and there is nothing not to like about them, they are devoted and would do anything for us) although will be rude about them if she wants to hurt my feelings in an argument (but I'm not counting things said in anger).

It is, in my view, a combination of two factors: Pathological Parity (i.e. if she feels guilty about using childcare for her nights, and so doesn't, then I have to feel bad too: I don't, and use it, so she gets angry) and Control (when things stick to the predicable, even-keeled routine she's fine: whenever anything different happens––literally anything, like a night out––it's somehow 'out of her control' and the challenge results in more anger).

Now, that's some pretty cheep armchair psychology, but it feels not too far from the mark.

Have you managed to have a discussion with her about it and raise that her reaction is not ok?

Multiply for many years. It does not go well. My analysis (no doubt biased) is that she is cognitively paralysed by the anger she feels about me not sharing her 'mother's guilt' about not having to be there 100% of the time, 24/7, to do every last thing for a 12-and-a-half year old pre-teenager––and so appears to be incapable of seeing that her responses are over the top.

If you are scared of your partner’s anger imagine how your daughter feels? How far does the anger escalate? If she gets violent you should call the police every single time so it’s on record and when you leave you will get custody of dd.

Utterly absurd! Does your partner suffer mental health problems?