How much is reasonable to expect your husband to help when you’re a SAHM? Am I asking for too much?

[eiy2028]

Hi,

DD (D) is 16 months old.

I am technically a SAHM but I have continued running my own business, usually doing work when D naps as the only family we live near still work full-time and we also can’t afford much childcare, only 1 day a week. DH (F) is in finance working 8-5 M-F.

I feel like I’m at the end of my tether asking for help. I understand that I will have to take on most household chores etc, but it feels like a constant battle when I need help.

It drives me nuts with the constant complaining, when I ask F to give D a bath or feed her and he complains because he’s tired, he only really looks after her while I cook, or clean, or take a shower. Sometimes he will let me take a nap on the weekend, or will let me lie in until 8am at which point when I get up he will go back to bed for a few hours (I’m happy with this arrangement)

But she is 16 months old and I can count on one hand the amount of times I have left him alone with our daughter. Times where I have asked to go out, he’s said he will ask his parents to come and help. It makes me want to scream

But I get he is tired and his job is stressful. But I am also exhausted, and the final straw where I almost hit the roof was last night when he was supposed to go to a music event after work. I cooked for myself and left him some to take to work the next day, I had been sat down for 30 minutes after a full day with D and he ended up coming home early from the event. He asked me to get up to cook dinner for him while he had a shower, and I begged him to just reheat the leftovers I made as I was exhausted and wanted to rest. He started complaining because he didn’t want to have to grate the cheese or chop up the cucumber to put on his leftover burger. Then he started complaining because his yoghurt had ran out, which he didn’t tell me about so I didn’t buy any.

I just feel like last night summed up everything I have been feeling. That it is always my responsibility to look after everything at my own expense and I am never the one to get looked after

how much do you expect from your partners as a SAHM? I just feel like I’m really starting to lose my patience

I was a SAHM when my DD1 was little. I did all the housework, shopping and cooking plus dealt with all finances.
My Ex DH would arrive home from work around 5pm, feed our DD, bathe her, wash up after our tea, we took turns to put her to bed.
At the weekend, he generally worked on Saturdays cash in hand to earn extra so I would spend time with my family. We took turns every Sunday to have a lie in til 9. He’s an ex for good reason, but not because of his parenting skills, which I couldn't fault.
In my second marriage, as a teacher I obviously had a lot more holidays than DH, so did most things in the holidays. As with DH1, DH2 shared childcare equally, if not more because I frequently had work to do in the evenings and every weekend.

My husband was doing response policing when my kids were your DDs age. He would work 7 nights in a row doing 12 hour shifts and on his first rest day would sleep 9am to 12pm to get up and take the babies off me as soon as possible.

He would get up with the baby in the morning when he was working late shifts (so getting home at 1am) as he knew he wouldn't see them otherwise.

On earlies when he would be getting up at 3am, he would come home around 7pm and jump straight in to whatever needed doing.

He WANTED to be involved! He acknowledged that parenting all day alone was tiring. At one stage we had a baby, and 2 toddlers and he was very hands on.

Your husband wants to be absolved of all responsibilities. He's an idiot.

We're 15 years into parenting now, DH still makes sure I always have a drink to hand, can rest, watch whatever tv I want, cooks (or orders pizza 😆) and is just attentive..

You have a DH problem..

Wow I had never thought of it this way, I always thought of it like that because we wouldn’t be paying for childcare if I didn’t have my business, or we would be paying it if I decided to get a job. That’s so true!!

he definitely sees it as my hobby, which it’s probably the biggest thing I said when I became pregnant that I didn’t want to change when I had a baby, as it’s my passion and it was starting to go really well before maternity leave. I sometimes need to do work in the evenings or weekends if D doesn’t nap well, and he makes me feel bad for doing that because I “should be resting”, but then I’m not resting at all because I’m still doing most of the childcare cooking cleaning.

these replies have been so helpful I’ve been driving myself crazy wondering for months if I was just overreacting to everything

When I agreed to be a stay at home parent I had really clear boundaries. I told my husband that I would be like a nanny..i.e. I was taking time off work to look after, educate, feed and play with our child. I would do general tidying like dishes and hoovering but things like big bathroom cleans, windows, weeding, etc were still joint responsibilities. I ironed mine and kids stuff, but he would continue to do his. Basically he always worked full time and anything he was happy to do pre children whilst working full time he should also be happy to do post children. I didn't think this was unreasonable and it worked for us. I also stopped being the primary parent when he was finished work so he was heavily involved in bathe and bed times.

You are a stay at home mum. Not his nanny. He's a grown man. He can cut up his own cucumber.

This is what I want this sounds perfect 😢 I think it also just makes me feel sad for my daughter and I worry I won’t be able to nip this in the bud before she gets older and can hear that he doesn’t want to do these things - although I hope to god he will have the sense to never complain infront of her.

the drink in hand thing also really struck me 😂 I see my dad and brothers getting my mum/their girlfriends drinks etc when we’re visiting my family, and I always have to ask him to get me one. And he sighs

If you’re a stay at home parent your “work hours” are the same as what your partner is out doing at work.

Once they are home through the door your stay at home parent duties end and you are
both just equal parents.

the parent who leaves the house for work doesn’t get to avoid all parenting duties just because the other is staying home during the day to save childcare costs.

Wow!!!

after all these comments, I know what I’m asking for is not too much. I need to have a serious conversation this weekend. Because I really can’t continue like this. It got so bad once I broke down sobbing my eyes out. But that was 3 months ago and not much has changed

When you say he has just graduated, are you both early 20s? If so, that's tough for both of you.

Does your local library do "storytime". Ours did one afternoon a week and it was great.

Do keep your own career going. My view was always that if everything DH did and everything I did was an equal input of our time that was fine. His was 99.9% work, mine probably 40/60 when the dc were little rising to 60/40 when I went par-time. But we both rendered the same effort in and had equal free time.

DH was also always perfectly happy to pay for a cleaner but we were mid 30s and established when we started a family.

I think I need to try and reinstate my boundaries. As I happy to do what I can during the day, but I really agree with you that it should be equal at night or on weekends. It’s not that he doesn’t do anything at all, but I either have to remind him or argue with him about why i asked him to do it/why it’s important. I feel like a manager and he is my employee that I have to boss about which I don’t want, I’d love for him to just do it and not complain about it every single time. This is 16 months later still complaining about the same things, like bath time. I just feel like the house would fall apart without me if I wasn’t there to manage everything or remind him to do XYZ

You are a stay at home parent (also working from home). Your role is to look after the child, not the house, shopping or cooking. If you had a childminder you wouldn’t expect them to cook and clean too. He really needs to change how he sees your role and realise that staying at home is the hardest job! I used to go to work for a rest!

OP home start run free baby and toddler groups in a lot of places. Please contact them it will give you a chance to get out and socialise.

Your DH is being lazy. He needs to step up and help care for his dd when he is finished work. Bath times and bed times should be taken in turns ideally.

Your DP is taking the piss and if I were you I'd be making plans to bring this exploitative relationship to an end.

He doesn't like you, he has no respect for you, he has checked out of the idea of partnership, and he has a massive sense of entitlement to all the services you provide.

And he clearly doesn't feel he has any responsibility to parent his own child. He's a horrible excuse for a man.

@eiy2028 I'm a sahm to a 22mo and my DH works 9-5 mon-fri and sometimes weekends too. He does pretty much all the washing up and Hoovering. And he also does most of the baths for little one too. Obviously I do most of the life admin and the cooking and most of the things for little one but working a full time job doesn't mean you can just push everything on to the sahp. Does he not realise that what you're doing is actually more than his phone so important 8-5 which he can switch off from at the end of the day? Your job is 24/7 7/7. He needs a reality check ASAP

Don't get me wrong, we've had our moments. Adjusting from one child to two was incredibly hard and we were both sleep deprived and stressed and played the "whose more tired" game far too often. But he never shyed away from getting stuck in. Obviously he couldn't really help with feedings as I was nursing but he did midnight nappy changes and burping.

It wasn't perfect, but I also never felt like he was trying to get out of active parenting. I didn't have to give him instructions, he's dad and knew what needed to be done.

Now, would be nice if he would clean a bathroom from time to time 🤣🤣.

yes both early 20s!

I think the reason I have let it go on for so long was because I was trying to be mindful that he had just graduated, just started working full time in a high pressure environment, and just had his first child. Whereas I found it quite easy becoming a parent, he didn’t, so I have tried to be patient but that patience has now gone, as it’s been 16 months now. So I think in part I have definitely enabled a lot of it, as I have always stated my boundaries but then I drop them as I feel bad when I get frustrated at him.

I think now that it has been a long time I like the idea of stating it as our time outside of work should be equal, in terms of rest and childcare and cleaning/cooking. I am going to figure out how to say it and speak to him this weekend

Bless you. He’s treating you like the hired help. Why the hell should you grate his cheese and cut his cucumber ffs?! All of my kids would do that for themselves - maybe not the six year old but your partner is not six.

You have to remember, DH gets lunch breaks and time to decompress when commenting and can pee easily without worrying about rushing back to baby etc. It's still tiring working full time, but it's still very different.

Why are you seeing childcare costs as 100% your responsibility? They should be at least 50% your husband's to shoulder.

You said you're a SAHM, but then described how you are working (OK, part-time if it's 17 hours pw) on your own business, looking after your shared DD and keeping house. That's 3 jobs not 1.

All he has to do is fold his arms and refuse.

As long as he feels you have no alternative and as long as his cushy life continues as normal, you are completely powerless here, and he knows this.

I'm sorry op , but your husband is a dick. Please consider leaving him.

This basically. It's sad that he doesn't want to be involved with raising his child.

I definitely do feel powerless. And I feel bad for him as I can see how his upbringing has made him think this is normal, his mother is shocked and proud at the fact he changes nappies. Which to me is like duhhh, of course he changes nappies.

so I don’t think he does it on purpose but it’s definitely a subconscious thing he believes that this is just the way it works, but I think I’ve been too patient now and let it happen by making excuses for him, I’m stuck in a corner like idk how to change things

This is honestly sooo true, a few people have said this and I can’t believe I never thought about it this way

idk why I just struggled to see my business as a job since having a baby and not being able to commit to it as much as I used to

Sorry I worded it so confusingly, basically everything we both earn goes in one bank account and then all our bills etc including childcare come out of that.

so we do half it definitely. But for some reason until some comments on here I saw it kind of as it not being worthwhile since I wasn’t making much money. If that makes sense?

Sorry, but what have I just read?

Why did you clean and cook?

What were you thinking?

You should have sat back all Friday evening, and on Saturday you should have packed the baby bag, sat the baby into her buggy, and headed off for a nice day together.

You are handing yourself to this selfish, entitled, immature fool on a plate.

I know this is harsh, but you need to stop enabling his behaviour.

Nobody hands out medals to women who put playing nice ahead of their own best interests.