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 think it’s just a bit pathetic of him tbh. I’m a SAHM, my husband has a challenging senior role but he has our children for an hour in the morning so I can shower/have coffee in peace acknowledging that the day ahead will be chaotic. He packs the bags for the kids for the day, makes snacks and lunches and ensures thtt we u have a change of clothes/nappies and wipes. Through the day I just take care of the kids then he will take them while I make dinner and after we put them to bed we both do the chores together then take an hour together or separately to relax before bed. He values my contribution on raising our children and thinks that is a much more important job than his, he cherishes me and wants me to have time to myself to get ready or to read have a coffee etc. Who is putting you first? Why are you having to beg for scraps when you are raising his child clearly without even having the benefits of a comfortable income. If you weren’t taking care of your daughter he would be paying half the nursery fees why isn’t he grateful that you are doing this paid work for free, demand more

Yikes - YANBU. I work and my OH currently looks after our 8m old full time. We have a 3 yo in nursery / with his GPs most of the working week. I fall over myself trying to make his life easier because I know how hard it is being on full time childcare, because I have been there.

Has he ever had to care for your child on his own?

Is he like this because he now perceives this to be 'your job'? or was he always an entitled prick?

Yes, we are definitely in agreement.

And I'd like to add, the aim of an abuser in a relationship is to make the partner feel she has no option but to stay. Abuse is a power trip.

Worth taking a look at this also as it appears to be available now, you don't have to wait until the free hours. There are carve outs for self employed people for a period of time
https://www.gov.uk/tax-free-childcare?step-by-step-nav=d78aeaf6-1747-4d72-9619-f16efb4dd89d

ALL of this.

I currently work and my OH stays at home with the kids but we look out for each other. No-one thinks the other person 'has it easy' we both work hard; we are a team.

Is he still in the same role as he was before kids? How is he at weekends? Do you share responsibilities?

Everyone else has said pretty much what I want to say. My husband earns pretty well but his job is long hours so when I was a SAHM I took up most of the work/childcare and he has paid me each month. But when he was back he was equally involved, it wouldn’t have been any other way without me going very much insane.

The grating of cheese and chopping of cucumber would’ve seen an eruption from me to equal any volcano. He’s very lucky he didn’t get that cucumber shoved up somewhere painful when he whinged at you like that. You need to work on calmly standing up for yourself and not backing down or doubting yourself.

He works for a start up company in finance, a very small team meaning he has a lot of responsibility/doing things he would never get to do for at least 5/6 years in a big company. It’s really his dream job, and what he’s doing is amazing. Unfortunately the company hit hard times and reduced his wage by 50%, so he is now under even more pressure than he used to be.

weekends it’s difficult, he is present with her but I am still doing all the cooking for us and our daughter, packing her bag, getting her ready to go out, cleaning etc. He’ll change nappies happily, but if I ask him to feed her and clean her after eating for example it’s a big drama. So it’s not that he shuts himself away in our room or anything, he’s there and keeps her safe, but that’s about it

I work in finance, in the city, and I have worked in start ups too. I appreciate he might be really stressed and really tired but he needs to realise that what you are doing is not a walk in the park. You are a team and you need to support eachother. Each of you can only do what you are doing becasue the other one does what they are doing, so you need to look after eachother.

if I ask him to feed her and clean her after eating for example it’s a big drama

Why?

Can he not be bothered to cut up cucumbers for her either?

Does he have health problems? An 8-5 finance job is much, much less tiring than being a 24/7 SAHM (yes, I have done both), and you are working on top of that! He sounds selfish and lazy.

Sadly these types of men rarely change. It's inbred in them that women do babies and housework.
Mumsnet is full of similar stories, often with two or more kids and women tearing their hair out.

You need a back up plan to leave him, return to where you have family and friends.

This isn't a partnership or anything like one, and it's not certainly not love.

He's not stupid, he knows what's happening here I'll bet but it's not in his interest to change, he's got a maid / nanny at home.

If you are having sex with him still ( why would you with this man child?) stop, as that's the best form of contraception and you do not need another child in this situation.

You aren’t a SAHM though, you’re running a part-time business so working part-time while doing all the childcare.

Dh and I have always been 50/50 in non-working hours, with him more heavy on the childcare. Ours are older now, but if I was home all day, he’d take dc as soon as he got home while I then did dinner and some tidying up. He did bathtime after dinner and then I did bedtime when we only had one (while he tidied up dinner and did some work). When we had 2, he still did bathtime, but we each did bedtime with one of them, then whoever finished first tidied up.

Having worked FT in a big London job with a long commute, honestly, it’s really not that tiring. 😂 Not as bloody exhausting as being home all day with a small child. When I was commuting, I’d usually get home 7/8pm and jump right in with bath/bedtime because I was the one who was fresh from not doing several hours of solo parenting, while Dh got a bit of a break since he’d been home with dc all afternoon (he did the tidying up then).

Yeah I think maybe he doesn’t realise how hard it is… I always say to him at least he gets a mental break for lunch etc I can’t even get that 😅

he did a couple of times when she was really little, but since she was about 10 months old he hasn’t

And definitely leave your daughter with him. He'll never get it until he has to do it. And don't let him get away with the 'I don't know how you do it much better ' old chestnut.

Angry on your behalf. 🤨

Yeah I can see how much it is weighing him down the pressure from them to get investments and then pressure to provide for us financially, so I am really careful with that, and we make enough to have a roof over our heads, have clothes, and eat so I would never ask him to leave his dream job for more money when we have everything we need. So I am very mindful of the pressure he is under, but I don’t feel like I am getting the same grace when it comes to the pure exhaustion of running a house and looking after a toddler with next to no help

We've got 3DC & worked it out like this - when he's at work I do everything that needs to be done during that time (take care of the DC, shopping if Ibhave thr time, all appts, baby groups, naps, cleaning if I have time etc). When DH got home we then split everything that needed to be done between us so we each had time to ourselves as well as time with DC.

We treated it like a job & once he was home then it was both our job to get everything else done. Being a sahm doesn't mean you are a slave and the person who goes out to work doesn't have to do anything else when they get home!

I tried to do food shop, cleaning etc when I was at home during the day but it wasn't always possible due to DC being ill, lots of other things that needed to be done etc so whatever wasn't done when he got back we split between us.

Tell your partner to stop being a lazy areshole & step up to being a good gather and partner who needs to pull his weight at home.

I’m starting to worry that might be true. I luckily have a lot of family who I could live with if anything did happen so, while I don’t want the worse case scenario, I’m not worried about what I would do if it did happen.

it doesn’t feel like a partnership definitely not. I have decided to have a crisis talk this weekend as I don’t have much left in me to keep waiting

My husband worked very long hours. I was a sahm after my second. He didn't have time nor inclination to do much around the house and appreciated that I might not either - so he paid for a cleaner. She also ironed.
He did the cooking on weekends and was the kind that tidied as he goes. He also took the kids swimming every Saturday morning for a couple hours. He was also fine looking after them when I took a crafting class. He was also very tidy himself - he never left a mess. So while I wish he was home more (he travelled for work too), I never expected him to do more than he did.

He's a lazy git. 8-5 is hardly brutal. The least he can do is feed himself.

Yeah I think it’s not even the chores as much as the childcare that’s bothering me, because it’s always been important to me that my children see me and their father as equal parents, equally involved, and they grow up seeing that as the norm. Plus, it makes me sad he doesn’t want to do it or spend the few moments he has with her before he goes to bed.

Yeah honestly I was close 😂 I was too shocked at the time to even get mad, it was about 10 mins later haha

I retrained completely from being in HR to being a teacher when DS1 was 9 months. To pay for his nursery, I temped when I wasn't on teaching practice. Because we had no money, husband used to get the coach to London rather than the train which meant him leaving home at 5.30 am and getting in around 7.30 pm. It was hard, really, really hard. I worked full time and my pathetic teacher salary covered the nursery and the food bill. But. My pension was paid into by work and as time moved on, my salary rose. It wasn't really worth working financially for some years (especially as I had DS2 when DS1 went to school) but by that time, we were much better off so I could drop down to part time. Look to your work. You are not working for now but for your future. You will be less bored, more fulfilled and frankly when you have other stuff going on the house doesn't matter so much. My mantra is 'as long as the kitchen and bathroom are hygenic and everyone is fed the it's ok'. My lovely husband is not the best at housework but is very good at other stuff and cannot fault his parenting and he was solo looking after DS1 on a boy's trip at three months. The boys are now grown. I still have a scruffy house but we have a nice lifestyle now - nothing flash, but working when they were small meant I stayed sane and now have funds to retire.

☝🏼 This is really important OP.
For the sake of your future earnings and career, you need to put more into your work NOW.
Pay for an extra day or half day of child care. Even if you only break even, it builds your business.
This is especially important if your DH continues to be flaky. He has had plenty of time to adjust to being a parent. Remind him that his life has continued with barely a ripple, while yours has been tipped upside down.
He needs to understand that staying and putting up with his crap is not your only option.

Hi OP, I hope you are feeling strengthened by the support on here!
I was struck by how much emphasis you put onto how important his job is. You seem to think how he feels about his job is much more important than your needs and happiness!
It's not you know, it's just a job. I'm old enough to be your mum jobs are not that important. Also your business was and could be successful whereas he seems to have picked a bit of a dud. I wonder how successful you would be if you put all the energy you put into supporting him into your own business?

totally agree with you, I guess it’s important that I try to stop thinking in the present so much when it comes to my work and start thinking about how it sets us up for the future. Which, if it continues going well, even if I don’t continue with my business it will mean better job opportunities.

the problem is is I never went to university as I thought I had years of travelling ahead of me (that’s why I started my business, so I could work from my laptop while travelling), my baby plan was not to have one until I was 30 😂 so in my ‘plan’ I had time to do all the travelling etc before getting a degree, and before having a baby. So the job opportunities for me right now with no degree in the city are low, since I’m not a super competitive applicant. But if I see my business going well as the key to better jobs that’s thinking more about the future I suppose