Am I unreasonable to want more help as a homeschooling stay-at-home mum?

[EducatorMum]

Hi all, I need to know if I’m being unreasonable.
background - I’m a sahm homeschooling our 3 children (11, 4, 2). My partner works from home (data) full time and is the only financial provide which I’m extremely grateful for to enable me to stay home with the children.
I used to be a primary school teacher but came off to be with the kids.
I naturally do all of the cleaning , laundry , housekeeping , childcare. I’m up every morning anytime between 6 and 7. I do all bath times and bed times alone as they don’t settle for him. At weekends, he stays in bed until 10/11 . He struggles to sleep at night so he argues he gets the same amount of sleep as me (I go to bed with the 4 year old). I generally don’t get a lie in or much of a break. Every evening after I’ve cooked and cleaned up he will head to his office usually around 7pm and have rest and alone time until he comes to bed around 11/12. I might get an hour if the youngest naps in the day but feel things are unfair. If I ever bring it up he makes out I’m ungrateful, that he’s working a job he hates and I can do whatever I want. Is this right? I don’t know how if this is the norm for others in sahm / homeschool positions ?

It sounds like he does very little actual parenting.

And it sounds like you work more hours than him overall.

Are you independently wealthy/own your own house? It's never a good idea to be dependent on a boyfriend.
(Asking because you wrote he's a 'partner', not a husband)

Your reservation about school is that you would be sending your children to be taught by strangers who couldn't care less. Why does that not equally apply to outsourcing subject teaching?

Pre school at two?

But do your children want not having other friends to play with and seeing a stressed out parent all day?
The 11 year old especially needs socialisation.
Your dh hates his life, he's hiding from you and is feeling stuck because of this choice you made. From your description I wouldn't be surprised if he left.
Be honest with yourself.

You said your dh wouldn't want you to stay home if kids were in school. So the real issue is you simply don't want to work, and sounds like you're using home schooling as an excuse. To the detriment of all around you. That's so selfish op.

You do sound controlling and you have some strange ideas about 99% of people who send their kids to school and teachers in those schools.
Reality is, your home schooling choice is not irrelevant, it is the root cause to all of these problems. Does you kid have sen, is he bullied? If not then it is a choice and your choice is making everyone miserable whilst you're just not seeing the facts as they are or don't want to.

A few observations:

1. Your husband should certainly be sharing the load of your shared children outside of working hours from a point of view of fairness.
2. Whether he knows or or not your husband is missing out on so much by not doing so.
3. You're not unreasonable to feel put-upon but you might also want to focus on how extremely lucky you are in the round.
4. Your husband sounds really quite unhappy and it's a ticking timebomb if not addressed. Do you have the wherewithal to put aside your (justified) feelings of unfairness and begin by approaching him with genuine love and concern, putting all options in the table to discuss (BEFORE discussing the effect on you)?
5. Such a distance between you and your husband is likely to end in marriage breakdown one way or another and should be treated as more of an emergency in your family.
6. Insulting the majority of posters on here who send their children to school (not least because most will not have another option that you are lucky enough to have) by sneering at that option and saying that most of the people educating their children don't give a shit about them AND THEN having the temerity to accuse them of bullying when people fire back at you makes you look like a cry bully.

I admit I haven't finished the whole thread because some of the responses you were getting were quite upsetting and nasty to read, but I just wanted to say that as a SAHM, all the weekends and the children's bedtime stories and cuddles in our house are split 50/50.

If your partner is working the exact same job/hours as they would do if you were also working, then they are not doing anything 'extra' that would mean they need to recover from an average job across the entire weekend. The cleaning, cooking, entertaining, childrearing and educating (whether completely teaching or orchestrating the home education curriculum from various sources) absolutely is equal to the amount of work that goes into the average job and you absolutely need breaks and recovery time to stay healthy and sane.

If your partner no longer wants you to stay at home, then of course things need to change, but doing unpaid labour doesn't mean you never deserve a break.

Unfortunately you seem to be the only one "caring for (y)our children".

Your DH has an inordinate and frankly unreasonable amount of "me" time for a father of 3 kids, especially given that 2 of them are still very young.

As I see it, his contribution is financial and yours is looking after and educating the kids. Both of these should only apply to a working day timescale ie 9 to 5. During evenings and weekends childcare and household chores ought to be split roughly equally, so as you both have a equivalent amount of down time. Enough of his evenings hidden away and excessively long weekend lie ins.

How can you bear to even look at him when he behaves like this? I think his attitude towards you is totally disrespectful and he must have very little relationship at all with his children if he is so absent from their lives (whether in the same place or not).

This man needs a bloody firework up his arse! You can't keep doing what you are doing OP or the resentment will continue to build and you risk some sort of breakdown or your marriage ending up in serious trouble (if it isn't already).

You have got a seriously and unfairly hard time on here. Mumsnet seems to be full of people with an almost visceral hatred of any sort of SAHM. I really hope you can manage to get your family life rebalanced to be a lot more fair

.

Op - to answer your original question and ignore the the derailment.

I was a SAHM.for 12 years after working a corporate job with three kids in school and childcare. My dh is on a low wage. Then i had a fourth and got made redundant after maternity leave. for the first 5 years our youngest was at home or at part time nursery. Then for 7 years they have all been at school Three of out youngest have sen.i was home alone.

My "job" was 8-5 housework and sorting out my kids ehcp shenanigans with my local authority, being at home for my sons taxi and going to non stop school meetings.

Your not going to like this but dh gets the kids up for school and out the door and cooks and washes up every night. Mainly the washing, vacuum etc was my job to fit into my day ( badly I might add). Their was no resentment or burn out from him. But I went into being a sahm from.a very well paid industry and with a big redundancy package. I had not chosen to give up my carer and had paid a lot into joint pot previously. Maybe that helped? I don't know. Dh just saw I'd struggle to cope returning full time in my field and its not a job you walk into part time ( I drooped to part time when I had kids).

But basically they are our kids, it's our home. It's not all my responsibility and he supports me happily most of time. Ask him if he lived alone who would be responsible to feed him, wash his clothes and clean up after himself? That's the bear minium equivalent time / effort he needs to do in a family home. Except with kids you cook a bit extra or add the kids kit into your washing load, or you never vacuum your bedroom, but the five minutes it would have taken, you check the kids have made their lunch etc.