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 ?

I think you are getting quite harsh replies, you both wanted to homeschool and I think you should both get equal downtime when possible. For context my parents homeschooled me and my 2 sisters (which was quite unusual in Ireland in the 90s). My mom was a SAHM, dad was a famer. He worked extremely long and tough hours but still made sure she got downtime, had a chance to rest, went to night classes etc. They were very equal parents, he did lots of the bedtimes, got up with us in the mornings etc. I am really grateful for this as I didn't realize how unusual it was at the time but it really framed my parenting expectations for my own children.

You say you read English at Oxford and yet your comprehension of my comment was poor.

"but we'll still get her to do at least 4 (including English & Maths), just in case, and I'd still like her to do a college course as a back-up plan and to keep options open for her future.
We play everything by ear and make sure each child has their own individual needs met, with their end goals in focus."

I clearly said "at least 4", so no, I'm not limiting her to 4. I also said we play everything by ear, with their end goals in focus. So if in 4 years time when she starts GCSEs she no longer wants to do the career she's working towards now, then of course we will ensure she studies the required subjects to meet her goals. She is an incredibly focussed and determined child and has been working hard since she was little for this career path. Whilst of course people can change their minds, it's highly likely she will go down this particular career path.

Of course I understand how it works, I'm a competent adult with post-grad qualifications. I'd never limit my children, quite the opposite in fact.

I agree with both of their points.

I've also had the opposite experience of you, the majority of home educated children that I've known, have gone on to become university educated. I know one who didn't but NASA approached him to work for them as soon as he was old enough as he is an incredibly intelligent young man. I know others who are in medicine now.

There is a lot of stigma towards home educated children/families. In my experience, working in schools, a lot more children leave schools with poorer outcomes than the home educated children I've known. Baring in mind, I've been HE for a decade so have met a lot.

Baring in mind
It's bearing. You might find that useful.

If your child is 11 and was in school until yr 6 - then you've literally just started home schooling. As children start yr7 at 11. So they would be starting this week.

And a 4yr old would be starting this week.

I don’t understand the time lines. Or what you’ve been doing and when.

Op probably felt alarm bells at the thought of going back to work and this was a solution.

You’re missing the point @1coconut2coconut3coconut4

They BOTH agreed to homeschooling.

And what’s his excuse for doing absolutely nothing outside of working? Why does working full time mean he can’t put a wash on, sort the kids bath times, take them to an activity?

he takes himself off every evening and shuts himself in his room whilst the @EducatorMum does absolutely everything else.

Yes. He’s a lazy bastard.

So you think most parents would rather outsource parenting? Home schooling aside. She has two children under school age.

This!! It’s such a shame that people have to be so vitriolic about homeschooling, so much so that they seem incapable of seeing past it to the actual issue at hand and it is an issue that your husband is a selfish individual who isn’t pulling his weight. So he’s got a job he hates, shame but so too do a lot of people. He needs to make effort to change that if he’s not happy, but that is, imo, quite irrelevant to the fact he is of the opinion he needs only provide for his family in the financial sense and not at all in a practical sense!
I’m a SAHM (to much younger children admittedly) and I’d be livid if my husband (who works long, long hours!) chose to flop about having all his off-work time purely to himself. He’s taking the piss.

He’s unhappy and disengaged with his children and marriage. That’s your starting point. Discuss what would make him come back into your family unit and what that would look like.

I agree that his engagement is poor but just laying down the law and setting up a timetable isn’t going to deal with the real underlying issue. You’re just going to alienate him further once you start shouting the odds. Your relationship has clearly changed as you previously decided to have three children with him ( two within the last 5 years). So what’s going on and how can you fix it together?

It’s what most people do after the first year even on a part time basis. Whether they want to or not.

I must be not "most people".

Yes you are on a high moral ground, wow bravo you must be an amazing parent well done tell us how you do it clap clap and everyone else is just outsourcing parenting (=sending kids to nursery so they can be stimulated, socialise and have fun for a few hours a day, and they can work)

Are you always this rude?

Are you always this smug?

Who asked you?

I'm aware thanks. I actually have a brain injury and mix up words that sound the same. No need to be so snidey when you have no idea of peoples struggles.

He doesn't sound like lazy bastard. He sounds like an utterly miserable man who has disengaged from life and is just going through the bare motions. His own narrative, that OP has conveyed, is that he works at something he hates to fund a lifestyle his wife wants and enjoys and which is a luxury to have. And he's not wrong in that. That is what is happening.

From OP's account he sounds completely isolated if he works alone all day and then spends hours alone in the room where he does the job he hates.

But fine, you encourage OP - who may not even be married as she calls him 'partner' - to think of him as a lazy bastard. Let her take that approach with him and see if that improves matters or pushes him finally to break up with her. Hope that house is in both their names.

The wisest approach for everyone is for OP to wake up to what is in front of her - that her H appears to be deeply unhappy and not wanting to be with OP or his family anymore. If she wants to fix that, she needs to start with talking to him about why he is so unhappy and how they can fix things to suit both of them. Not by saying, 'Oi you lazy bastard, clean the bathroom'.

Like I said upthread, I will always remember the desperate posts on a homeschooling SM site from a home schooling mum of four whose partner ( not married) had just left her. Not a good position to be in.

Yup. All this.

Personally, I'd go back to work and send the kids to school; then, financially, you're about equal.

He might be able to change jobs to one he doesn't hate. You would share the childcare/chores.
Why is he opting out of family life in the evenings? Over 4 hours in his office, whilst you do baths and bed. Perhaps if he interacted with you and the children, they might get used to the strange man, they sometimes see.

This is why one partner (usually the woman, let’s be honest) staying home and taking on sole responsibility for that whole massive house/childcare/life admin workload while the other does a ‘proper’ (!) job is never a good idea. When it comes to the crunch, you end up financially dependent on one person who can basically choose to behave as they like, gets away with a total abdication of any responsibility beyond the financial, and what you’re doing will still never be considered ‘enough’ by some people anyway (as some of the responses on here show). The hand that feeds you can starve you, as they say, and ‘starvation’ can look like a lot of things in this context.

You can fix this by putting the kids in school/childcare, getting your own income, and making sure he does his part round the house and in the family (or leaving if he doesn’t). I don’t get the impression you’re going to actually do this, but it would break the deadlock at least. At the moment you have nothing to bargain with. Every time you say anything he’s going to keep saying ‘I’m the earner’, and he’s never going to appreciate your labour until he gets a taste of it himself. If he’s as miserable as he claims he’ll be grateful for the change. I very much doubt he is as miserable as he claims, though. He sounds like he’s onto a good thing the way things are. If being the stay at home was all that easy men would be queuing up to do it.

This is what I thought too!

Just this.

The only times I have been a SAHM was during both of my maternity leave periods (so 8 months each time). I did all of the housework and primarily sorted the kids out in the mornings & evenings - my husband would do a bath time if he was back from work by then. I made sure to get all housework done during the week so that we could have weekends to enjoy as a family.