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 ?

In my opinion home education should be for the benefit of the child/ren, not because a parent wants a reason to avoid going to work.

@EducatorMum Is part of the reason you have chosen to permanently homeschool is so you don't have to return to paid employment?

What country are you in? We call them State schools in the UK.

It’s your utter ignorance of the secondary curriculum that is amusing. I asked if you could teach up to Y11, can you teach a full suite of GCSE’s whilst simultaneously teaching two primary aged children? I think you’re the clueless one
Good luck, your choice

My head fell off from laughing so hard at this post.

I don’t know any parents of young kids who are working jobs that they love. Is that a realistic expectation these days???

The DH sounds like a lazy fecker with his lie-ins and fecking off upstairs for Me time instead of pulling his weight.

I’d be reading him the riot act and pulling no punches.

I have no problem with working. I worked for a BA and then went on to do a PGCE and spent years as a primary school teacher. I would just prefer to educate my own children

That is entirely your choice but, as with all things, these choices come with sacrifices and consequences. You choose to keep your children at home with you. That means that there is not going be a lot of ‘me time’ especially with the age gaps and still having a Very young child.
I do think that the balance sounds a little out but your fundamental issue that will not change until your children are much older is that you are responsible for 100% of your children’s time.

It seems like you’ve agreed your roles and responsibilities during the day - he has his job and you have yours - but I think during the evenings and weekends the load should be shared equally, just like it would be if you had a 9-5 office job too.

I have a 9-5 office job (hybrid) and I am also up between 6-7 so that’s not that unusual imo.

But I would think post 5pm is when you both “clock off” and share the childcare and household responsibilities.

Also weekends, I’d expect to take it in turns having a lay in and not really be bothered that he slept “the same amount of hours”, just came to bed way later. Sorry, no. Get yourself on a sleep schedule so your wife can have some of the lay ins!

Maybe you could sit together once kids are in bed and devise a new way of divide and conquer so you both are “working” equally (say your 35/40 hour working week) and then sharing everything around those hours.

The word 'prefer' is a massive luxury. What would your husband prefer?

plenty people who aren’t teachers do it successfully. There are plenty of online classes , tutors and home ed groups. I never said I would teach everything myself

You’re getting these ridiculous answers, OP, because you’re homeschooling, and Mumsnetters generally don’t approve of that. But that’s neither here nor there. It is not ok for your husband to have a lie-in til 11 every Saturday and Sunday, and opt out of any parenting in the evenings, while you’re working 18 hours a day. That’s not being a father.

Ironically, if you were a SAHM to just your 2yo you’d be getting much more sympathetic responses.

I agree. But I was responding to OP’s comment about what would change if she got a job.

To answer your main question - how do you balance the work? - the homeschooling makes it a little bit tricky. If it were just a case of his working full time and your being a SAHP, I would say that you pick up the majority of the shared household/childcare tasks because you are able to be at home and not otherwise obligated roughly M-F 8 - 5 (adjust for his work + commute times, if they are different). Outside of that time, split the remaining work equally (taking into consideration if either of you has other outside obligations - like caring for a relative outside your household, or going to school). The ideal should be that you each end up with roughly the same amount of "leisure" time to do what you want (not including a normal amount of sleep, which you each need). The homeschooling alters this a bit as you DO have obligations during the day which may be urgent and time-dependent, but only you can figure out how much that impacts you. There's also the fact that you each should be doing roughly half of the parenting, as distinct from childcare "tasks" like the school run, making children's meals, etc. - if one of you is routinely not, that's a priority issue to fix for their sake.

You didn't explicitly ask this, but it sounds to me like you and your husband don't really have clear ideas about how much each of you is doing. Discuss it, in detail, and come up with a fair breakdown. You'd be surprised how clueless one partner can be about how much work and time the other puts in! Before you do that, though, check first that you're both still in agreement that homeschooling IS the right option for your children and that your being a SAHP with no outside work and his working full time are still desirable to both of you versus the other viable options. Parenting is hard, and if you have children they should be your top priority. You keep dismissing options or saying your husband would reject them but you both have to think more broadly. Nothing viable should be off the table merely because of your preferences or habits, including the children going back to school, your husband changing jobs, the two of you completely switching roles, or both working FT.

So when you went into teaching you couldnt care less about the children?

You would have time if you were working as a team but it seems he’s not happy with the financial burden (and I think he misunderstands how much work goes in to homeschool and childcare) and you’re not happy with the unequal split. It means you’re not making time for each other.

I think a lot of couples go through this. I remember thinking it was so nice for DH to go to work, eat in peace, talk to adults, use his brain then come home while I felt all I did was housework drudgery and mind numbing play groups. DH on the other hand felt pressured to do his job and rush home to see LO and that I was so lucky to get up each day and pick what we were going to do and build a lovely bond.

Homeschooling is another thing. People have strong opinions on it (both for and against). I personally think it works really well for some kids but not all.
I don’t see it as leaving my child with strangers, more giving them a chance to have a life outside of our family and make friends, socialise and learn how to play/negotiate/navigate relationships. It’s a little surprising as a teacher you don’t appear to think there are any benefits.

If your DH doesn’t agree to do more, you need to really think about what you want. Is it really a child free break regularly? For your DH to do more? To feel like you have equal break?
If you can figure that out, you’ll know exactly what you need from your DH and can be quite explicit in your requests which may help.

Yes. There are many reasons we wish to
home educate , but that’s not really the point of this post

This.

@BirthdayTrash I'd be incredibly surprised if an (ex) primary teacher - and not sure how many years she actually taught for - could successfully teach her children up to A-Level?
As I said, I am primary trained. Taught in the classroom for 22 years and now tutor.
I absolutely would not have been able to teach my sons A-Level Maths, Physics or Computer Science!

Did he do any parenting or housework when the kids were at school?

Perhaps a poor choice of words here. I cared massively, I knew many that didn’t!

Why would you need to? There are teachers and tutors and online schools for that.

@BirthdayTrash Well then OP is a SAHM with kids at home, not a home educator.

Haha thank you! Clearly homeschooling has riled people right up , never mind 😂

I trained as a Primary School teacher but I wouldnt feel qualified to teach all subjects in the secondary curriculum up to GCSE and A Level.

The homeschooling is irrelevant, as is whether you wanted to do it or become a sahm.
Opting out of family life to this degree isn’t acceptable behaviour from a father imo. Non of the cooking, no bath times, no bedtimes, no waking up in the morning with them, in bed until 11 am on the weekend?