my dh resents me for not working

[thestarryskiesabove]

we have 2 Dc's, 4 & 5, both in full time education, it was always agreed that one of us would stay at home and look after the kids until they were older, whilst the other worked - I am now looking to get a job but have so far been unsuccessful. The fall out is that dh is being really resentful towards me and pretty much treats me like a home help/employee, ie with disdain and contempt. I get that my role is perceived as the easier one, but in reality our hours are pretty much similar in that I am a house wife 7 days a week, I do everything to do with the house and kids from sunrise to sun down - whereas he does a 40 hour week mon to fri. How do i deal with his deep, brooding resentment?, obviously apart from getting a job - thats for the future, i am talking about right now.

Well....exactly! :)

Just popping back to say-

I don't think this is about whether having a role as a homemaker is worthwhile once the kids are at school. Badvoc and others have made it clear that they make other contributions by volunteering; and also, we shouldn't take it for granted that being busy is an end in itself.

The OP was asking: what can I do to persuade my OH that what I do is legitimate, because he is sulking? in later posts she clarified that she did work outside the home when her first DC was young; with her current children she doesn't want to, even though they are at school, because it's nice and she has more time.

The advice to OP is that her best case is not that she is working as hard as he is. He won't believe her, and to be honest it's not her best argument.

Of course we are all very busy when they are tiny. But it changes. By the time mine are say 30, 28 and 26 I am not expecting to be busy with them at home; I was very busy when they were 6, 4 and 2 (which is when I went back to PT work). By the time they were 11, 9 and 7 I was less busy again and so I went to FT, but locally.

At the time I went back, work was quite junior and home was pretty busy, so there wasn't that much difference. I recently had some time off work following surgery, so I got to compare a senior job (which I have now as I have been back at work for so long) with life at home with three DC out all day at senior school and Uni. There is no question, even allowing for the fact I was recuperating: it was way, way less work.

It's difficult to make this point, because ppl feel that we don't value motherhood, or homemaking, or that we are obsessive. In fact, I may well feel that there is nothing wrong, at all, with having a more leisurely life and spending spare time on volunteering or walking the dog. I'm looking forward to it myself, when I retire, and i don't mean that to be snarky. If I could afford to retire early, you bet I would. But I need the pension scheme.

So it's not that we don't value homemaking. We do realise that the pre-school years are busy- we had the same experience. but on the narrow question of: whose day has the most in it, the evidence does show that ppl who are employed have more in their day that is compulsory, than ppl who are at home with all their kids in school.

So the OP needs to find a better argument if she wants to agree this lifestyle with her OH- as many ppl have successfully done.

"The idea that we're tallying up a filled dishwasher or an emptied bin as having financial value seems to me very odd. And only seems to be something that happens when DC arrive. Before and after that, people just crack on with it, don't they?"

Before DC I paid someone to do all my domestic chores - I didn't have time to do them and also do my job which involved copious amounts of travel and very late evenings, all the time. I don't consider any of those things "just part of life". Anything that is outsourceable has a financial value attached to it.

Divide and rule innit?

Bonsoir I absolutely do not believe that prior to DC you did not buy food or cook meals. That you never went to the dry cleaners. That you never put a plate in a dishwasher.

Are you seriously suggestiong that you employed someone to do all domestic chores and that you only worked ?????

Are you seriously suggesting that anyone that works does nothing other than work?

Honestly, that's just daft. DH is one of the managing partners in one of the biggeste law firms in the world and he did the school run this morning. And filled the dishwasher ...

I never cooked at home at all. There was a dry cleaning service at work. I never washed up - I left it for my cleaner.

"The idea that we're tallying up a filled dishwasher or an emptied bin as having financial value seems to me very odd. And only seems to be something that happens when DC arrive. Before and after that, people just crack on with it, don't they?"

I would be pro- the idea that basic household tasks aren't something to make a song and dance about if this argument would effectively lead to men seeing these things as nothing to make a song and dance about and would just do them, and do them right the first time, and do them without being asked. This "everyone empties their own dishwasher like everyone wipes their own bum, surely?" argument is presumably meant to shame men into accepting this as some universally accepted status quo.

The difficulty with this is, is that, as a matter of fact, the status quo is entirely other to this, which is: men get their domestic work done for them by women, often for free. So by appealing to some underlying generally accepted and unexceptional state of affairs, you promote the status quo, (unwittingly I'm sure), so the argument "it's just emptying a bloody dishwasher innit" stops meaning "so men should do it as often as women" and leads to "so what are the women moaning about?"

I think all housework should be noted and accounted, whether paid or not, because it is a massive part of the exploitation of women by men, and making out that to to notice it is petty does women a huge disservice.

Well that is highly unusual Bonsoir and certainly unneccessary.

The vast majority of working people don't employ a live in servant. Nor do they need one!

My girlfriends who still do "big jobs" all have oodles of home help - someone who comes in at 6am to make/serve breakfast and stays until after lunch, doing housework and making lunch for DC, someone else who takes over at 3pm and does all the shopping and prepares the evening meal, an au pair if their are small DC... I know plenty of women who cannot cook at all...

It's not remotely unusual in Paris, wordfactory. We still have chambres de bonnes and back stairs in these parts!

Blimey bonsoir are you Miss Piggy in disguise? respect!

bones I do agree with that, but I'm not sure it's an argument either for or against SAHM. For our family, the thing that asserts most clearly that housework is a shared problem is that i don't do any- I am out all day earning the same as DH. So we both have to sort it out, equally, when we are both at home. And we do.

But my mother, who stayed at home, once said to me: "never do housework when they are out, or where nobody can see you do it. If they don't see it happen, they think it's no trouble".

I can't be bothered to read the whole thread, it has made me so angry I have stopped. The OP had been given a ridiculously hard time.

Having worked in a high power job in London all my life, given it up to get married to my husband and move to a different country (but would apply if I was still in the UK)
I have a genuine question...

Presuming there was a job I could do where I live in Spain (there is not), how would I deal with the following...

dropping off and picking up DD (5) at 9am and 4pm.
16 weeks of summer holidays.
5 weeks of Easter and Christmas holidays.
Various other holidays and sick days here and there.
All in all it is about half the year out of school when childcare would be needed at what cost both emotionally and financially to me and DD?

How does that work, genuinely? To the benefit of me and my DD and financially? It simply does not all add up. Until my DD is at least 11 I cannot possibly get a job. I don't go out, I don't run a car, I don't go on holidays and I don't buy clothes. I make every meal from scratch and cheaply and consider myself a good parent, doing the best I can.

I also do not sit around painting my bloody toenails.

see you guys later

Somerset, there must be childcare options in Spain. Nanny, guessing?

Beastofburden what you say is fair enough.

Although i don't think the OP is asking how to make her husband appreciate her homemaking skills. More that, it was agreed before they had DC so about 6ish years ago, between the two of them that one of them, clearly 'she' in this case would, stay at home until said DC are school age. That time came about 6 months ago, and she is duly looking for paid employment. But her husband isn't happy with her, despite the fact she is following the terms of their agreement. Hopefully, she'll get a job soon and get him off her back in that particular area. But I can't help feeling that as soon as she has a job, there will be some other issue with her he'll bring to the fore. To me, he is being exceptionally unreasonable, and unhealthy, in his attitude towards his wife.

In the meantime, a large number of posters have taken the opportunity to have a good old dig at SAHM's, regardless of the OPs situation.

"bones I do agree with that, but I'm not sure it's an argument either for or against SAHM. "

No, it is absolutely not, and I would never make any of my deeply held beliefs into an allout argument in favour of or against SAHM, because that would be nonsense - all such arguments are nonsense, and worse, pernicious.

Lots of very cheap (= illiterate) help is the norm for working mothers in Spain. Standards of childcare are way lower than British people can stomach.

Bonsoir, for younger children I agree a lower standard of childcare is difficult to accept. But when the children are older than 3 and way short of 11 years like somerset is talking about, many people in the UK use aupairs to wrap around nursery, school and activities. That is something somerset could look into if she really wanted to make it work.

Bowlersarm, the OP and her DH didn't agree what age the DC would be when she went back to work, from the posts it sound like he assumed it would be when the DC were at full time school.

Trouble is, imported educated au pairs and nannies don't like being "on their own" in a sea of undereducated all purpose home helps. In happens to some extent in Paris but I think that in Spain (going on what my sister described - she lived there for several years) that it is an even more acute problem.

bonsoir has it there, if I want a Romanian refugee looking after DD, along with all her children, in a less than desirable enviroment for half the year then, great. I could afford to be able to maybe get a crappy job and maybe clear a 100 euros a week.

On balance, I think not.

Bowlers the OP's situation is that, in relaity, she does not want to work and wants her DH to appreciate her contribution.

As she points out, many men do appreciate it, even if the DC are school age.

The response has been mixed.

And one point that has come up, is whether housework ie domestic chores when the DC are in school, has a financial value. Some say yes. Some say no.

It's hardly a firece debate about morality or summat!

Op I have had kids, gone back to work part time and now have chosen to stop working again. My kids are 9 & 11. My DH works hard, long hours & is home late-ish each night. My job now is to keep house & that is all the housework, washing, cleaning, shopping, taxiing kids to activities, cooking and decorating, organising the car repairs, jobs that need doing in the house by tradesmen and anything else that occurs. I see friends in the daytime too & go running. I am tired in the evening by the time DH gets in, so rarely have the energy to socialise on a week night. It works for us because I've explained to DH all if the above. I think your DH needs to show some understanding.

Word I agree that the OP doesn't really want to work. As a lot of people don't. However, she will work once she finds a job. And in the meantime she'd like her husband to appreciate what she does a bit, and stop belittling her.

As I said, though, it would be the same problems in the UK.

I was desperate to get back to work. I got a job, in the UK and was going to move back, when DD was only 1. The hours were great, 10am / 3pm. It was a good job which would have lead to better things when DD was older.

I worked out the childcare costs in several nurseries in the UK, I would have been left with nothing. I simply would therefore prefer to look after DD and stay in Spain where I can afford to do so as the cost of living is pence compared to the UK.