Dp said I had a "small life" and now I'm mad

[sexkittyinwaiting]

I gave up work when preg with my eldest who is now 8. I have since had 4 more children and am expecting no.6 in March. I am a full time sahm and I think it is a very hard job for many, many different reasons.

Anyway, dp and I ( who have a pretty shaky relationship anyway) had a row about one of the kids yesterday. He couldn't understand why I was so upset with him and told me that I had a small life and muttered something, I can't clearly remember, about people like him who basically didn't have small lives and were living in the real world dealing with real problems.
I was bloody livid and when I told him he had called me small he got angry and said he had never said that. I told him that if you tell someone they have a small life then by implication you are calling them small. you are hardly saying "well you're a really big and important person but you have such a small life"

TBH I don't think I have a small life. I have my life which is raising 5/6 young children. It's not a business woman's life, a career woman's life, but it's one of the most imortant jobs there is to do and one of the hardest too.

I am furious that he has this opinion. Up until now I had alwyas thought he thought my work as a sahm to be of equal value to his as the breadwinner, just different.
Anyway I don't know why I am writing this, I'm just venting my spleen and wanted to know what views others have on this. How would you feel and what would you do if your dp said this to you?
Perhaps it's becasue I have such a small life that I have a chance to sit down and write this

hug sexkitty. sahms are the glue that hold the world together

dh is the same, and i always end up apologising for being a sahm, im still signed off work with pnd but i say "im just a mum at the mo" or "im not allowed back to work yet" You are not small, you are helping to shape the future. much more important than filing

I'd be tempted to tell him to take a week off work and have a go at living your "small life" on his own

I've been a full time SAHm for about a year now and it's the hardest thing I've ever done. I appreciate being able to be with my children but going to work is definately easier.

Your DH needs a kick up the backside IMO. DP has said to me he knows he wouldn't be able to be at home all of the time. Your DH needs to have a real think about what exactly it is that you do for your family

Am very on your behalf!

ask him if he wants to swop for a bit, and you can go to work instead.

Yes I also feel very for you!

You know I know my intrinsic value I am just utterly, utterly shocked that he thinks this way.
He has no idea what this job involves. He is self employed so is around more than a father who is out at an office, he therefore thinks, because he sees some stuff at home, that he knows what my life is like. But he is so bloody full of his own self importance.
I often wish I could put people in my shoes for a while, I think it would need to be more than a week. A week isn't long enough, not nearly, for the monotonous grind to get to you. Now imo THAT is the hardest thing to learn to live with.

I agree with you Kitty, but without knowing wha type of person your DH is, I am thinking that he might have made the "small" comment in the heat of the moment, when you were both angry and because he doesn't agree with you about the gravity of the issue. (You are allowed to disagree and have different opinions on parenting issues after all).

A constructive way forward would be for one of you to apologise for your part in the argument, if it's you, say you still disagree over the main issue and why and that you were very upset about his "small" comment, that it made you feel de-valued etc, and that you have since been hoping that this is not the way he really thinks, Realise it's hard to make the conversation run as smoothly as this but it would be a way forward. Don't let this cause a huge crack in an already volatile relationship; if you can have the above convo it might help to get things into context.

Too true! When it feels like groundhog day doing the same things over and over again zzzzzzzzzzzzz

Kitty, as you know I am still in work waiting for lo number one to be born, so obvy have no experience of being a SAHM. But as I posted on the antenatal thread, I am for you, what on earth does that mean that your life is small???

Because going out to work for a petty-minded boss with horrible colleagues sitting in the same chair every day staring out the window at the same fecking view when you're not on the computer or telephone, trying to make money and hit targets, working stupid hours for silly money, yeah, that's "big" is it?

It's weird, since getting pg my priorities have changed. I used to draw my entire view of myself from what a successful salesperson I was, how much commission I'd made, how much I'd over-achieved my targets blah blah blah.

Now I listen to my colleagues going on about their billings this month and I think "you all sound so small."

Kitty you don't feel small, as it were, in yourself do you?

But shinyhappy.. don't you think that people actually speak the truth in arguments, you know because they haven't got time to cesnure what comes out of their mouths? Just like when they're drunk.

OK
I think it was a very rude thing to say and he shouldn't have said it.
but
if the monotonous grind of your life is getting you down, then perhaps you should look for something to make it more interesting.

i agree, i used to be obessed with gp, staff rotas i even used to divert the restaurant phone to my mobile ffs, now I DONT CARE!

No Moss i don't really. I have battled with my own self worth as a SAHM in the past. it's not the most thrilling job in the world for me but I recognise it's importance to my children and i am glad to be there for them and am glad we are in a finacial position for that to happen.

But becky, it's tough with so many YOUNG children. Yes I made the bed and I'm lying in it, I'm not complaining about that. What I'm doing would be montonous to most people.
It's his attitude that infuriates me.

In all honesty most people's lives are "small". Most of us interact with similar people on a day to day basis. We work: be that paid or unpaid and we tend to end up with gripes along similar lines on a regular basis.
I've worked alongside some real highflyers & even with their international, high powered jobs their actual lives are still fairly "small". They still end up winging about the dodgy coffee machine, the crap traffic into work or en route to the airport.
I think your DH needs to have a think about the justification for his comment! Did he make it in a moment of irritation or anger?

Look, I do sympathise. But you refer to your life as a monotonous grind. If I spoke about mine like that, my dh would be on my back too. He would want me to do something that interested me. If it's what you want to do, that's great. But you don't sound very positive about it, and maybe that's what he's picking up on. In a very insensitive way of course.

I think it's really insulting to say that by being a SAHM you have a 'small' life. So being a WOHM makes you bigger, grander, more important eh?

I hate the implication that SAHMs should have to apologise for what they do, or that being a SAHM has any lower status than working. Our culture has become so money-grabbing that we value people by what they earn, not who they are. And that makes me !!!!

With 5 dcs and 1 en route you must work really hard to look after them all! and be v. skilled in lots of ways...

Kitty, people often say things they don't mean in the heat of arguments, the aim being to shock the other person into shutting up, or even with the aim of hurting them. Many soon regret what they have said as your DH may do and the urge to cause the other person pain. Only you know how he usually treats you and speaks to you.. but you imply he usually treats you with respect as you say that until this argument you felt that he saw both you roles as equal in their different ways.

He may feel/have felt that the issue you were originally arguing about was 'small' because he a.didn't feel as strongly about it as you and b. it was "nothing" compared to what he has been "dealing with all day" at work (not saying this is the case; just that he may have felt that at that moment).. it's a matter of perspective and feelings at the point of the 'conversaton' (row) can completely affect what is said and felt.

If you were saying that you fed up with his general attitude towards you and being constantly belittled I would be thinking this was a bigger problem than it sounds, but you haven't said that all; just that your relationship is a bit 'shaky'.. (how?).

Becky I see where you're coming from. His comment actually was in response to our argument about his incompetent dealings with our 3 year old. He would be one of the first people to say that looking after 6 young kids was monotonous. If he were to say that my world was small as was his and I was therefore making a mountain out of a molehill blah. blah it would have been not so bad. it was his implication that his world wasn't small. That's just crap.

Truth be told I don't think many people recognise the worth of what their partners do. I personally think I'm a f*cking miracle worker but Dh doesn't seem to recognise that. I'd kill myself laughing if he even tried to do what I cope with every day . I suspect the 'small' comment was a heat of the moment thing. Perhaps he'd had a bad day? No excuse but it can make a difference. You value yourself, your children value you, DH I'm sure does too but we all forget that at times.

Don't blame you for being angry though.

Kitty, as I said, previous disclaimer applies as I don't know anything about "the other side" yet!

But sometimes I do think that we have our priorities a bit wrong in this country with regards to bringing up children. In some European countries you get loads and loads of maternity leave, loads of benefits and loads of support.

Whereas here you get six months at about £108 quid a week and if you want to spend more time with baby after that it's not paid at all. And given that it's drummed into you that "you are what you earn" (and all this crap about how you should always be earning at least your age) is it any wonder that being a SAHM is seen as a low value job, both by people who earn a salary, and sometimes by SAHMs themselves?

If we didn't measure the "bigness" of jobs by salary and instead measured them by the importance they had to the lives of others, SAHM would be right up there at the top.

Shiny, you've hit the nail on the head there

There are many many monotonous jobs in the world, like call centres, checkout operators, production line workers etc etc.

Suggest he has a look at how much it would cost for nursery and after school care or the cost of a nanny and a housekeeper if you were to venture out into the "big" world. silly man doesn't know how good he has got it.