Long and rather dull thread about dh saying I'm selfish and he doesn't understand me re having another child

[bran]

I may just type all this out to clarify my own thoughts, and not post it at all.

The short version is that dh wants to adopt a second child and I'm unsure. He wanted to go ahead with the initial assessment for a second child and see whether my doubts resolve themselves in the process. So I said that since he's the keener one he could phone and make the appointment. He was going to do it at the beginning of the year but kept putting it off. This morning as he was walking out the door he was firing off a list of things he wanted me to do and added phoning Social Services on to the end of the list. I said that he had agreed to do it whereupon he said "You know I'm much too busy at work to do it. You're so selfish, I just don't understand you sometimes" and slammed his door on the way out.

Long version below.

There are lots of reasons why I'm unsure about a second child, on the positive side I did always plan to have two children when we started trying for a family. I know that ds would love a sibling, not just now but it's great to not be an only child when you're grown up and your parents are getting older. Also, DS has brought unbelieveable joy into our lives and I love him more than I thought it possible to love and another child would be loved just the same and no doubt bring as much joy.

On the negatative side I'm not a natural baby person and, although I enjoyed it very much, I found the first year with ds very hard work, even though he was a fairly 'easy' child. I'm not at all sure how well I will cope with two children, especially if the second child isn't easy. Now that I have experience of one child, I worry that I couldn't cope with a challenging child. I know that no child comes with any guarantee of health/good personality, but an adopted child can come with with ante-natal drug/alcohol usage, an unknown genetic history or a genetic history of mental illness/medical problems, lack of care/disruption in the early months/years leading to attachment disorder. I worry that the stress of dealing with any of these things will put a strain on my relationships with dh and ds and that ds won't get the attention that he deserves.

A further complication is that dh is a workaholic. He loves taking on challenging and difficult contracts and works very long hours. When we were meeting with social workers being assessed to adopt and after we got ds he would always promise to be home in plenty of time, but I would usually end up apologising to social workers and starting without him and he would roll in 30 mins late. When he's here he's great with ds and does lots with him, but the job he's in at the moment he usually only gets home before ds' bedtime once or twice a week. He also occasionally works at weekends, and when he is at home he spends most of the time that he's not with ds working on his computer.

I work part-time so naturally most of the household and admin stuff is down to me, but I resist being his unpaid PA and skivvy as I feel it's his choice to work all hours not mine, also he has a tendency to be vague on details so when I do do stuff for him it always takes longer and is more of a pain than he lets on. This causes a certain amount of tension when he wants something to be done but can't do it himself and I don't want to do it. Also I think he is jealous of my free time and laziness, or annoyed that I have free time and 'waste' it and feels that I am a resource for him to harness, he sometimes tries to 'manage' me like one of his work team. Generally if I want something to happen I organise it myself, if I don't want something I don't argue I just let him organise it and it often doesn't happen. Which is why I suggested he organise the appointment with Social Services last November (it's nearly June now!) as I knew the delay would give me a bit of thinking time.

I really feel that if dh can't find the time to phone up and make the initial appointment how is he going to find time to meet with the social workers and do a handover with the new child. The handover for ds took a week and dh was supposed to take a fortnight off when ds moved in with us, but didn't.

There is a bit of a time pressure on this decision as we are planning to move back to Ireland in a couple of years and ds will start primary school there. So any adoption would have to be done and dusted before then otherwise our move will need to be delayed. As an indication of how tight that is, it was 3 years from starting assesment until ds was placed with us, and almost another 9 months until the adoption was finalised in court.

I don't know where I'm going with this rant really, but I do feel better that I've written it down and clearer in my mind what the issues are, so I think I'll post it and I can look back at it in a few days. I can't decide though whether I am indeed being selfish, I'm certainly being fairly passive-agressive. But on the other hand dh genuinely feels that he is doing what's best for his family and gets frustrated that I'm not being a team player when I put my point of view forward, so the choice seems to be to go along with what he wants or be passive-aggressive.

Well, your DH should probably get on my DH's case, as he isn't doing overseas stuff very much at all now - his new job involves having no overseas staff. (Well, unless Cheshire (pronounced: Chooster) counts? ).

Some of us just like the work, men and women. It's interesting. They've asked British workers if they want shorter hours and actually a lot of them don't. It's great to love your work. I'm sure it's great to enjoy being home with under 5s 12 hours a day. I can understand loving the work but not all that looking after small children and yet some men and women prefer the childcare. I suppose we just all differ.

Right ... but there's loving the work, and enjoying time at work, and working long hours. And then there's spending your holidays in an internet cafe, being late for home appointments, and not managing to get any of your home obligations done.

The former is fine. The latter is very difficult for people living with you.

If you work long hours, but you can predict your hours a bit, or control them (and take actual holidays!) that's a hell of a lot more survivable, for everyone involved, than this sort of workaholic behaviour. (I feel compelled to note that I don't think DH has ever spent holidays in an internet cafe. He's really not in the same league as bran's DH, from what she says here.)

xenia, admit it you just copied and pasted that from another post of yours, didnt you?? THE OP IS ASKING ABOUT ADOPTING A SECOND CHILD, NOT ASKING OPINIONS ON WHETHER SHE / ALL WOMEN SHOULD WORK A 70 HOUR WEEK. rant over.

(Some day, late at night, I might be tempted to have a 'let's all be Xenia' game ... go onto threads about, say teething pain. Or clothing. And explain how the problem would be fixed by mothers working full time. I doubt I could out-Xenia Xenia, but it would be interesting to try ...)

I do have sympathy with the 'women should work more' position, but really, this is insane behaviour bran is describing, tbh ... if we all worked like this, presumably we'd all be forever forgetting our children at nursery ...

I feel that I should point out that we don't spend all of our time on holidays in internet cafes, but when we went to New Zealand (our penultimate holiday before ds) we stayed in lots of different places. Where the hotel or guest house had an internet connection dh would log on while I was in the shower or doing laundry or having a lie in so it was only slightly annoying that he was clocking up at least and hour and a half a day. Other times we would check out of the hotel and have to keep an eye open for internet cafes while on the road. There was at least occasion when we spent more than 2 hours in a cafe, dh denied that we'd been there that long, but I know we were because the car was on a meter and I had to feed it twice.

His company also has an office in Kuala Lumpur near where his family live, so when we go there to visit he generally does 3 or 4 full days work in a 2 week visit. At least he has the good sense to drop me off at his brother's house on the way, I tend to want to murder my MIL if left alone with her for more than 20 mins at a time.

Thank goodness he doesn't have a blackberry.

Ah, DH has a blackberry.

It is the source of some marital stress, although he's been better about it, since moving to the new job.

I would love to see the stats on how many Blackberries are thrown into toilets/stomped on/run through shredders every year by irate spouses. I bet it's a big part of their market ...

I am going to go slightly against the grain here and say that whilst you and dh need to keep talking about this I think one of the basic premises that you should keep in mind is that dh will not change if/after you adopt a second child.

He sounds very like my dh workwise. I will bet money on the fact that even if he did sell the company before you move to Ireland he will start something else.I'm not saying its right or wrong - its just the way it is. He has to stop making false promises.

I think your discussions should accept the fact that he will still be working as much as he does now, and from there, assess whether or not you want to adopt a second child. If yes, what extra help can you as a family unit afford to get? Even if you are talking 'one day a week babysitter' so that you, bran can go to the spa for a day. (he does need to change this 'you're lazy' attitude)

If you do this, when(if) he does decide to cut his working hours, it will be a bonus for you rather than seething for months that he is not doing what he promised.

But I do agree about having a second child and that somehow feels like a proper family more and he wants that and it isn't always wrong to please the other half.

(On internet access better someone rushing on line to check business than email their love/go on mumsnet surely)

bran, I'm impressed with your patience and the effort you've put into explaining such a complex dilemma to us.

Any response is bound to be over-simplistic. You've spent months/years thinking it through and we haven't.

That said - your fears about the second adoption are realistic and his blitheness is unrealistic.

Is this not all part of the assessment process - reality checking of the couple's expectations? Could you thrash it all out together with the social work adoption team? Including all the experience of what he promised but didn't do last time?

His 'selective memory' is blurring the whole issue - I think getting written agreements to each stage of the decision process is a reasonable way forward.

But you won't necessarily be doing ds a favour by 'pleasing your other half'. Putting ds's needs first does involve taking account of your own.

All the best whatever you decide.

Mumsnet is great for getting a sense of perspective, isn't it. I can see that dh and I live in different realities. He is surrounded by people who think that it's entirely normal to work all the time and be very successful, which has driven his natural tendency to get stuck into work into overdrive. The people he works with either don't have families or they have a support system in place to allow them not to need to be responsible for day to day care. He keeps telling me that 'everyone' says that there is very little difference between having one child and having two. And I think for the people saying that it's probably true.

I think from some of the replies that I've put dh in a very bad light. The only problem that I have with him is this constant working thing, he doesn't really see a second child as a project or the next goal to acquire, he is very warm and kind and funny, and he loves ds very much. When we were younger he used to say he wanted 4 children as he likes large, bustling families. And, to be honest, I would like to have two children, I just don't want to be doing it mostly on my own.

I'm still not sure really what decision to make, but I have started to keep a diary of the times he comes home so that I can work out which reality is the real one. He thinks he's home before ds bedtime quite often, I think it's not very often at all. I haven't spoken to him yet about whether he's going to start the ball rolling with social services as he came home last night after I'd fallen asleep, so sometime after 11.30, and there's never time to talk in the morning rush.

Thanks for your thoughts everyone.

Bran

There is one thing I am eternally grateful to my cousin for - he warned me that having two children was MORE THAN twice the work of one.

There are no economies of scale. None. The reason that it's more than twice the work of one is because you have the interaction between the two children to facilitate (aka being a UN Peacekeeper).

People who were happy to sit for one, quake at the prospect of two. So you end up with less informal help as well.

There are lots and lots of upsides to having two children, and I am glad that I do. But it's lots and lots more work. I imagine even more work when adopting because of the whole potential attachment disorder situation.

I am reliably informed that the economies of scale thing kicks in after two.

I don't think he'll change much, some people (including my equity-partner-solicitor-DH) just can't sit still and are very driven. People don't change much, do they? I think you are being realistic about that, when you say that he has promised before and only half-delivered (if that!)

And I did find that there was a big difference between 1 child and 2 (we had a 23 month gap). In fact at the time we had a cartoon on the kitchen noticeborad that said "Going from one child to two is like going from owning a dog to running a zoo"! Now I don't actually think that is true (now they are 8 and 6) but it shows how we were feeling at the time. And we decided to stick at 2, both having initially envisaged 3.

I think you have to decide based on things remaining as they are, otherwise you may store up a lot of resentment for the future?

You sound a lovely level-headed person, btw

Take care, whatever you decide.

SNAP!!

Hmmm, I didn't find moving from one to two that hard. But then DS2 was easier than DS1 as a baby, and mine are three years apart, which does help.

Bran
Found you, it?s a difficult one, as with many points in life you need a crystal ball.

Lots of aspects to it but don't forget that once the kids are out of nappies /less messy/ less dependent etc it'll be less drudgery than at the moment. Don?t forget that you can buy in some support to help you out.

It might be useful to talk to anyone who is ten years ahead of you i.e. have adopted only one child and how that all works without a sibling. Also talk to someone who is an adult only adopted child and their experiences. I think that the worries you have are very valid.

About your DHs long hours and the pressure it puts on you I think that?s a separate issue - will he ever change? The diary things a v good idea. I did it with my dh and his pc game playing it really helped and having it in B&W was sobering for him he just didn?t realize and a really good starting point for our discussions and agreeing how things where going to change.

Get him to agree to him coming home one night a week at 7 for a month for heavens sake he owns the company! That also would be a good starting point for discussions and conversations.

You need to pull together on this one so you don't end up resenting each other for your different viewpoints on how your family works, there?s a lot at stake.

FioFio , I don't even Xenia would suggest that I should grow a penis. Although she hasn't been here all that long there is something strangely soothing about her sticking so resolutely to her party line, no matter what the situation, when everything else in the world is uncertain and constantly changing.

I think I will have to stick to my guns and just wait for him to make a move. We had another discussion this morning, much the same as the others. He feels he's being logical and sensible and so do I, but we are poles apart.

Him: Did you do x (unrelated, not terribly important thing) that I asked you to.

Me: No, I didn't get around to it. Did you phone social services?

Him: I've been too busy, it's easy to do these things when you have a day off (implying that I should do it).

Me: I really feel that if you don't have time to make a phone call that you won't have time for a second child and all the meetings.

Him: I'll make the time when I need to. I work very hard for this family and you have lots of spare time.

Me: Nobody is forcing you to do such long hours, you could choose to work less.

Him: (silence)

The thing is, much as I would like a second child, life is pretty good at the moment. I work a bit, I spend a bit of time with ds and I have some time to myself. There are occasional difficulties to do with dh not being around enough and his time-crunch approach to putting work and other people first (have I mentioned that he's also doing a doctorate and he serves in church, is proving the soup lunch this month and is on the PCC which involves regular meetings).

On the whole though, because we only have one child and a full-time nursery place things don't reach crisis point and I'm not exhausted and exasperated in the way that I often was in the first year. I can see dh's point that after the first year of the second child things will settle again, but he has lots of assumptions including that the next child will be at least as easy as ds.

The other thing I would say is that simply because there is a little more elastic in the system (sounds like principally your system) does not mean you should be at full stretch.

Both my dh and I work full time and we have two children. We are both absolutely at full stretch and we'd both prefer not to be.