DH working away from home 3 days, what should he do when home?

[PurplePrincess31]

My DH sometimes works away from home 3 days/nights a week, I work part time with school age DC, what would you think was reasonable for him to do on the days when he is there?

So there are 3 things:

1) bedtime routine
If you are doing it when he is away then as someone else pointed out, presumably when he is staying a hotel he is relaxing and has child free time, so when is yours? Yes he absolutely should be doing bedtime on the nights he is home.

When I worked away DH did daily routine with DS when I was away and I did it when I was at home.

2) other household chores such as cleaning
are any of your days off (you said you work PT?) while he is away and how old are DC? If he is at work and DC at school/nursery and you are at home then IMO you should be doing the lions share of housework (cleaning, laundry) in that time. That's not to say he gets away totally free, when he is home he could (and it sounds like he does?) chip in with things like meals.

3) tidying up his shit
No, you should not be doing this. He is a grown up and needs to take responsibility for tidying away his own shit. Creating more work for you to do is absolutely not on.

If my partner only worked 15 hours a week and we only had 1 Primary aged dc, then I would expect them to be doing the overwhelming majority of the stuff around the house, yes.
I did considerably more than dh when our were young and worked more than twice your hours (and we had 3).

I suspect this is about something else - some lack of contentment as some other posters have suggested.

I happen to think doing an equal share of cooking, and putting dc to bed when he is home is not an unreasonable balance if you have all those spare hours when he is doing his paid work.

If DH worked just 15 hours whilst mine were 37 I’d expect him to do the bulk of the housework tasks and then we would share the weekend cooking.

@PurplePrincess31

His normal hours are around 37, sometimes he does more. I do 15 at the moment, so before everyone starts having a go I accept and do do the housework, it would just be nice as I said above if he could help clean up tea things, tidy up after himself and see to the kids a bit more.

Your expectations here are waaaay too low, OP. The PP who said he should as a bare minimum be doing the same amount as a single man who lives alone is correct - why on earth would he or you think that he should do less than that when he has a family and young children!? Of course, he should really do significantly more than a single man! Children create a lot of mess and laundry and they need lots of food and attention and help with things, this isn't a surprise to him, is it?

Helping clear up the tea things is just a basic adult function, you eat you help clear up, no? I would at least offer to do that at a friend's house (or if a good friend I'd just get up and do it), let alone my own. Tidying up after himself and parenting his own children are so basic I can't believe you even have to ask (I assume he's worn you down so much you've begun to think this ridiculousness might actually be acceptable).

What does he do while you're clearing up the tea things, tidying his stuff and looking after your joint children? Does he just sit there watching you do it?

Equal leisure time. It's the best measure of fairness in a relationship that I've found.

(SAHP, married to a surgeon. He does the nightwakings, I do the mornings. When he gets home he does stories and bath. Child is breastfed to sleep so I do that while he tidies the downstairs and starts dinner. He washes up/loads the dishwasher while I do laundry. Often in the morning he will empty the dishwasher before leaving if he has time, especially on the day our cleaner comes as this helps me to clear the decks for her. He does half the nursery drop offs and pick ups. I do more of the non-daily chores like arranging the boiler service because I have more time in the day but when we're both here in the evenings and at weekends we both crack on with whatever needs doing until it's done so we can sit down and relax together. Unless he is at work.)

I would expect him to do 50/50 in his non-working hours and then take on slightly more of the child-related tasks, so perhaps doing bedtime solo some of those nights or taking them out for a few hours or the whole day on the weekends to have the sort of quality time you would normally have when he is away.

In our case, I'm the one who works away part of the week (usually 3 days but not every week) in non-COVID times. I do 50/50 of household tasks when I'm home and I also do admin tasks while I'm away that are easy to do remotely (like booking tickets to the school play or ordering the online food shop). When I'm home I do a bit more of the child-facing tasks (like bath and bedtime) and the school runs because I miss out on those when I'm not there. The difference is that dh and I both work full time (I work compressed hours over 4 days when I'm away). It might be different if dh worked PT and was home more anyway with more free time.

It depends on how PT you are.

Most family homes really don't need hours of cleaning every week, if that's what you're doing, it's by choice.

When I worked PT I aimed to "work" the same hours as DH and usually that got everything that needed doing done, so weekends and evenings were leisure time for both of us. If there were extra things to do to do at weekends they'd be fairly distributed, not by any stringent rota, but just because that's how it happened.

Sorry, I've just seen you or update. Yes, I'd expect you to do the bulk of cleaning/laundry type chores that can be done during the working day. I would expect him to take his share of meal prep, clearing up, homework and bath time etc.in the evenings.

Mmm I expect you need a break after three days solid with the kids. 37 hours and a hotel stay sound quite relaxing in comparison I would expect him to give you a proper break on his initial return and then split chores so you had the same amount of down time for the following few days