Being the ‘secondary’ parent as a Mum?

[nightmareallys]

My DH and I are in the stage of talking about children, and what our lives would like with children. We both currently work full time in similar paying jobs, and I enjoy mine more than him and I have a clearer route of progression and pay rises. It’s also easier in my job for me to move round to different companies - I have a set “role” that many companies use. His job is more specialist and less transferable.

He’s also definitely more excited about being a parent than I am. He’s very family-focussed and loves his nephews and is really excited about parenting. I think I’ll find it much harder as I’m quite selfish and I think I’ll find not putting myself first quite trying at times. My DH is already a very selfless person and does that already often. We’re both keen to avoid nurseries for our child/children until school age (apart from a little socialisation in the year before school), just personal preference based on our upbringings.

Anyway, all this to say it seems to me that the best option for us both may be for me to go back to work at 6 monthsish and for my husband to become the full time, stay at home parent. He has expressed an interest in doing this and we think the finances would work. I’m thinking this would be a good way for me to maintain independence and get to be more of the traditional “Dad” parent - weekends and evenings, not the hard grind of childcare.

My main worry is our relationship would suffer - I read a lot of threads on here from SAHM’s whose husbands are resentful of being the ones to keep the family financially afloat, or SAHM’s complaining working parents don’t do enough to help. I worry about how to navigate that, as I would expect my husband to do the bulk of household jobs and child responsibilities - I will not be doing any nighttime’s when I’m working for example, that’s the point of having someone at home. At the moment that’s fine in principle and we both agree, but clearly a lot of people have found that harder in practice.

Anyway, I’m interested in hearing from women who have been the breadwinner whilst their husband’s have stayed home. Or, I guess, from SAHM’s who can give advice on navigating one working, one staying at home.

You're probably remebering a time when you were older - mid-late primary age maybe
Huuuge difference in SAHP workload from baby/toddler/preschool to school age kids

Honestly, it feels like more work! Settling him and putting toys in it for him and keeping him happy in it. I meant using one in the context of say going to clean the house - 1/2/3 hour jobs. I don't feel right having him in a playpen for that long, I don't think it's fair. I found it easier to use the bouncer to do smaller jobs when he was little and the high chair now, we do have a travel cot we pop him into sometimes if we're getting ready to head out but someone suggested to me - oh put him in a playpen while you clean the house for an hour and I thought no, that's not how I want to parent plus sometimes you wouldn't have an hour! I also find I get the cleaning done way quicker if I'm left to it and my husband watches him rather than constantly going back and forth to keep an eye on him!

I went back to work, part time at first, after a year and it was definitely a break from being at home.

I had a pretty challenging job but I got to eat lunch when I was wanted to, I could go to the toilet by myself, I could make myself a cup of tea and drink it while it was still hot.

I had twins which probably made it harder. But having dc is very hard and frankly stays hard in different ways for a long time.

It is a total and permanent lifestyle change where you have to center the needs of others over yourself for almost two decades.

If you don't feel a driving need for dc I wouldn't consider having them. As my DH said they raze your old life to the ground. We like our new life but we were both very sure we wanted dc. Even then it is still tough at times.

Ah ok, perhaps anticipate revisiting this when the baby arrives and you realise that looking after the baby all day is actually harder than many office jobs!

Really the whole thing I think you might have to wait until the baby is here - you/ your DH might change your mind when you experience the reality of the child rather than the theory!

OP you are getting a really hard time on here considering that this is supposed to be a forum supporting women.

I think your set up sounds great if both of you are happy. No different really from what many people do but just with the roles reversed.

I don't see why it wouldn't work and I think it will be really good for your children to see both parents doing what makes them happy.

Doing all the night time wakings isn't the point of having someone at home. Looking after a toddler all day is absolutely knackering physically and mentally. They often wake up before 5am and then that's a full day 'on' until bedtime. Plus then doing the majority of the housework like you expect him to do. Looking after an infant is as much a full time job as paid work in terms of how tiring it it. So nights should be split fairly. Unless you're a surgeon or something similar which demands you be on your A game 100 percent of the time.

I also the idea that the point of having someone at home is that the person working doesn't have to do the night feeds is off. The point is that the person at home cares for the child during working hours, either because that's your preference or it's more practical than them working. But for it to work, both parents have to put roughly equal effort in otherwise someone burns out. So if your husband has already done a full day looking after a baby (which can be intense, especially if the arrangement is that he does most of the housework too) and then has to do all the night wakes, the effort is unequal and he will be exhausted. Your arrangement as you've planned it changes your life and routine far less than his.

It's very different being at home with older school age children to being at home with a tiny baby.

School age kids - yes plenty of time to fe house proud and easy peasy.

With a baby, no way. You barely have time to pee, eat or shower or clean up a pile of sick. You just have no concept of what it's like - but it's ok, I don't think any of us can imagine it before the baby arrive.

@MadeleineBassettHound

Have to agree strongly. Irl I have never seen or heard of a SAHD who actually wanted that role, they were all either semi employed artist types who to be honest aren’t the greatest parents (they love their kids but don’t really keep the hon tidy or be hands on much) or else have lost their jobs and see it as temporary. I’m not saying they don’t exist but I find it impossible to believe men en mass are ever going to want to SAHD because of a instinct to nurture like large amounts of women do.

I'll probably get slated because I had my kids over 35 years ago, so what do I know, - but this is what we agreed on too. It just seems logical to prioritise the sleep of the working parent.

However the reality hit me hard, when he got to have unbroken sleep and two lie-ins every weekend and I was up at sparrow fart relentlessly every morning. This happened in holidays too. In fact I ended up only being a SAHM for a year and then I went back part time - but the no lie-ins continued.

When I had our second and had to stay in bed due to an infection he really had a wake-up call (pun intended). However it reverted to form after I recovered. I just felt that for him life hardly changed when we had kids whereas mine was unrecognisable.

I think you should expect to be flexible about this at weekends and holidays, otherwise resentment just builds.

Let me know if you want to come meet my DH, a very happy SAHD who meets none of your criteria.

@FieldOverFence I’ve often spoken to my Mum about this and she is adamant that from two weeks old she always was up and dressed with make up fully on, house clean, me dressed and clean and with dinner ready for when my dad came home. Knowing her it may well be true!

Hi OP,
When my 3 DC's were little I was a SAHM. My oldest DC is 15 and when I was pregnant with DD we decided I would leave work. My DH earns more than me and we did look into a Nursery but the cost of it meant I would literally be working to paid for childcare. Before I was pregnant I felt I would go back to work but things changed. We are older parents and I have worked from the age of 16 and thought I would miss my job.

I loved being a SAHM and did everything from the night feeds, looking after our DC's, looking after our home, etc. My DH worked away and worked long hours. He is a fantastic Dad and it worked for our family unit. We worked really well together and didn't have any resentment towards each other with me leaving work and being at home or me, resenting him for his career going from strength to strength.

I went back to work when my youngest DC started primary school. He was 4 and I worked part-time to work around the school runs. I will have all 3 DC's at secondary school in September as my youngest leaves primary tomorrow. I can honestly say I have loved every minute being a SAHM. I was thinking of going back to work full time in September but because of the nature of my job I am now caring for my Mother-in-law. (She is like a mum to me, lovely lady). I will still work part-time as I enjoy what I do. I feel we work well as a team at home. Everyone is different and what works for some families may not work for others.

OP, this is what we did when the kids were young. I had 9/10m off on maternity leave with both of them, and then went back to work full time. Kids went to nursery for 3 days and then was at home with husband for the other two. For us it was a no-brainer financially - I earned 10x what he earned at this point. The point was that the kids had 1 parent always accessible to them, even if it wasn't me (mum).

There will be the obvious challenges of having one working parent and one SAH parent - SAH has to think about career, pension, adult conversation to keep them sane etc. I ended up doing night wakings as I woke first and was still feeding when I went back to work (as soon as I night weaned we did split those night wakings though). Child may also have its own ideas as to who is prefers to be around at night - I had to go away on business trips for several days before my first would accept being settled by husband at night. Household chores you need to work out if possible - you may end up with a calm chilled baby who doesn't mind being put down whilst you clean and tidy etc, you may end up with a more clingy version who won't let you do this, and you need to flex your attitude to chores (and tidiness) depending on which baby version you get.

More specific challenges as to having dad as main carer which we hadn't realised - baby / toddler groups are normally with mums. Whilst he wasn't made to feel specifically unwelcome, he wasn't welcomed either. He did get strange looks from women in playgrounds who thought he was out to steal their children (despite bringing two of his own with them and very obviously playing with them!) By the second child we'd worked this out, and he didn't bother going to the normal range of baby groups and just did the things which he / baby wanted to do. Dad loved it when they were 2-3 and he could take them to museums, out and about, much more than when they were still small babies, but to be honest I'd have found the same.

You have to be happy though that you are comfortable taking on the main responsibilities though, if you aren't, then its not going to work if you spend all your time resenting him for being at home with baby. Clear communication is the answer, you must keep on talking to each other and if one of you is finding something hard, talk it through. But that is the same no matter which parent is SAH and which is breadwinner. You also need to have a plan as to how SAH parent is going to get back into workplace (if that's what they want to do) after child is in school - whether that's retraining, nursery for a few days to keep skills ticking over (what we did, wasn't the best idea financially but made it viable for him to come back into work once both kids were at school).

Good luck - SAH dads are becoming more common now and certainly as the kids get older, it's more common to see.

@nightmareallys if I were you I'd face up to the fact that you don't want children, and not have them!!

There is no down time looking after a baby. Get it out of your head that a SAHP to a baby has downtime or an easier life.

Honestly you get more down time in an office job on your commute and lunch hour/coffee breaks.

As they get older it gets easier. But it's pretty coMmon for kids to wake up EVERY night into the age of 5, so don't expect undisturbed sleep from 6 months either!

OP you are just so naive and unrealistic and unprepared for the realities of parenthood, I'm sorry.

If she did that then she must have been leaving you to cry at the bottom of the garden or something. Or plonk you in front of the TV. Sorry.

@MolliciousIntent Hear hear! My husband also doesn’t fit any of these nasty stereotypes. Women spewing stuff like this holds society back.

It's great that you're talking through all your options, it sounds like your DH would be a great SAHD. How this works in practice to some extent depends on what type of child(ren) you get. The parents who find it 'easy' probably have contented good sleepers with no health issues.
I find being a SAHM now relatively easy as DC1 is at school and DC2 is a little treasure. Being a SAHM to DC1 was so hard I ended up in therapy on the verge of a breakdown, he slept really badly and from the moment he could move about he was on a relentless mission to destroy everything and everyone he came into contact with.
The other thing you can't really plan for is how you'll feel once you become a mother. I wasn't overly fond of children before I had any and fully intended to return to work after 9 months but once baby DC1 was here I was absolutely besotted and leaving him for any length of time was unthinkable for me.

I agree with this. What OP's suggesting is no different from how things work in a lot of households, just with the sexes reversed. People are criticising OP for being honest, it seems- I've never heard a dad say "I'm just doing weekends, not the hard grind of childcare" but in practice plenty of them do exactly this and for some families it works perfectly well.

The only thing I'd suggest to OP is that she and her partner think through what happens if things work out differently to how they imagine and allow for a bit more flexibility. Maybe OP will suddenly want to stay at home? Maybe her partner will try SAHDing and hate it? etc etc. As parenting guru Mike Tyson says, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

You're expectations are so out of whack you're heading for a fall. Maybe you will have an easy baby and put make up on every day. But I find it hard to believe. My first is hands down the easiest baby I've ever heard off. Widely acknowledged to be. But I still needed 3 months to get on top of the situation. I volunteered during my mat leave as was twiddling my thumbs. But i know no one else like this. My second was much much harder. Clingy as hell. Fortunately my partner supported me a lot because I simply couldn't cope and would often just have to hide as couldn't handle the baby. You need to be much less rigid in your expectations otherwise chances are this will go tits up.

@nightmareallys

Many women were really like this (and some still are), it was expected. Unless you were alive then you might not believe it, but if you were female and adult in any time pre say 1995 and not in a career this was pretty normal and also what all your friends did. I know because I live it too.

Tbh I like it though it’s hard. I think many women are missing purpose that we had then. But of course there’s other women who would have hated it and felt purposeless so…..

Things don’t really get better, they just get better for some people and worse for others, depending on your nature.

@Cadot I’m going to ask her next time we speak! It was the 90’s so I imagine I was in a playpen a lot when a toddler.

Do you have to move on this now, or do you have a few years before you'd need to start?
The financial situation now is not looking good for many families and I don't know many who can really get by on one wage. So things might not quite work the way you're planning.

@Ginandcrispsarebliss

What I think a lot of posters are ignoring us that men often want a SAHM and a woman in the nurturing role more attractive, not less. And they enjoy being in the provider role.

The way a husband feels about a SAHD can’t be compared to that. Yes a woman might accept a SAHD but does it make him more attractive to her? Yes she may accept being the main breadwinner but does it make her feel like she is in the role in her family she’s meant to have?