Dh resents my lack of ambitions… DS is 3 yo

[Blipblopblap]

Dh and I have a 3 year old son who is due to start morning school nursery soon. I currently work 2.5 days a week and Dh is full time self employed. He earns a lot and we’re comfortable at the moment but we don’t like where we live and want to move to a different area and get a bigger house. Dh actually hates our house… it’s a new build and the neighbours are a nightmare, the parkings atrocious, the house itself is pretty naff… it makes him super angry every single day.
I have an ordinary type of job and the money is poor. I don’t pay anything towards bills but I pay for childcare and bits and bobs like clothes and toys and the like.
Recently arguments have been brewing. He’s clearly resenting me that we rely so heavily on his earnings. He says for us to move to a bigger and better house I need to be working and earning more to help cover the bills should he be out of work (his work is contract based).
The only thing is then we would need a lot more childcare. And i love the routine I have at the moment and the thought of seeing my son a lot less literally makes me cry. I’m sure other mothers will understand this but he really doesn’t get it.
It’s all come to a head and he has threatened to sell up and get a divorce due to my “lack of ambition.” I don’t want this. He gets frustrated because Im not a career person but he has known this since he met me 14 years ago. But he is so unhappy in this house it’s making him ill, he’s desperate to move which is why there is so much pressure on me. I’ve told him I’ll do whatever it takes so I’m going to start looking at better jobs/courses etc. I just wanted to see what you all thought. As a mother to a young child it just feels wrong. But clearly it’s what my relationship needs.

Mumtothreegirlies
Each to their own but I think it’s in a baby/toddlers best interests to have a parent look after them rather then nursery staff. Having worked in nurseries it’s not the kind of place I’d feel happy for my baby to spend the majority of its time in. This is my personal preference and I wouldn’t have had children with someone who didn’t want that for our little ones.

Three years old is not a baby/toddler.

If they haven't already discussed it, now is absolutely the time to have a discussion about division of responsibilities changing now the child is older.

Fair enough staying home with a baby, fair enough working low hours with a toddler, but he's not far off school now and like DH, I'd be wanting to see some kind of plan about working more or upskilling so the financial burden can be shared.

You don’t need to wonder, there are threads along these lines and there’s mixed replies but many telling the OP that women are allowed to be a SAHM so men can too and that ‘if this was the other way around’ he’d be getting more support to stay at home.

That’s right, the ‘if this was the other way around’ posters pop up everywhere and are often wrong in their predictions.

I've read it again and realised he's self employed but my comment still stands. He should try juggling work and childcare. It's definitely not easy or cheap!

Nope. You're wrong.
I am living this experience and can categorically tell you my child comes first. However, that doesn't mean being with him all of the time.

So if your son became unwell for a year what would you do?

Your male colleagues must have really basic easy jobs. Perhaps that’s why their wives have to work so hard too.

Hahah ridiculous comment. I know loads of men ( my DH included) who have full on senior jobs but are still capable of pulling their weight at home. It's not hard.

GCsister I’m genuinely interested in how you achieve this? Are you able to refuse travel / client meetings /conferences etc if it clashes with something like a school play/ speech day/ sports day? Can you not attend a vital evening commitment if it’s a child’s birthday for example?

So if your son became unwell for a year what would you do?
We'd assess the situation as a family, just like we do now when unexpected things crop up.
What's the point in tying yourself in knots about a hypothetical situation?

‘Senior jobs’ …what in?

@Mumtothreegirlies you absolutely can

I’m a high earning career woman
and didn’t and don’t have family around to help with childcare
never had a nanny or au pair or mythical cleaner/gardener/housekkeeper
we did all household chores ourselves

i went to all school assemblies/sport days/parents evenings etc, picked kids up from
school, made teas, dud bedtimes, when older juggled multiple sports and friends

its perfectly possible as all my friends are doing or have done the same

only on MN is it impossible for a woman to work or have a career once they have children, expect husband to keep them, then cry foul of but I gave up a career ( in op case she actually hasn’t) when long suffering husband wants out

Because these are legitimate situations that parents up and down the country are faced with. To suggest a child never needs a parent around and that you can plan a family based on 2 working parents every time is naive and to suggest that you can put them first is also silly Considering the amount of parents that send their children into nursery and school with contagious diseases because work won’t allow parents time off at the drop of a hat.
my youngest daughter is disabled and there is no way I would have been able to climb the career ladder when she was young because there isn’t a job in the land that lets you have random days off for illness and appointments at the drop of a hat several times a month.

GCsister I’m genuinely interested in how you achieve this? Are you able to refuse travel / client meetings /conferences etc if it clashes with something like a school play/ speech day/ sports day? Can you not attend a vital evening commitment if it’s a child’s birthday for example?

I'm a senior academic so other than teaching I tend to manage my own diary. I don't do much teaching anymore but even that can be covered, moved if it really, really needs to be.
I travel internationally (as does DH) and if possible we take DS with us or we arrange it around commitments.
I book DS's birthday off as leave every year so if something was to crop up I'd delegate that anyway.
Yes, it's a juggling act and can sometimes mean catching up with things when DS is in bed but it's not unmanageable.
It helps that we only have one child.

Interestingly, its DS school play this week and I will be at all performances unlike most parents as I'm governor and will be supervising the children.

I know of two sets of parents who are having to send grandparents because they weren't able to get time off work - they work in jobs that are supposed to work around school.

Been full time since my kids were 9 months old - if you want “bigger and better”, you have to put the work in 🤷‍♀️

I’m going to take a wild guess and say you’re exaggerating at how easy that was.

I think if you want to keep your family together you're going to have to reach a compromise on this. As PPs have said, just because he 'knew' you weren't ambitious 14 years ago and chose to marry you doesn't really mean much as people change loads over time. My last relationship was only 4 years long, we didn't have any kids, but by the end of it I was very frustrated with his lack of ambition where I was ok with it at the start - with me being a bit older & more sure of what I 'wanted' in life being the only factor that'd changed.

He must feel immense pressure being the breadwinner & to be honest the anger 24/7 reads like he's very unhappy. I have been depressed and even the tiniest of things could ruin my day. Financial stresses/pressures are one of the main contributors to poor mental health - particularly in men. He's going about things in completely the wrong way but if you love your husband and want to make it work, you need to come at it from a point of understanding and be a little less rigid.

Could you retrain? Making more money doesn't have to mean working loads more hours. At 3 your little boy will also possibly benefit from more time at nursery socializing with his peers. My 3 year old nephew would raise all hell if he had to go less - he loves it and it has prepared him nicely for school. He isn't so young that my sister is missing loads of milestones by him being in childcare, and he is a very securely attached, balanced, sociable little boy. Talk to your DH and see what you can come up with!

GCsister you sound like you have a great set up and one which sounds eminently compatible with family life as you have a good degree of autonomy. But if you’re say a female partner in a city law firm, an investment banker or a multitude of client facing roles it just isn’t possible to have this degree of control over your diary.

In my previous life I had pretty much zero flexibility, worked on a trading floor and had to be at my seat by 645am every morning.

I moved from being a sahm to being part time. At one point when things were tight dh suggested I went full time. I agreed on the condition that he did half the cleaning, half the shopping, half the cooking, half the schools runs, half the dog walks, used his leave for half the childrens sickness days, half the animals care, half the gardening…decorating… school communications, hospital visits etc. I would even have been happy for him to work fewer hours. He didn’t want to. I didn’t mind either way. So we carried on as we were.

The main point of that being, if you do more paid work hours, will he take on more of other things?

Because these are legitimate situations that parents up and down the country are faced with. To suggest a child never needs a parent around and that you can plan a family based on 2 working parents every time is naive and to suggest that you can put them first is also silly Considering the amount of parents that send their children into nursery and school with contagious diseases because work won’t allow parents time off at the drop of a hat.

I never said you can always plan a family with two working parents and I haven't said everyone should.

What I have said is that it isn't always impossible. Lots of us manage it very well.
I'm not naïve or silly. We do our best for our family in our specific circumstances.

my youngest daughter is disabled and there is no way I would have been able to climb the career ladder when she was young because there isn’t a job in the land that lets you have random days off for illness and appointments at the drop of a hat several times a month.

And therefore you do what's best for your family based on your specific situation.

I didn't have any of these issues to contend with so it wasn't a problem for me. Should I have quit my job 'just in case'?

This is just getting silly.

I think OP would have mentioned if her 3 year old were seriously ill or disabled.

Should all mothers just retreat from the workforce on the off chance their child may one day be ill?

This!!! Exact same situation - do it all ourselves and work full time and feel like we’re pretty bossing it to be perfectly honest!

We all make career choices and choices about our families that suit us and our family.
People talk in absolutes on here when it's far more nuanced and individual.

He sounds like an angry, miserable arse tbh who doesn't appreciate at all what you do. How can a house make someone angry every day?

I'd feel pretty resentful if i was made to go back to work full time by my high earning OH because he wanted me to earn even more money rather than look after our child.

It sounds to me like he prioritises a bigger, better house over you or your child's wants or needs. Does he have any redeeming features?

OP hasn't mentioned her child is disabled. Why are posters making this about their own situation?

Can you say what is wrong with the house,precisely? If the neighbours are awful what do they do? Same with parking, what is the issue? Are there issues with the house that can't be fixed? I'm trying to get an idea why the house makes him so angry and unhappy. i can understand that in some circumstances there are things that cause real issues, does it cause you problems?
Do you think there is anything else going on that would cause him to be angry/upset to this degree?
Can you sit down with him calmly and talk this through, because I feel something isn't quite right.
FWIW, I always worked full time despite having 2 kids . I did it because we needed the money and also because I paid into a pension, which now provides me with my income. Being at home would have been nice, but at the end of the day we had to be practical.

I have a senior executive role that’s market facing. It is vanishingly uncommon that I can’t make it work. I can think of once in six years of kids where DH and I were due to be travelling internationally at the same time and neither could reschedule. I don’t like both of us being out of the country at the same time, so I flipped my meetings to zoom. Not ideal but it worked well enough. Other than that - yes I juggle around. Do I attend every sports day? No. But DH and I make sure that between us we cover everything off.