Dh resents my lack of ambitions… DS is 3 yo

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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.

I'm not sure what you think SAHMs do? All those things you've listed above and more.

@SunRainStorm well yes, if the child is already in nursery then maybe OP wouldn't mind one more day. However, if she does mind, that's OK too. As I posted previously on this thread, OP could consider an evening job if she doesn't want to put him in nursery longer.

That would be a workable compromise.

I completely agree - I've never understood how much running the household other people seem to do on here. Especially when people include organising insurance and paying bills - those are incredibly simple in this day and age (and insurance only comes up once a year, or less!). I think Mumsnet has a tendancy to over-exaggerate the work needed to be done in the home, it's not reflected by anyone around me.

I'm not sure what you're getting at? Could you clarify please?

I SAH til the kids went to school and am still PT school hours now (kids 11 and 16).

On the time it takes to run a household, doesn’t it depend on so many different things like how many pets / animals you have, how many children, how much sport and extra curricular stuff they do, the age and condition of your house, the size of your garden, how present you partner is and so on.

@Hippyhippybake I totally agree! Sometimes I think we’ve done ourselves no favours as women with how feminism has worked out in this day and age! Having said that, I would have been much more screwed and would have had far less options in life than I did following an abusive marriage if we all went back to a fifties type society… So I do appreciate the progress made in society with women’s rights.

However I do feel that in the stampede to prove ourselves equal to men in the workplace and assert our rights there, somehow along the way we’ve lost the right to look after our own kids because we didn’t value it enough.

I was gutted to put my son in nursery full time under one year old, absolutely gutted. I still feel sad about it sometimes, and he’s a teen now. And seems to have turned out just fine! I deliberately had him relatively young though (for a “career woman”! Late twenties. Motherhood is TBH far more important to me than my career, but I have to pay the bills somehow so might as well try and make it worthwhile and as lucrative as possible). So my situation probably would have been different if I’d waited 5-10 years. Would still have had to work but could have managed part time by then with career progression. The plan (before the divorce from my abusive husband after child number one) was for him to be the first of several though so I wanted to get started then! I was so ready to be a mum at that age.

I’m afraid you just can’t. Something has to give.

This is my thought. Also if he hates the house so much then why not just move to another but affordable house, why does it have to be bigger and more expensive? It’s not as if you don’t work at all and the rest of the time you are a mother, which is a valuable job in itself. I don’t think I’d want to stay married to someone who threatened divorce because they’re having what sounds like tantrums over a house.

There was a thread on here a few years ago where people were invited to list what they considered typical household chores and 'mental load' activities. Many items on the first page were pretty legitimate but as the thread developed there were some absolute gems such as 'checking local facebook groups to see if there is anything that affects the family' and 'organising stimulating craft activities'.

That’s your individual experience of it. Now a lot of women are working hard just to put food on the table hence so many posts on MN from desperately unhappy struggling women trying to juggle a career and family. Hard work and career in 2023 doesn’t always equal comfortable life and having mum home doesn’t always equal poor vulnerable women and children living in poverty. Some men earn enough for both, some are willing to work twice as hard and some families are willing to make financial sacrifices in order to make it work for a few years before mum goes back to work.

Is her husband going to do 50%, and I mean a full half, of the childcare/parenting related needs and housework if she goes back to work full-time? I fucking doubt it
Why doubting it? Only on MN do working men do nothing. In my environment, where most mother's have to also work FT to pay for high mortgages, men certainly do their share and more. My male colleagues definitely do.

I’m afraid you just can’t. Something has to give
My mum was a career woman (single mum) and indeed, time together was limited, but these times were high quality. In a perfect world, I would gave chosen quality and quantity but all in all, quality won every time and as an adult, I'm glad my mum's career means she is enjoying a good retirement.

My kids have told me that they wouldn't change anything for the same reasons.

Kylie, one of my big bugbears is professional women who assume that lovely high paid intellectually fulfilling and fascinating jobs are open to women so why on earth would they want to stay at home with small children when they could be doing that.

I think something like 60% of women in the UK have jobs not careers and I find it ineffably sad that some women who would love to be at home with their small children are instead working in badly paid menial jobs often with anti social hours simply to make ends meet and at the same time paying for their children to be looked after in an institutional setting. Fine if you want to but how horrible not to have the choice.

Of course there are lots of variables but it is undeniable that some tasks or chores are absolutely over egged on here. Booking a dental appointment or renewing your car insurance is akin to 4D chess or building the great pyramid of Giza.

Your male colleagues must have really basic easy jobs. Perhaps that’s why their wives have to work so hard too.
Mine works 7-7 with a 1 hour commute. He has 1 day off a week on a Sunday and that is family time not housework chore time. There is no way he’d have time to cook or do cleaning. He has a few jobs rounds the house like bins, diy but he can’t invent a 30 hour day. He has to sleep at some point and often he’s making work calls, emails etc in the evening too.

I have a feeling that because you work part time you currently shoulder a lot of the childcare, house admin, shopping, cooking, cleaning etc. So at least have the discussion of you going back to work full time and ask him what jobs he plans to take on in the house as you will now have 18.5 hours less time in the home so he will need to step up for his added responsibility. That included cooking dinner etc.

Also a conversation about if your child is sick and the 50% commitment from him of not working whilst looking after a child as this should now be fairly split if he is wanting you back to full time work in a career.

These are your first points to discuss because I am wondering if he expects you to work full time and still do everything you are currently doing. See where it goes from there. I agree that threatening divorce is a bullying tactic that is disgusting behaviour.

@Hippyhippybake That's the same for many fathers as well as mothers - most PEOPLE in this country have jobs not careers. This isn't a feminism issue it's a capitalism issue, really.

sahm do everything they do in a childcare setting plus all the housework and cooking. What do you think your child does at nursery? Sit there and stare into space? What do the staff do? Chat and go on Facebook?
on the one hand you can’t understand what a sahm does all day but then you need childcare to go to work? Why not bring your baby with you if it’s that simple and easy.

Quite. It’s nursery, where the kid has fun, learns things, builds an immune system, toughens up a bit before school, socialises, learns routine. Not a military torture camp 🤣🤣🤣

@Mumtothreegirlies I hope your husband is bringing in insane amounts of money for that schedule. I know a lot of high-earning people in very successful careers and none of them work 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. That feels unsustainable.

Where does the idea that a mother working full-time time necessarily produces unhappy or emotionally stunted children? I don't think that the quantity of time that a parent spends with s child is nearly as significant as the quality of time and interactions spent with the child. Nor do I think that a man who has managed to navigate his life successfully suddenly needs a partner at home to ensure that he has steady meals, clean clothes. a clean home and the ability to continue to advance in his career. One would assume that prior to marriage or a live-in relationship , he was successfully managing all of those aspects of his life and that he brings those same skill sets into a marriage or relationship.

I guess my question is in what way is a stay at home spouse facilitating the partner's ability to advance in their career? If the working spouse is capable of paying his or her share of the child care costs, why is there an assumption that the working partner is some how benefitting from having a stay at home spouse or partner?
Of course if both partners are in full mutual agreement to the stay at home arrangement, then it becomes a non-issue.

How much time "running a household" takes depends on a huge number of factors.
It can be a lot if you have multiple kids, or those with additional needs, an old house, primary school admin to deal with - especially for multiple kids - pets, cars, elderly parents, building work that needs to happen, a partner who works long hours...
It's also easier or harder depending on how much money you have (for a cleaner, labour saving services and devices, etc)
And also depends on your view of how your "household" should be run household/ what good parenting looks like.
If, for example, you feel strongly that as a parent you want to do things like homecooked meals for the kids most days a week, sitting around the table to have meals together, taking them to swimming lessons, taking time to do homework and reading with them, taking them to the park after school, limited screen time and doing occasional things like baking/ arts and crafts at home instead, talking to them about their day, attending their assemblies/ plays/ concerts/ sports days, and getting involved with school bake sales and summer fairs... then absolutely this adds up to an absolutely huge amount of time.

This is not me being judgemental, my partner and I don't work and we struggle to achieve all the above (!) but I can understand those who feel that they want to be at home more, because those things feel really important to them.

Christ this working mum vs SAHP argument is boring

what works for one family doesn’t another.

what’s important is everyone respects each others roles in the house and supports each other - if that breaks down, then resentment brews and the conversation needs revisiting about expectations, needs and wants.

Can't say I blame him.

It's pretty entitled to expect to not work.

Because when you have children it requires a lot of care and organisation. When both parents are focusing on their career, the children, the home, the family unit doesn’t get the same level of attention. If I’d not been a sahm for 3 years, my husband would have had to cut his hours, wouldn’t have been able to work and progress as freely because he’d have had to been home to cook dinner, clean get up in the night and do feeds and change nappies. I also would have also had to do the same half the time too.
often the children come last, that’s why when I worked in a nursery we’d have babies brought in with croup, chicken pox and all sorts. Parents would drop them off in the dark and pick them up when It was dark. It was very sad to see.
it doesn’t get much better when they start infants either. Schools only open 9 months a year there’s still the 3 months spent in holiday clubs and crèches. I can’t say the women looked beaming with the joys of life either.

Thank you.

@Mumtothreegirlies Your male colleagues must have really basic easy jobs. Perhaps that’s why their wives have to work so hard too.
Mine works 7-7 with a 1 hour commute. He has 1 day off a week on a Sunday and that is family time not housework chore time. There is no way he’d have time to cook or do cleaning. He has a few jobs rounds the house like bins, diy but he can’t invent a 30 hour day. He has to sleep at some point and often he’s making work calls, emails etc in the evening too.

Your husband must not be very good at his job then if he needs to work 72 hours per week plus extra in the evening then.