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SAHP

A place for stay at home mums and dads to discuss life as a full-time parent.

Original poster

The vitriol for SAHPs on this site is insane

403 replies

JustSoFrustrated · 07/05/2025 11:24

So many insisting it “isn’t work” and that we’re lazy, calling us “leeches” on our spouses, saying that “housework doesn’t take that long” and assuming we’re either “faffing about” or filling our time with made-up work or leisure activities…

Honestly, I wish they could all take a turn doing what I do each day and see if they still think it isn’t work or that it only takes “two hours max” daily to keep the house running—Someone told me that it only takes 20 minutes to hoover the entire house! I was like, I could do maybe one room in 20 minutes. Are they not picking things up off the floor first or moving furniture?? It also makes me imagine that their homes are TINY, and that they don’t have much of a garden, or at least not one that’s their responsibility to maintain. They also all have older, more independent children and seem to have forgotten how much supervision and assistance young children need, and how much of a mess they make constantly.

Someone else was like, “It takes five minutes per meal to do the dishes,” and I thought, what the hell are they feeding their kids? Maybe if you microwave cans of soup, or pop a tray of chicken nuggets in the oven on a single sheet pan, or boil pasta in one pot and then dump a jar of sauce over it… And that’s fine to do every once in a while, but not for every meal. If you’re actually cooking cooking— you know, chopping fruits and veggies, working with meat, cooking different components to a meal in the way they taste best, serving them on real dishes, with real cutlery to eat with… Dishes are gonna take you more than 5 minutes per meal, even with a dishwasher (Unless they’re just popping their dishes and cookware in without rinsing them off at all?? In which case I’m assuming their dishwashers are rank inside!)

And when you explain to them, this is how much work I have to do, and how much time it takes me, they either start concluding you’re “plodding around”/doing it inefficiently/incorrectly, or they’ll start suggesting that you downsize your life so that you’re less busy… presumably so you can get “a real job.” But that’s totally not the point; why would I make it so my family has a less enjoyable or less luxurious life, and see my DC less, just so I can go to work to make money that we don’t really need?

I’m tempted to just start insisting to WOHP that their houses must be disgustingly dirty and that they’re obviously cleaning wrong if it takes them so little time… or that they’re “faffing around” at work all day, because obviously if families with SAHP can live comfortably on one income, then their work must be really inefficient…

But that wouldn’t be reasonable, would it?

OP posts:
MerlinsBeard1 · 22/05/2025 11:36

JustSoFrustrated · 22/05/2025 00:01

I don’t want acknowledgement. I want people to make sense and to look beyond their own noses

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That is wanting acknowledgement.

EilishMcCandlish · 22/05/2025 12:35

JustSoFrustrated · 21/05/2025 22:30

I don’t have to cook elaborate meals for my family, no. But it makes their lives better, and I can, so I do. That’s not laziness or idleness; it’s work. I’m sure many WOHP could get by making a bit below the poverty line, but most of them want a better life for their family, and are willing to work harder or less-than-enjoyable jobs to make that happen. It’s no different.

I could live in a dirty, disorganized pigsty (though I’d probably end up divorced), or I could do all the cleaning required to maintain a live-able, functional environment, which takes up a lot of time. That’s not “creating busywork;” that’s “being busy.” If it takes someone else less time to do that in their household, it’s not necessarily because they’re more efficient or less lazy, it’s because they have less to do as a result of their individual circumstances. And that’s perfectly fine.

And yes, I do have to do the “pruning.” You don’t get to have a nice property with so many plants without doing the gardening regularly, unless you’re okay with it being an overgrown, useless, tick-filled jungle.

The whole point of the dishes conversation is that even if you only use one chopping board and one or two pans, serving utensils, and dine with dishes, drink ware, and cutlery, you still make more than 5 minutes of dishes per meal. People are giving these ridiculous numbers for how little time they’re spending on specific tasks, and like I said, they’re either doing it poorly, if they’re accurate numbers, or they’re drastically underestimating the amount of time and labour it takes to do these things.

There’s also the consideration of division of labour: maybe some of these people positing these numbers are only doing a couple hours of housework a week. But how many hours are their partners doing? How many are their children doing? Maybe you have five bedrooms in your home, but your children are responsible for keeping four of them clean. Maybe they’re old enough to clean up after themselves, assist with other chores in shared spaces, and prepare some of their own meals. (My own mum stopped fixing me breakfast and packing my lunches as soon as I was able to do it myself.) Maybe their partners cook and wash dishes in between tasks, and their kids scrape and rinse their own dishes when they leave them in the sink, and all they have to do is place them in the dishwasher and turn it on, and later on someone in the household will unload it. But all of that collectively adds up to more work than they’re acknowledging. When it’s one person doing everything, it’s a whole job. The refusal to acknowledge it, and the insistence on being illogical and assuming that’s all anyone else has to do as well, so that if they’re not also WOH, then they’re lazy, idle, or “making up busywork” to keep them occupied…that’s what drives me batty.

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All of those things are still choices. Choices you have made, so quit whining about them. The fact that your kids dump their plates in the sink and leave them for you to load the dishwasher, for example, that is on you (and your husband) not teaching them to treat you with respect.

If you choose to do 100% of everything and no one else does their share and don't like it. Address that within your household.

You choose to live in a large house with grounds that need maintenance and do it all yourself. Don't like it? Move. Or leave.

This isn't about SAHP vs WOHP. This is that you don't like your current set up and are beginning to see that you are having the piss taken out of you by the other members of your household, but have not yet quite joined the dots. And instead of dealing with it, you are coming here and mudslinging at working parents (and quite frankly, at SAHP who live in smaller, easier to manage houses).

You are pointing the finger in the wrong direction.

WhenYouSayNothingAtAll · 22/05/2025 17:58

JustSoFrustrated · 22/05/2025 00:01

I don’t want acknowledgement. I want people to make sense and to look beyond their own noses

Show quote history

But you’re doing the same thing , making generalisations about SAHP and WOHP based on your life choices and specific setup.Most SAHP don’t have to do the amount of work you do either - smaller home, older kids, running water, average sized garden , a husband that isn’t lazy AND has unrealistic expectations etc. Whatever you’re looking for , you won’t find it here , and even if you didn’t it wouldn’t change anything in real life(which by the sounds of it is what you need).

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