DH said “but you don’t have a job”

[TeaDoesntSolveEverything]

I don’t really know if I’m offloading here or wanting advice on what to say back. At Christmas I said to DH how overwhelmed and exhausted I was and how I was so behind with things and he responded “why, you don’t have a job.” It’s now February and I’m still so upset by it and feel each thing I do during the day I’m building in my head of “and this is why it’s non stop busy all the time”.
To put this into context, I am now a SAHM of 3 under 7s, one of which is autistic. DH works away and was only home at weekends and it’s always been like that but now works abroad and only home here and there and it’s been like that for 1.5 years. We have no family help. Friends offer to help but I feel a burden accepting as my kids are very energetic and the autistic one has a lot of melt downs which are tough for anyone not used to it including my DH. As it’s always me they all get very upset being away from me too and play up for anyone looking after them as they are small and don’t vocalise feelings of missing me. The smallest always used to get upset stomachs if I left them.
After a few days I brought up how upset the comment made me feel and DH replied he didn’t mean it like that and it’s more what am I doing for others that means I’m not finding time to clean the house, have time to myself etc. I do something one day a week for others that needs half a day prep the day before but his comment defending himself made me feel even worse as he just can’t see how busy it is doing everything alone, all the club runs too for 3 kids. The autistic one cannot switch off at night and is normally still awake wanting me for reassurance until 9.30/10 if not later each night.
Even though financially we are ok he also wants me to get an actual job again which I just can’t see how I can cope with. I had to give up my successful career just before having my second as I had a breakdown due to finding my first borns life was in danger with his childminder (she was reported to Ofsted over it). He pays all the bills now but I have a rental income which just about floats me each month.
I guess I’ve always felt invisible as to what I do as when he used to come home at weekends he would sleep in both days as he was tired from work and not think how tired I was solo parenting during the week and being up so many times at night feeding babies etc.
How do I go about being seen or am I best to just give myself a slap and carry on and realise it’s never going to change. Just feeling totally broken physically and mentally.

Ok. Now I see his point.

You have all day while the children are in school to yourself but you are volunteering elsewhere.?

Can't you just volunteer less?

Your husband can't really help if he works abroad and you sound exhausted.

I think you need a more you based routine in the day

"Could you try to find a paid babysitter/childminder who could help occasionally? Maybe someone who could be around whilst you are there so the children can get used to them. Just to give you the occasional break. "

A PP suggested this up-thread. I remember my DD did this when she was a post-grad, for one of her colleagues. She played with the children after work a couple of days a week while the parents ran round getting the meal ready, sorting laundry or whatever. Then she babysat occasionally, as the children were familiar with her.

I think also, if you try to look from the husband’s side. If he is pretty much solely supporting the family financially, and having to work away from home, it’s not an easy lifestyle for him. He is missing out on a lot of family life, and presumably has quite a stressful job plus a long travel each weekend.

To then have someone at home not coping and complaining, with up to 30 hours free a week, I can see why he might have made that comment. Working and having the financial burden isn’t easy either. The volunteering he probably views as leisure. I wouldn’t be impressed if my partner was at home and was saying the school run and cleaning was a full time job. While I feel I’m sacrificing a lot myself

I have answered this already.

Yes SEN children. One diagnosed one under assessment. Higher rate daily and mobility. One NT. DH leaves home before DC are up, and returns (usually) after bed. I pull more weight with all the household stuff, because I appreciate how much more he earns and what it gives us as a family.

And actually the school run was a ball ache today. Going was fine. In out, done. 5 minutes. Home time? Nope. We took 15 mins to leave the grounds because of a tantrum over a piece of paper that had been folded the wrong way. Then we sat in the car and spoke about how we can get another piece of paper, which took about 10 further minutes to go from hysterical to "ok, we can just get another piece.". But it's not every day, at all. Neither is it for OP.

Anyway. OP doesn't work. The whole point of her working/not working is not the issue because she can't even accept there's enough hours in the day to have no children at home, no job, but do the laundry and lay out uniforms. It's the fact she calls it an impossible task to get the basic household chores done in 30hrs free time a week while her children are all in full time education setting.

As many people have pointed out, this impossible task is what most of us do outside of full time work hours, and the idea of having 30 child free hours a week, and no job to fulfill, is an inordinate amount of time to get everything done. Whereas OP keeps trying to insist that because she makes these things take all day, that she's doing the equivalent of full time work.

@FortnumsWeddingBreakfastTeaPleaseyour children sleep ok? Don’t underestimate how having someone that could potentially share the load even at night eases the pressure

Two don't. One does.

As I've mentioned already, sleep deprivation is horrible.

OMG why are we blaming OP here for coping as best as she can with a shitty hand and giving her arsehole of a ‘h’ a free pass. He has effectively abandoned his wife and kids to live in another country. She has as passive income but you all want her to work full time too because we don’t lift women up, the race is to the bottom, to see how low we can make each other feel and how bad we all have it but still keep going.

@FortnumsWeddingBreakfastTeaPlease do you want a medal? 🥇 well done for winning mother of the year for working full time, parenting SEN kids with a DH at home with you who also can equally share the physical and emotional burden and for finding the unicorn job of school hours with WFH in the evening and doing all housework. You are a saint. We should all learn from you!

@FortnumsWeddingBreakfastTeaPlease thanks for making me feel even more down and shit than I already do. And for constantly repeating incorrect facts about my time that others are quoting because of you. Clearly I am a total failure and just needed my feelings of that confirmed so thanks and thanks to everyone else too.

You are doing a fantastic job. Parenting kids with SEN is hard. It’s hard when you are solo parenting and carrying all the emotional burden, night wakings, the meltdowns, the stress of mornings and trying to get 3 kids to school. I have a school refuser and was constantly called to school with my SEN son. I have huge sympathy for you.

if you need to talk, please send me a DM 💐

You are far from a failure. My mother was a SAHP parent and we really benefited from it.

He isn’t solely supporting them (and why are you presuming he has a stressful job?) OP had said she has a passive income that keeps them about afloat, so actually she’s doing her fair share in the finance front as well as all the childcare and domestic labour. No doubt there are others who are doing that while having to go out and work elsewhere to their share of the finances, but if she doesn’t have to, why should she be made to feel guilty by those that do?

He doesn’t come home every weekend!! He comes home occasionally and the OP has her own income through a rental property. She also has to solo parent 3 children 1 with SEN and one with suspected SEN. The distance to school is 45 min and she has been called to school 14 times since September which without just the time dealing with the issue is 1hr and 30 min round trip. It’s exhausting! Her husband works then does fuck all the rest of the time. He doesn’t parent and isn’t a husband. Stop giving him a free pass at not doing anything. Also he should be financially contributing, they are his children!! 🤬

1. he is not solely supporting the family financially
2. men whose work schedules make it very difficult for a partner ti work if there are children should either not have children or if they do be prepared to support them financially. Entirely on his own.

Don't listen to anyone who runs you down or thinks you should be working on top of being a practically single parent who has to spend a lot of time supporting a SEN child. @FortnumsWeddingBreakfastTeaPlease has clearly just decided to use this thread to kick every mun with SEN kids who can't work on top of everything else. Very few mums who have children with severe SEN can work so she's just lucky. And your husband doesn't have a clue.
You're a brilliant mum, you should be proud of yourself. And do remind your husband that he needs to be in the same country as you and coming home every night so you can work. He'll shut up because he obviously doesn't want to be a parent full time (or a supportive husband).

OP said he pays all of the bills and she has a small rental income that just about keeps her afloat - so pocket money effectively. He is supporting them financially on his own. I'm assuming that's why the OP hasn't divorced him even though he's clearly awful, because she can't afford to like so many SAHMs.

Women should think twice about having children with partners who have work schedules like this. They should also reflect on how their partner parents their first child before agreeing to have any more.

I don't agree with how OP is treated overall by her husband and every parent deserves support so they don't burn out. However, the reality is she doesn't have a job and has significantly more free hours in a week than a lot of parents, certainly enough time to maintain a house. I can see how it possibly doesn't feel that way if she is overwhelmed.

Women should think twice about having children with partners who have work schedules like this.

They don’t usually have these work schedules before children.
Funnily enough, although being home and looking after kids is so easy apparently, these men go to great lengths to avoid it.

So what’s the answer? He comes back to the UK and gets a job here? Except my hunch is is that it won’t be that simple in this current climate. Mentioned many times already but the type of job he has likely means his job that pays all of the bills is very well paid.

The poster I responded to said that men with these work schedules shouldn't have children. Hence my response that women shouldn't have children with them. In OPs case, her husband always worked away during the week and he wasn't a good parent to their first child.

I didn't say being home and looking after children is easy. Being home all week while your children are at school is certainly easier than many of us have it though.

Well in the interim he could at least acknowledge that things are hard for her, and not be making digs like in the OP.

My H isn’t perfect but when I was in this position he saw it was untenable and paid for a nanny so I could work part time. Working 20 hours a week gave me my sanity back and I could do it knowing that my kids needs were being properly looked after. There was literally no other childcare solution we could have used, for all the reasons already listed upthread.

If working away hadn’t supplied enough money for this, then yes I’d have been saying come home and get another job that allows you to also be a husband and father.

I should add that after 12 months the good nanny left to go travelling and, unable to find a replacement I had to give up work. But it was a lovely respite whilst it lasted.

OP said he pays all of the bills and she has a small rental income that just about keeps her afloat - so pocket money effectively.

OP’s phrasing is definitely open to interpretation, but she didn’t say small and so I wouldn’t jump to ‘pocket money’. Someone is paying for her and the children to eat and get around and wear clothes month to month. I read pay the bills as exactly that, and that her money keeps them going day to day.

Previously OP had posted that her husband had just taken a job abroad, so it hasn’t been all their marriage/kids lives that he’s worked away.

People have completely lost sight of the actual issue.

This isn't poor OP struggling with her job and everything on her own, no time to herself.

This is someone who doesn't do childcare. It's called parenting. Do you collect your children from school and announce you are starting your "childcare" shift for the evening? No.

A SAHM who's actually looking after children during work hours, is doing the "job" of what you would otherwise pay childcare for. So people often call this childcare, as it's comparable.

All her children are in full time education.

So with 30 hours of her own time with no job to do, she is complaining about how tough she has it, to complete daily household tasks.

As this poster puts it:

I didn't say being home and looking after children is easy. Being home all week while your children are at school is certainly easier than many of us have it though.

I don’t think the drive to school is 45 mins each way, I think the OP said it takes 45 mins after school drop off to clean up the breakfast stuff? She said she has 5 hours after getting back before having to leave again for the next pickup.

Either way, she needs to talk to her husband, and they both need to be honest, or nothing will be fixed and there’ll just be resentment on both sides.

It’s not a free pass, it’s awful working away from family, and a sacrifice. It’s not nice having all of the earning pressure either. It could be that if there’s a more equitable balance between work, he could work on the UK again - we don’t know. But speaking to each other and exploring all of the options would be the first place to start. It could be the OP could monetise the volunteering - she clearly has skills. And no one is saying jump straight into full time work

The thread went south when some posters - perhaps most prominently you - decided the issue was that OP’s life was not as hard as theirs and derided her for struggling.

No doubt many have it harder than her, but some of those claiming to be in the exact circumstances but working full-time are comparing apples with pears and using their conclusion to kick the OP when she’s down.

Why must it be a debate about how ‘easy’ or otherwise her lot is? The ‘actual issue’ is that OP is feeling unsupported and unseen by a partner who she is supporting by raising the kids alone. The fact that lots of other mothers have shitty husbands, or no husbands, or a job on top, is neither here nor there, just an opportunity for people to bemoan how much harder they have it, or smugly pontificate on how they manage much better.

Should you feel "unsupported" by having no job to do, children all in school, and just the housework to do, while your partner funds the whole household? Choosing to volunteer for a day and a half each week, (interestingly that's apparently no problem to do with her SEN child) but complaining how you have to "do it all" as if her husband does nothing. He is literally funding her ability to stay at home all day and she's complaining that he's not sharing her load. No, he's not. He's at work. And she's not.

It's not kicking someone while they're down to point out that to most people, that's frankly a joke to be complaining about lack of support. This childish "have a medal" at the notion anyone could possibly just put the laundry on, a fiver minute task, with children at home in the evenings. She can. Her circumstances are not particularly exceptional.

It's not the level of "my diamond shoes are too tight". But she genuinely thinks she's "doing it all". And as countless people have pointed out, with 3DC in FTE, she's got all the time in the world to do it, not be complaining that the person working full time isn't doing that too.