I (33M) and my wife (33F) have a 2.5 year old daughter. After maternity leave ended, my wife wanted to leave her job and become a SAHM. I was apprehensive and wanted to use a daycare service since I wanted us to both continue saving for retirement.
We eventually settled on her leaving her job with the expectation that she would eventually go back. Ever since then it has been tough on us, me especially since I carry the burden of financial stress. If i fail, we cant pay the mortgage, forced to sell the house, etc. I think about this kind of stuff every day.
Now here is my question for you all, AITA for expecting something in return since "we" picked the "premium" SAHM option. By something in return I mean, she puts the baby to sleep more, doing more diapers, doing more dishes, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I still assist in those departments, but just not 50/50. Probably 70/30 currently.
You both have jobs, so when you get home it should be about 50/50.
You should also discuss your long term plans- will your wife go back to work part time? Full time? Once the kids are school aged, I think is fair that she raises care of the housework and errands during the school day, so there’s less stuff for either of you to do when you get back.
NAH
YTA – watching a young child is a full time job. Full stop. You’re clearly just trying to punish her.
You want your wife to do more than 70% of the childcare.
So you just basically don’t want to be a parent at all?
Running the household and caring for children has recently been estimated to be worth well over $100,000. dollars per year on the open market. Value her labor fairly. How much of “her” salary, if and when she returns to work, will she have to pay toward child care? And still have all the work to do when she gets home? “Premium SAHM option” ? WTF does this even mean? “I do 30%” … you sound like the AH here.
INFO: Are you looking for 70/30 when you get home or does the 70/30 include what she does during the work day? I’m not sure why it should be more than 50/50 once you are home.
She’s working as hard as you are at home when you’re at work.
So when you’re home, it should be 50/50. However if you’re keeping score like this, your marriage is doomed, I promise.
You would be a horrid spouse to anyone with a chronic or disabling health issue.
YTA.
YTA—what do you mean, “assist”? Once you get home, it’s 50-50. When my husband got home at 6:30PM (when the 3 kids were younger), I would bolt to my bedroom, and he would be alone with our kids preparing dinner for the next hour. Then after we ate, we both would do whatever was needed with the kids. But he would put them to bed. I would do the dishes and other household chores because I needed a breather from the kids.
Let’s assume you work 8 hours a day + a nice 30 min child free lunch, and have 1.5 hour driving total. You were gone from the house 10 hours, that accounts for 41% of the day. That means for you to be doing 30% of the work you need be the on call parent for at least 7 hours.
If I had to hazard a guess. You might do an hour in the morning and maybe 3 hours in the evening based on most of my working brotheren I know. And I can almosst guarantee you are not the primary those 4 hours. You have your wife’s help and you know it. You are probably already in 90/10% and giving yourself way to much credit.
You made a human. Be a father. You married a woman and started a family. Be a leader.
So what does this look like that you’re looking for? And tread real fucking carefully on this answer. There’s a roadpath where you’re not the asshole, but it’s reallllly narrow. And currently you’re not on that. Because she’s seeing your stress, and has stress, and you’re looking to pass some more stress on here. So be realllly sure you know exactly what you’re looking for, and that it’s reasonable. For you and FOR HER. Otherwise, you’re gonna find out how expensive shit can be when you’re doing this single income and paying for her alimony/child support too. Also this is a conversation that should have been had about 3.5 years ago. But maybe you have this conversation when kid’s in kindergarten and not now.
Currently YTA.
YTA
You made this child as much as she did.
You work 9-5 (or whatever) and in that time, she is also working by taking care of your child, teaching it things, and taking care of the home.
When you get back, you expect her to still “be on the clock”? No. It’s your child, too. You should absolutely take part in its upbringing while you are at home.
YTA
pregnancy was not 50/50, labour and delivery was not 50/50, her body changing and hormones changing was not 50/50, breastfeeding was not 50/50. You get to clock in and clock out of your work, her work taking care of the baby is never ending. And you wanna complain about her doing more? Go figure out how you can support your family more instead of being another child she has to think about
YTA.
Being a SAHM is a job. The difference is that it is a job with no clock out time, no lunch break, and no coworkers to tag in when you are overwhelmed. Just because you leave the house for paid work does not mean your partner has been “not working” all day.
If she is actually parenting and managing the household, her day probably looks like a revolving door of feeding a small human, teaching them things, breaking up meltdowns, trying to socialize them so they grow into functional people, cleaning the same mess over and over, scheduling and attending doctor’s appointments, laundry that never ends, and attempting to keep the house from looking like a toy store exploded. Trying to keep a house clean with a kid around is honestly worse than an unmedicated root canal.
And that’s before even touching on the mental load…remembering everything from appointments to groceries to school stuff.
When you come home from work, the responsibilities don’t magically stay hers. Parenting and household duties should become shared because at that point you are both off your primary daytime role. You don’t get to skip out on being a parent just because you’re the one bringing in a paycheck.
Also, a lot of SAHM’s slowly lose pieces of themselves because their entire identity becomes childcare and household management. Acting like they have it easy because they aren’t at an office all day just makes that worse.
If you want a partner who isn’t burned out and resentful, start acting like you’re part of the household team when you walk in the door.
So, your wife should do her unpaid work 24/7 because you leave the house to go to a paid job and thus feel entitled to time off parenting?
Next time, how about you get pregnant for nine months, suffer all the difficult and health-altering physical changes that come along with it, push a human out of your body (more physical stress and pain and changes) and then care for the baby single-handedly non-stop, while your wife leaves the house to go to work, and lies on the sofa when she gets back.
Oh, you should also do all the feeding of course.
YTA
YTA.
Look at this way: If your wife worked full time at a daycare or as a nanny looking after other people’s children and you worked full time, wouldn’t it be reasonable for you to contribute 50/50 to the domestic duties of running your household and the after work childcare?
Yeah, same thing my guy. Her labor is not less just because it’s her own child.