I’ll try and keep this short while providing some background context.
Partner and I had our first child about 2.5 years ago. For a few reasons like avoiding daycare etc, they stayed home with the baby while I went to work for most of that period outside some initial leave when baby was born.
We had our second baby about 6 months ago and I am now wanting to return to work as I’ve exhausted all leave available to me. My partner now wishes to return to work but I also don’t want to be the stay at home parent full time, but will do so if it avoids daycare.
My Partner is fortunate enough that their employment offers considerable flexibility and is full time WFH. Some times are busy, and I never really know how busy they are going to be on any given day. Some days it might only be a couple hours in the morning, some days it might be a bit more. Very rarely is it a full 8 or 10 hour day, so they are able to help out with kids at home, come to the park and generally hang out as a family.
I am really struggling with this as I don’t understand given that flexibility why they cant do their job plus look after the kids while I go back to work. I also cant deal with being suddenly available. Like as an example I had an outing planned with the kids today, then just as I was getting ready to leave they offered to look after the younger one at home if it made things easier or to maybe come with me. I got frustrated and blew up as if I had known they were going to be finished with work so early I would have planned to do other things if I knew they could look after the kids for a bit. So we had a fight, with my partner also getting pissy and angry at me saying ‘fine, pretend I didn’t ask and that im flat out until 6pm, sorry for offering to help out and/or have some family time’ and went back to the study. So I took the kids as planned but the fight doesn’t sit right with me. How can they not get it or understand how I’m feeling and why their behaviour is so frustrating to deal with?
For further information, my partner makes considerably more than I do and pays the lions share of the expenses. For the last couple of years while I was working they drew down on their savings to help. This would continue to be the case if I went back to work, but they have enough to cover it for a few more years until the kids are in school. They are saying I am being unreasonable and selfish.
AITA?
>Some days it might only be a couple hours in the morning, some days it might be a bit more. Very rarely is it a full 8 or 10 hour day
\[…\]
I am really struggling with this as I don’t understand given that flexibility why they cant do their job plus look after the kids while I go back to work.
YTA. You can’t leave baby alone even for “a couple hours in the morning”. Also you’re irrational to demand the main breadwinner also be a primary caretaker
Also, **working** from home is working, people doing so have to focus on their job, they can’t just head out to the park and stuff like that
YTA, you want your partner to be both a full time employee and a full time stay at home, while you can’t even pay most of the bills. Your partner would be better off as a single parent
You’re being unfair, unreal and selfish 🤷♂️
YTA
YTA. You don’t understand why they can’t work and take care of the kids? Really? Have you ever tried getting work done while caring for two young children? And I’d understand if you had issues with your spouse being suddenly *unavailable*, but I don’t see why them having unexpected availability is a problem.
YTA. Being free occasionally to spend time with your kids is absolutely not the same thing as being available to take care of them full time. It’s absolutely not reasonable to expect your partner, who is the breadwinner, to work full time and provide full time childcare all at the same time. If you want to go back to work, you should, and the solution is obvious — get childcare. Why are you so dead set against this? You don’t even give a reason. And then you blew up at your partner for…offering to hang out with you and your kid? Like what? She did absolutely nothing wrong. She happened to have some free time and offered to help you out. You’re a big asshole.
Yes YTA, remote workers get to choose when they are available for non work during work hours, not the people around them.
YTA. Also really interesting that you’re specifically avoiding gender because you know we’ll be on your wife’s side
Massive yta
You want the primary breadwinner, who’s basically paying for everything, to also take care of the kids despite her working hard? Not only that, you also blew up on her for being available? Not a thank you or being grateful but being an asshole? You’re being extremely selfish and a prick.
And INFO: what do you have against daycares?
YTA. Why do so many people who don’t want to spend time with, take care of, and pay for their kids have multiple kids???
YTA you’re guilty of what you’re accusing your partner of – not understanding something obvious about their point of view. You could not, in fact have made other plans because they were not, in fact, free to commit to looking after the kids that day. They can’t look after children and work at the same time and while it sounds like a lot of the time, they end up working short days, they do not know in advance whether that will be the case or how exactly the day will play out. To commit to looking after the kids to the extent of being the only option, they would have to be sure that they did not need to work, which would require actually taking the time off.
It is wild to me that you do not see the flexibility in their role for the gift that it is – the ability to have more time together as a family and more flexible with taking over with the kids is amazing. That they are able to do so while still earning a full time wage is incredible. To be mad that it comes with the caveat of having to wait and see how the day goes is unbelievably negative.
If you want to return to work because being at home full time is not working for you, then you should do so. If that means daycare then so be it, I don’t understand why you would demand that your partner stays home if it isn’t what they want either. But it is totally unreasonable to expect them to provide full time childcare while also working. If they are able to take time out to be with the kids because their day goes short that’s a great bonus, but it can’t be presumed and it wouldn’t mean they could be the childcare option anyway- kids need to be cared for for all of the hours of the day, they can’t just be left for 2-6hrs depending on the schedule.
My personal experience has been you cannot work from home and take care of young children at the same time, and maintain the same standards for both. Either you are not interacting with your children or only really working while they’re asleep. Or you’re not focussed on your job. Also, an increasing number of WFH roles are specifying that you cannot also be looking after children full time while working.
It sounds like your partners job is also financially more important for your family, and working is emotionally important for both of you. It also sounds like your preference to work instead of being the SAH parent is making you resentful, such that rather than seeing an early finish from your partner as bonus family time you are wishing they’d just do all the childcare so you could work. This will ruin your relationship if you let it.
You need to have a proper adult discussion with your partner about family priorities. Why don’t you want your children in daycare? If not sending your children to daycare is actually important enough to you that you would opt to be a SAH parent instead then you need to lean in and embrace that role rather than resent it.
YTA.
BECAUSE they don’t know when they have to actually be working, they have to have that 8-10 hours of THEIR WORKDAY free. Seems pretty damm easy to understand. And you’re upset that she earns more NOW but used her personal savings while taking care of YOUR shared kids? Selfish, selfish asshole.
YTA all the way
edit cuz can’t spell
YTA.
You’re being unreasonable and selfish. Your partner did the SAHP thing for 2 years while you worked, because that’s what the family needed at the time. It’s now your turn to be the SAHP, and your partner is by all accounts giving you more help than you gave them when you were the one working, and it’s suddenly “unfair”?
If you want to avoid daycare, which seems important to you, then the lower earner stays home. You don’t ask the higher earner to do two full time jobs at once.