Is my wife being unrealistic about her expectations of my work life balance?

[Anonymous]

A lot of empathy missing from these replies. This is a hard time for both of you. Yes your wife is not being reasonable, AND she's going through a very difficult period of life and, in my marriage at least, we give each other grace.

Maternity leave with my second was one of the toughest stretches of my entire life. I would get to the end of the day and just cry myself to sleep for an hour then wake up and do it all again. Add in a snow day with a 4 yo and an exceptionally busy day for my husband and I probably also could have said something unreasonable or snarky. Thank god my husband let those kinds of comments roll off his back, stepped up where he could, and overall maintained better perspective than I was able to at that point in time.

Have you ever spent five hours straight stuck inside with both of your kids? Five hours flies when you're busy at work but your wife was probably crawling up the walls and watching seconds tick by. It doesn't make her "right" it just means she was struggling.

OP, my advice to you is that the "reasonableness" of her comment isn't really the lens to look at it through. You are a team with a shared problem: you are both operating at full capacity, so any unexpected burden, e.g. a snow day, puts one or both of you over the edge. I'd try to tackle that part of the problem together. Where can you throw money at things? Where can you each let go of a little bit of expectations? (E.g. she wants the 4 yo picked up at a specific time, you want to get all of your emails sent before you leave the office. Neither one is necessary, you are both choosing a battle).

Fwiw my husband and I both work for west Coast companies and it's NOT easy. We say constantly that one or both of us should quit but we have golden handcuffs. I'm grateful we can each relate to the problem at least, it must be hard to be juggling the pressure of trying to log off at what is effectively 2 pm for your colleagues, and feeling push back at home if you can't get off until 2:15. It sounds like your wife will be going back to work soon - have you guys started to talk about your routine then? Maternity leave is short and hard, so I would spend less energy trying to draw out these arguments and more time trying to anticipate the next phase, which will last a lot longer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, you need to see your wife's perspective. She's postpartum and sleep deprived and you should be more understanding. Stop thinking of what you do as "helping out"-- that means you see the household and the kids as primarily her responsibility. Think of it as doing a fair share and being a good parent, which is both of your responsibility. Her day was disrupted and made much more difficult, and you just shrugged and left her to it? Yeah, that's not being a good husband.

She wants to pick up the 4yo at a consistent time because she's tired of being functionally alone at home with a baby. And because she wants to start the evening routine, because there's dinner and whatever else such as bath, and then she has to nurse, and then bedtime which can be difficult, and then it isn't very long until she has to wake up in the night. It's almost as if-- get this-- there are two shifts in the day and at 5 PM she's starting her second shift.

She's thinking about going back to work. She's thinking how will all the household and parenting stuff get done-- that's why she's sensitive with you about household chores. Are you thinking about these things? Because you should be. If you're constantly claiming that you can't stop work on time, does she also get to work late and have you pick up the slack? Does she also get to go on multi-day work trips? Because it seems like you're claiming a lot of priority and flexibility for yourself here, and it doesn't even occur to you that this is a two-way street.

+1. Refusing to even try to coordinate a defined stopping time to hand off childcare is basically saying that OP is more important than his wife. Obviously OP needs some flexibility in case something comes up at 4:55, but it’s not actually hard to have a hard stop at a specific time. OP dismissing this conveys an attitude that his job comes first and hers second. I realize that she’s on maternity leave but I think the attitude still rankles and will likely still be there when she returns to work.

Now it seems possible that with coworkers on the West coast, it may not be feasible to stop work at 5pm ET when things are still in full swing there. In that case OP needs to be a big boy and have a discussion with his wife about how to coordinate.

OP powers down at 5, could be 5:05-5:10 if he's typing a last email, which I think is completely reasonable. For example, we pick up our kids from daycare at 5:30. Sometimes we walk out the door at 5 and grab them at 5:20, sometimes we walk out at 5:10 and grab them at 5:30, some days we leave at 5 and hit every single light and grab them at 5:30. OP's wife biyatching about 5-10 minutes is *insane*.

Only if you actually believe it is “just” 5-10 minutes. Remember that OP said at the start he “used to have work-life balance issues.” I bet anything that it’s more like 15-30-45 minutes (whatever HE decides it should be) and that is a big deal. And of course the context is that she is going back to work, so she’s trying to figure out how to make that work in the face of his possible unwillingness to stick to a schedule.

I’m also not sure what additional past issues they had or if they were as bad as in my house. But at certain times I had to exert what probably seemed to be an “insane” overreaction in order to get my exDH to be even minimally responsible for anything. So yeah, it could come down to really needing to insist that “no, it HAS to be 5pm, every single day” because otherwise my exDH would take advantage and it would slide to 5:30 then 6:30 then “oh I can’t do pickup today, can you do it?” Then before you know it, boom, I’m doing drop-off and pickup most days even though I also work FT. So yeah there was a tantrum in there once or twice when exDH said (from bed) “Oh can’t YOU take him to school this morning?”

OP does drop off every morning. It makes sense that his wife would do pickup.
And they can both bring the baby. If she’s worried about what it’s going to be like when she goes back to work, maybe they should practice having both kids at drop off/pick up.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, no, she's a stay at home mom, her literal JOB is to take care of the children while you work. I say this as a stay at home mom myself. What would your wife do if you had to go into the office every day like my husband??? She sounds really, really dumb. Has she ever had a job before?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stupid struggles of people from majority culture is so entertaining.

A marriage headed for divorce.

Ughhh.. Harsh but yeah..

One of the two spouses will have an affair. They may stay together for money though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, no, she's a stay at home mom, her literal JOB is to take care of the children while you work. I say this as a stay at home mom myself. What would your wife do if you had to go into the office every day like my husband??? She sounds really, really dumb. Has she ever had a job before?

She’s on maternity leave from her job. That’s why their oldest is in daycare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, no, she's a stay at home mom, her literal JOB is to take care of the children while you work. I say this as a stay at home mom myself. What would your wife do if you had to go into the office every day like my husband??? She sounds really, really dumb. Has she ever had a job before?

She’s on maternity leave from her job. That’s why their oldest is in daycare.

It sounds like the oldest is in preschool because he is 4, not because his parents just had a baby.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like she’s struggling. Keep your work schedule but just check in more via text if you can during the work day.

My husband and I both work from home and he gets more absorbed in phone calls. I never know if he’s coming up for air to run to the bus stop or get our daycare kid - little texts from him like “wrapping up a call and will do bus pickup today” would help. I get a little frustrated that only I seem to be aware of the time of day with respect to the impact on the kids schedules. I wonder if she is looking for something like that, little indications of whether you’re ending at 5 or running 15 mins late, for example.

My point is there may be a relatively simple fix that doesn’t involve changing your work style.

Why on earth do you not have this figured out? Monday, Wednesday, Friday he does bus, Tuesday, Thursday he does daycare. Done. He can figure things out on his days. Stop waiting around for him to text. This is partially on you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like she’s struggling. Keep your work schedule but just check in more via text if you can during the work day.

My husband and I both work from home and he gets more absorbed in phone calls. I never know if he’s coming up for air to run to the bus stop or get our daycare kid - little texts from him like “wrapping up a call and will do bus pickup today” would help. I get a little frustrated that only I seem to be aware of the time of day with respect to the impact on the kids schedules. I wonder if she is looking for something like that, little indications of whether you’re ending at 5 or running 15 mins late, for example.

My point is there may be a relatively simple fix that doesn’t involve changing your work style.

Why on earth do you not have this figured out? Monday, Wednesday, Friday he does bus, Tuesday, Thursday he does daycare. Done. He can figure things out on his days. Stop waiting around for him to text. This is partially on you.

This. You have to leave him to it. And let him fail. If the kids aren't old enough for that then you need to draw a hard line with him.

Some men seem to think parenting is their option when they find it convenient and opt in. but that their wife must be available to do it 24/7.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like she’s struggling. Keep your work schedule but just check in more via text if you can during the work day.

My husband and I both work from home and he gets more absorbed in phone calls. I never know if he’s coming up for air to run to the bus stop or get our daycare kid - little texts from him like “wrapping up a call and will do bus pickup today” would help. I get a little frustrated that only I seem to be aware of the time of day with respect to the impact on the kids schedules. I wonder if she is looking for something like that, little indications of whether you’re ending at 5 or running 15 mins late, for example.

My point is there may be a relatively simple fix that doesn’t involve changing your work style.

Why on earth do you not have this figured out? Monday, Wednesday, Friday he does bus, Tuesday, Thursday he does daycare. Done. He can figure things out on his days. Stop waiting around for him to text. This is partially on you.

Plus once kids are old enough to be trusted to do so, they can walk themselves home from the bus stop.

[Anonymous]

Are you taking parental leave after your wife goes back to work?

If not, then I think you need to take some leave and join in the actual work of caring for a newborn. Obviously the quarterly meeting and C suite presentations were important and had to be prioritized, but if you were parenting more she likely would have been much more understanding.

We don't have her side of the story, but your POV sounds a lot like my husband who likes to offhandedly promise massive support for childcare, transportation, logistics, etc., but when the rubber hits the road I am usually stuck handling it all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When they had a second baby, nothing changed for him.

When she goes back to work, nothing is going to change for him.

She’s going to look around at her own decimated personal life and tend a rage fire. They are likely to get divorced and he will just be like, “what happened?”

Exactly this. I’m troubled by how few posters are calling this out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s nuts that in 2025, the sahm position is that taking care of two young kids, one of whom goes to daycare, is beyond the capacity of the stay at home parent, and this can only be reasonably managed with childcare.

I am fascinated and disgusted that some women have not only convinced their husbands that there is so much value in the work done by a stay at home mom that they shouldn’t work out of the house, but also that their husbands should go out of pocket to pay for childcare and house cleaners while their wives perform this apparently imperative function. (I understand ops wife is on maternity leave and planning to go back to work, so it’s not exactly the situation here. But there are lots of posters suggesting that op is expecting too much of her to watch two kids on a day when she is not working - so same sentiment).

you’re fascinated and disgusted that a woman wants support caring for two small children one of whom is an infant possibly breastfeeding? And you then wonder why women are declining to have lots of babies? Come on.

I’m a woman and find it this strange. The older kid is in full day daycare most days. I have no issue with women opting out of having kids, but I do think it’s odd to try and opt out of the ones you do have.

Oh, so asking for some help from the other parent of your infant and preschooler is “opting out” of childcare? GTFO.

Yes, complaining about the spouse giving a presentation to the c-suite on the first day you have to take care of both kids solo is pathetic. Embarrassingly so.

if he failed to even communicate and work out a plan with her - and just silently expected her to do it all - then yes, he’s being a sh*tty user. The message is “you are my nanny and I control the division of labor in the household.”

If OP had taken a moment to be RESPECTFUL of his wife and coordinate the day, then he wouldn’t be here right now.

You are kidding right? The plan is the parent who is not working that day takes care of the kids. It was 5 hours, not even a full work day.

Yeah no, your wife is not your nanny. If that’s the plan, you discuss it with her.

I am a wife who works and brings in the lion share of our income. What a silly response. Yes, the parent on leave actually cares for the children. What a strange world you must live in.

you’re not reading what I wrote. of course it makes sense that she did the childcare while he worked. The problem would be if there was no conversation about it letting her know that today he’d likely be unable to interact the way he usually does during the day. And the broader context is that she’s going back to work in a month. is he also going to silently expect her to be the one to take all the snow days? Sounds like it.

You’re actually suggesting that when you have a working spouse and a spouse on maternity leave not currently working, the couple needs to have a discussion about who is going to watch the children on a snow day?? When one of the parents has no fixed obligations that day, and the other one does have obligations? Like there’s a discussion to be had? You ladies are absolutely bonkers.

Yes there is a discussion to be had. That’s the whole point - assuming your wife will just be the default caregiver is a huge issue down the line.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s nuts that in 2025, the sahm position is that taking care of two young kids, one of whom goes to daycare, is beyond the capacity of the stay at home parent, and this can only be reasonably managed with childcare.

I am fascinated and disgusted that some women have not only convinced their husbands that there is so much value in the work done by a stay at home mom that they shouldn’t work out of the house, but also that their husbands should go out of pocket to pay for childcare and house cleaners while their wives perform this apparently imperative function. (I understand ops wife is on maternity leave and planning to go back to work, so it’s not exactly the situation here. But there are lots of posters suggesting that op is expecting too much of her to watch two kids on a day when she is not working - so same sentiment).

you’re fascinated and disgusted that a woman wants support caring for two small children one of whom is an infant possibly breastfeeding? And you then wonder why women are declining to have lots of babies? Come on.

I’m a woman and find it this strange. The older kid is in full day daycare most days. I have no issue with women opting out of having kids, but I do think it’s odd to try and opt out of the ones you do have.

Oh, so asking for some help from the other parent of your infant and preschooler is “opting out” of childcare? GTFO.

Yes, complaining about the spouse giving a presentation to the c-suite on the first day you have to take care of both kids solo is pathetic. Embarrassingly so.

if he failed to even communicate and work out a plan with her - and just silently expected her to do it all - then yes, he’s being a sh*tty user. The message is “you are my nanny and I control the division of labor in the household.”

If OP had taken a moment to be RESPECTFUL of his wife and coordinate the day, then he wouldn’t be here right now.

He is at work. She is on maternity leave. That he works from home doesn't change that. It is astonishing that even though this mas been repeated over and over, some of you don't grasp it.

If he'd been working from the office, no one would have an issue with anything that he's done. He's at work, giving presentations. She is home, watching the kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, you need to see your wife's perspective. She's postpartum and sleep deprived and you should be more understanding. Stop thinking of what you do as "helping out"-- that means you see the household and the kids as primarily her responsibility. Think of it as doing a fair share and being a good parent, which is both of your responsibility. Her day was disrupted and made much more difficult, and you just shrugged and left her to it? Yeah, that's not being a good husband.

She wants to pick up the 4yo at a consistent time because she's tired of being functionally alone at home with a baby. And because she wants to start the evening routine, because there's dinner and whatever else such as bath, and then she has to nurse, and then bedtime which can be difficult, and then it isn't very long until she has to wake up in the night. It's almost as if-- get this-- there are two shifts in the day and at 5 PM she's starting her second shift.

She's thinking about going back to work. She's thinking how will all the household and parenting stuff get done-- that's why she's sensitive with you about household chores. Are you thinking about these things? Because you should be. If you're constantly claiming that you can't stop work on time, does she also get to work late and have you pick up the slack? Does she also get to go on multi-day work trips? Because it seems like you're claiming a lot of priority and flexibility for yourself here, and it doesn't even occur to you that this is a two-way street.

+1. Refusing to even try to coordinate a defined stopping time to hand off childcare is basically saying that OP is more important than his wife. Obviously OP needs some flexibility in case something comes up at 4:55, but it’s not actually hard to have a hard stop at a specific time. OP dismissing this conveys an attitude that his job comes first and hers second. I realize that she’s on maternity leave but I think the attitude still rankles and will likely still be there when she returns to work.

Now it seems possible that with coworkers on the West coast, it may not be feasible to stop work at 5pm ET when things are still in full swing there. In that case OP needs to be a big boy and have a discussion with his wife about how to coordinate.

OP powers down at 5, could be 5:05-5:10 if he's typing a last email, which I think is completely reasonable. For example, we pick up our kids from daycare at 5:30. Sometimes we walk out the door at 5 and grab them at 5:20, sometimes we walk out at 5:10 and grab them at 5:30, some days we leave at 5 and hit every single light and grab them at 5:30. OP's wife biyatching about 5-10 minutes is *insane*.

Only if you actually believe it is “just” 5-10 minutes. Remember that OP said at the start he “used to have work-life balance issues.” I bet anything that it’s more like 15-30-45 minutes (whatever HE decides it should be) and that is a big deal. And of course the context is that she is going back to work, so she’s trying to figure out how to make that work in the face of his possible unwillingness to stick to a schedule.

I’m also not sure what additional past issues they had or if they were as bad as in my house. But at certain times I had to exert what probably seemed to be an “insane” overreaction in order to get my exDH to be even minimally responsible for anything. So yeah, it could come down to really needing to insist that “no, it HAS to be 5pm, every single day” because otherwise my exDH would take advantage and it would slide to 5:30 then 6:30 then “oh I can’t do pickup today, can you do it?” Then before you know it, boom, I’m doing drop-off and pickup most days even though I also work FT. So yeah there was a tantrum in there once or twice when exDH said (from bed) “Oh can’t YOU take him to school this morning?”

Translation: IF that facts as related to us are completely different, OP's wife would be completely reasonable.

Sure, you got us. Point proven.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s nuts that in 2025, the sahm position is that taking care of two young kids, one of whom goes to daycare, is beyond the capacity of the stay at home parent, and this can only be reasonably managed with childcare.

I am fascinated and disgusted that some women have not only convinced their husbands that there is so much value in the work done by a stay at home mom that they shouldn’t work out of the house, but also that their husbands should go out of pocket to pay for childcare and house cleaners while their wives perform this apparently imperative function. (I understand ops wife is on maternity leave and planning to go back to work, so it’s not exactly the situation here. But there are lots of posters suggesting that op is expecting too much of her to watch two kids on a day when she is not working - so same sentiment).

you’re fascinated and disgusted that a woman wants support caring for two small children one of whom is an infant possibly breastfeeding? And you then wonder why women are declining to have lots of babies? Come on.

I’m a woman and find it this strange. The older kid is in full day daycare most days. I have no issue with women opting out of having kids, but I do think it’s odd to try and opt out of the ones you do have.

Oh, so asking for some help from the other parent of your infant and preschooler is “opting out” of childcare? GTFO.

Yes, complaining about the spouse giving a presentation to the c-suite on the first day you have to take care of both kids solo is pathetic. Embarrassingly so.

if he failed to even communicate and work out a plan with her - and just silently expected her to do it all - then yes, he’s being a sh*tty user. The message is “you are my nanny and I control the division of labor in the household.”

If OP had taken a moment to be RESPECTFUL of his wife and coordinate the day, then he wouldn’t be here right now.

You are kidding right? The plan is the parent who is not working that day takes care of the kids. It was 5 hours, not even a full work day.

Yeah no, your wife is not your nanny. If that’s the plan, you discuss it with her.

I am a wife who works and brings in the lion share of our income. What a silly response. Yes, the parent on leave actually cares for the children. What a strange world you must live in.

you’re not reading what I wrote. of course it makes sense that she did the childcare while he worked. The problem would be if there was no conversation about it letting her know that today he’d likely be unable to interact the way he usually does during the day. And the broader context is that she’s going back to work in a month. is he also going to silently expect her to be the one to take all the snow days? Sounds like it.

You’re actually suggesting that when you have a working spouse and a spouse on maternity leave not currently working, the couple needs to have a discussion about who is going to watch the children on a snow day?? When one of the parents has no fixed obligations that day, and the other one does have obligations? Like there’s a discussion to be had? You ladies are absolutely bonkers.

Yes there is a discussion to be had. That’s the whole point - assuming your wife will just be the default caregiver is a huge issue down the line.

She’s on maternity leave today. Down the line, when she returns, things will be different. Today the wife is the default caregiver.