Second Shift - sucks for dads too

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We moved our entire family across the country to a southern state we didn’t know anyone but found jobs in for this reason. Our life is so simple now. Just move, it’s 2026. You’re not on the Oregon trail, it’s not nearly as difficult as it sounds.

This just made me laugh out loud, thank you.

How is it simpler? Don't you have the same daily grind, but just in a state where you don't know anyone? (make breakfast, work all day, dropoff/pickup kids, make dinner, take them to their activities-albeit probably less intense ones, get ready for the next day of the same).

I'm the PP that laughed, not the one who made the original comment, although we also moved out of DC for the specific purpose of simplifying our lives. Pre-COVID we both worked out of the house (now we both work from home full-time with no plans to ever return to the office), but we had a nanny who was cheaper than our nanny in DC, we had commutes of 20 minutes each versus an hour, we built an amazing house for the same price as our older townhouse in Vienna, our kids are in an excellent private school where tuition is half the price of the school they were in before, and the pace of life is just slower here. Friends live closer, so we aren't going to birthday parties in Bethesda that take us an hour to get to, traffic isn't as bad, so we aren't white-knuckling it in the morning and evening, I could go on and on. Our kids are all in intense sports, we are all very social, we travel a lot, we have two dogs, we both work full-time jobs that are pretty demanding, but life is still so much easier than it was when we lived in DC. I honestly don't know why anyone stays if they don't have to. And yes, we both switched jobs in order to move, it's not like we just easily picked up and relocated, but it was so worth it.

What happens when one of you is laid off or has to RTO? That’s mostly why a lot of us stay near metro areas, for the job market not just the current jobs. There are a LOT less WFH jobs these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:WAIT, WAIT, WAIT, WAIT, WAIT!!!


I thought it was fabulous and amazing to be a WOHM, and SAHMs were a waste of space!!

I thought - SAHMs provided zero value when - house was clean, laundry done, meals cooked, grocery bought, cars serviced, house organized, bills paid, drycleaning picked, social engagements met, entertaining done, kids school and ECs nailed, eldercare sorted, petcare done, yardwork sorted, haircuts scheduled, wellness checkups done, dental and eye exams done, home remodeling/improvement thoughtfully done.

Oh dear! What happened?? Why has life become so shitty???

Wow, scrapping the barrel there.

lol that one and “paying bills”. Sahm always list this as an important task and really how long does this take?

Regards paying bills -
Monitoring for overcharges. Disputing Healthcare refusal to reimburse or false billings. And oh yeah, getting the old car off the insurance and getting the new one on - this last one i found out spouse had forgotten because HE was in charge of that and we were paying for several car insurances. That's what happens if someone is not on top of this.
Kids mobile phone renewals, parking thei number be ause they are studying in the UK. Trying to pay UK tuition because they dont ever contact you only the kid.
Checking performance of retirement accounts and moving funds per FED omens. Summer camp deposits, contractual forms, tracking number of music lessons and to keep the payments going because the teacher can be a bit squirrelly. Plumber servi e payments, making g sure they actually did the work....
If no one is on top of any of this, you can get fleeced easily.

I speak as a former SAHM. It i love working, it is so much easier on some levels.

I'm a working mom and I "pay the bills" and yes, it's a ton of work. Our issues are different from yours but yes. It's really way more than paying bills, it's financial management and bleeds into other tasks like vacation planning (it's easier for the person who understand where all the money is and how it's allocated to plan something with a variable cost that might require deal-hunting or creating alternative plans based on budget).

One of the jobs I do as "primary parent" and the person with the lower paying, less demanding job is deal with our HOA. You might say "oh, how much work could that possibly be?" I would have said that before as well. It's really annoying. Our HOA meets quarterly and also sometimes calls for votes between meetings on things that directly impact our household (stuff like issuing a special assessment for a maintenance item, or changing a policy that impacts where our kids play) so I have to stay on top of that, not miss votes, etc. For three years prior to this, I was roped into being treasurer on the HOA board (because we were at the time only one of 6 owners in the neighborhood who had been here over a year, didn't rent our place out, or were not currently selling, just an annoying cross-over period when there were very few people available for board roles). That was a TON of work, so freaking annoying, I had to process all invoices, maintain all the budget spreadsheets, and do presentations on budget at every meeting. This is the kind of thing people get dragged into doing all the time because they are responsible, functional people, and no one else will do it. It adds up to a lot of work when you put it all together.

I could easily put together a full-time job with the unpaid stuff I do for the kids, our family, and our community. Easily. I wish I could afford to be a SAHM. I wish my DH didn't have a one our commute both ways to work (or that we could move closer to his job). I wish I could afford to pay someone else to do all the boring, annoying crap like paying bills and invoices and hiring a roofer and researching water heaters before ours totally craps out and getting the oil changed in the car and remembering to log into the portal to pay our kid's therapy bills and remembering when camp sign up happens and figuring out how which document is missing from our school re-enrollment when we get the vague email about it and on and on and on. But I don't, so I do it. It's hard.

Poor baby you are the only one doing this

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We can do hard things.

I think about this a lot… but like why? Why are things so hard when they don’t need to be. Let me telework a day a week, my job is so frustrating (fed) and a waste of time when I actually want to do something meaningful. I’m drained and tired.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem is that OP makes it sound so unfair that he has a second shift and how that is somehow under appreciated. Like he is not supposed to have a second shift but society has conspired to give him one. Meanwhile women just expect it.

This is the thing I notice about men who split parenting and housework relatively equally with their wives (who also work) - they consider it some kind of huge notable thing that they are MEN who have to balance work with family obligations. If they see a lot of men dropping off kids at daycare, they think to themselves, "wow, these men are so evolved" without thinking about the absurdity and injustice of the alternative - dumping both drop off and pickup on the wives that ALSO have jobs. It's not "evolved" that there are men at daycare drop off, it means there are two working parents and the men are more likely to do drop off so they can work later.

My husband and his friends, all of whom have wives who work, some of whom are the breadwinners, think men who don't do stuff like drop their kids off are lazy and pathetic excuses for husbands and fathers. They don't pat themselves on the back, they feel sorry for the wives with waste of space husbands.

Yeah the way people talk about men doing parenting and housework on DCUM is completely foreign to me. I know very few families where dad doesn't do drop off or pickup or both, I know more families where mom doesn't cook dinner than where dad doesn't cook dinner. No one talks about it as a big deal, it's just a thing.

I'm so happy for you

My brother has a 1 year old and when we talk he'll sometimes refer dramatically to the days when he is the "primary parent". Can you imagine a woman saying that?

What? Women literally do this *all the time*. They’ll even refer to themselves as single mom when they’re doing 50% or less of the parenting…

Nope, women do not talk about how they are "the primary parent" because they cared for their own child for 12 hours

Yup, they absolutely do. I know several “single moms” who have 50/50 JOINT custody of the kids.

They’re single moms (i.e. primary parent) the same way they’re childless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:WAIT, WAIT, WAIT, WAIT, WAIT!!!


I thought it was fabulous and amazing to be a WOHM, and SAHMs were a waste of space!!

I thought - SAHMs provided zero value when - house was clean, laundry done, meals cooked, grocery bought, cars serviced, house organized, bills paid, drycleaning picked, social engagements met, entertaining done, kids school and ECs nailed, eldercare sorted, petcare done, yardwork sorted, haircuts scheduled, wellness checkups done, dental and eye exams done, home remodeling/improvement thoughtfully done.

Oh dear! What happened?? Why has life become so shitty???

Wow, scrapping the barrel there.

lol that one and “paying bills”. Sahm always list this as an important task and really how long does this take?

Regards paying bills -
Monitoring for overcharges. Disputing Healthcare refusal to reimburse or false billings. And oh yeah, getting the old car off the insurance and getting the new one on - this last one i found out spouse had forgotten because HE was in charge of that and we were paying for several car insurances. That's what happens if someone is not on top of this.
Kids mobile phone renewals, parking thei number be ause they are studying in the UK. Trying to pay UK tuition because they dont ever contact you only the kid.
Checking performance of retirement accounts and moving funds per FED omens. Summer camp deposits, contractual forms, tracking number of music lessons and to keep the payments going because the teacher can be a bit squirrelly. Plumber servi e payments, making g sure they actually did the work....
If no one is on top of any of this, you can get fleeced easily.

I speak as a former SAHM. It i love working, it is so much easier on some levels.

I'm a working mom and I "pay the bills" and yes, it's a ton of work. Our issues are different from yours but yes. It's really way more than paying bills, it's financial management and bleeds into other tasks like vacation planning (it's easier for the person who understand where all the money is and how it's allocated to plan something with a variable cost that might require deal-hunting or creating alternative plans based on budget).

One of the jobs I do as "primary parent" and the person with the lower paying, less demanding job is deal with our HOA. You might say "oh, how much work could that possibly be?" I would have said that before as well. It's really annoying. Our HOA meets quarterly and also sometimes calls for votes between meetings on things that directly impact our household (stuff like issuing a special assessment for a maintenance item, or changing a policy that impacts where our kids play) so I have to stay on top of that, not miss votes, etc. For three years prior to this, I was roped into being treasurer on the HOA board (because we were at the time only one of 6 owners in the neighborhood who had been here over a year, didn't rent our place out, or were not currently selling, just an annoying cross-over period when there were very few people available for board roles). That was a TON of work, so freaking annoying, I had to process all invoices, maintain all the budget spreadsheets, and do presentations on budget at every meeting. This is the kind of thing people get dragged into doing all the time because they are responsible, functional people, and no one else will do it. It adds up to a lot of work when you put it all together.

I could easily put together a full-time job with the unpaid stuff I do for the kids, our family, and our community. Easily. I wish I could afford to be a SAHM. I wish my DH didn't have a one our commute both ways to work (or that we could move closer to his job). I wish I could afford to pay someone else to do all the boring, annoying crap like paying bills and invoices and hiring a roofer and researching water heaters before ours totally craps out and getting the oil changed in the car and remembering to log into the portal to pay our kid's therapy bills and remembering when camp sign up happens and figuring out how which document is missing from our school re-enrollment when we get the vague email about it and on and on and on. But I don't, so I do it. It's hard.

Poor baby you are the only one doing this

You completely missed the point of the post.

[Anonymous]

I don’t think it’s an issue of location and hcol. I think no matter what one parent has to step way back professionally. it should usually be the mom, at least in the early years for pretty practical reasons. That said, I think women should always keep a toe in the professional world whether part time or taking certification classes, because husbands can of course have heart attacks or hoe attacks. But they shouldn’t be expected to work full time while raising school aged kids. I’m a feminist, I have a masters. I do work part time but very luckily telework due to having seniority but I don’t think we are doing any families nor especially moms a service by normalizing a mortgage that requires two incomes. It should not be the norm it’s miserable for all but a few families. Also we should normalize returning to work after a couple years of nurturing a human the same way we applaud ceos who climb mountains or take sabbaticals instead of treating mothers who take extended leave with contempt.