VENT WARNING. Non-working parent not carrying their weight in quarantine

[Anonymous]

Wow. This sucks. I'm sorry op. I'm working and dh is mostly on paid leave with some work here and there. He's pretty much got the kids and the house on him every day. All laundry, dinner and walks/activities with the kids. The oldest is a preschooler without zoom stuff. I feed the baby every 3-4 hrs and make the plan for lunch and dinner and he executes most days. I do the bedtime routine and sometimes have lunch with them otherwise it's all him. I clean on the weekend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow. This sucks. I'm sorry op. I'm working and dh is mostly on paid leave with some work here and there. He's pretty much got the kids and the house on him every day. All laundry, dinner and walks/activities with the kids. The oldest is a preschooler without zoom stuff. I feed the baby every 3-4 hrs and make the plan for lunch and dinner and he executes most days. I do the bedtime routine and sometimes have lunch with them otherwise it's all him. I clean on the weekend.

Congratulations. This post contributes nothing. Thanks for stopping by to puff yourself up though.

[Anonymous]

Op, I'm in a similar spot. My work has gotten so busy. I used to work part time and was absolutely the primary parent when it came to kids, carpools, coordinating housekeeper/ dog walker/ tutors, etc.

DH is in between jobs (which is fine - he's deserved some time off after a busy few years), but it definitely took some real conversations about roles - we are in a better spot but it' still challenging. He does all of the menu planning, shopping, cooking and laundry. I'm still the primary person around schooling but our kids are a little older so they don't need much (and it stressed me out when he would miss an email, not really help the kids, etc.). We block out some time as a family to do the house deep cleaning (on weekends because I know it won't happen without me).

DH still has time to putter/ work on his hobbies. I still get irritated that general stuff around the house still doesn't happen without me noticing or doing it (broken appliances, car registration, filters changed, light bulbs changed, etc - but at least getting core day to day chores off my plate has been a huge help).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well FWIW I am the working from home spouse (man) and my wife who is a SAHM already is doing jack sh$t every other day. She gets “exhausted” or “can’t handle the kids”. So she just sleeps the whole day. Our kitchen is a war zone of dirty dishes stacked to the windows, laundry in various stages just piled all over the house. She’s used to having a cleaning lady.

Like two hours of home school per day and making a couple sandwiches is moving mountains. I work a very demanding and stressful job. Once in a while they stop screaming at each other when I ask them so I can do an important call. That’s about it. Occasionally she makes me a cup of coffee.

Be more like this dude, OP. It doesn’t even occur to him to do the dishes, make lunch, and help with schooling when he has a SAH spouse. He’s not sitting next to his child and feeding him lunch while he attends an important meeting and his wife is sleeping in the other room. He assumes lunch has been made and calls out from the home and tells everyone to be quiet so he can make an important call.

His wife is doing so much more than your husband is, OP, and this dude is still so pissed. He isn’t looking for reasons that she might feel the way she does or coming up with lists of when the kids zoom meetings are.

Be more like him.

This is so true. And it’s funny how men and women react differently to having a spouse slack off, but seriously, OP you need to be more like this dude.

Stand up for yourself! Or at a minimum take care of your needs first.

Lol.
Someone needs to explain to him that he should just let his wife do things “her way” or do them himself. And that just because her way doesn’t look like his way doesn’t mean it’s wrong .

I think that's exactly what he is doing.

FYI dad - I'm a SAHM who does a good job (if I say so myself) and would just like to point out that homeschooling really does only take a couple hours max in our house, especially if the kid is motivated to move on to more fun things. You have fair complaints but I'm not sure that's one of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let me guess, you are a woman and the non working spouse a man?

Or, have you always been the primary parent and home handler?

Thank you all for the validation without being rude. In the pre-covid world DH works more than I do and so I do take on the primary parent and home handler role. Right now that's switched to DH working zero hours and my work is ramped up. House handling and parenting feels harder simply because we are home 100% of the time. There aren't school and dog walkers and housecleaners and playdates and all the rest of life to ease those burdens. I partly needed perspective since my temper is so short and I don't want to explode if in fact I'm being unreasonable. Social media doesn't help watching friends baking bread and taking family hikes when I barely get through the day.

New poster here. Even before the gender was revealed or who did what I was going to say you should have shifts. I would treat it like how we did when one of had to wake up when the kids were babies. IMO no one parent should be 24-7 with two adults in the household even if one person is home during the day- maybe the split looks different but there should be a shared load. There was a good opinion piece in NYT about parenting in quarantine. The goals are trying to come out on the other side without getting divorced, getting fired, or kids running away. So as a team, how can you both work together - not to be Pinterest perfect but to survive with jobs and families in tact.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/opinion/parenting-coronavirus-burnout.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well FWIW I am the working from home spouse (man) and my wife who is a SAHM already is doing jack sh$t every other day. She gets “exhausted” or “can’t handle the kids”. So she just sleeps the whole day. Our kitchen is a war zone of dirty dishes stacked to the windows, laundry in various stages just piled all over the house. She’s used to having a cleaning lady.

Like two hours of home school per day and making a couple sandwiches is moving mountains. I work a very demanding and stressful job. Once in a while they stop screaming at each other when I ask them so I can do an important call. That’s about it. Occasionally she makes me a cup of coffee.

[b]Be more like this dude, OP. It doesn’t even occur to him to do the dishes, make lunch, and help with schooling when he has a SAH spouse. He’s not sitting next to his child and feeding him lunch while he attends an important meeting and his wife is sleeping in the other room. He assumes lunch has been made and calls out from the home and tells everyone to be quiet so he can make an important call.

His wife is doing so much more than your husband is, OP, and this dude is still so pissed. He isn’t looking for reasons that she might feel the way she does or coming up with lists of when the kids zoom meetings are.

Be more like him. [\b]

Yep. OP, your job took the backseat before covid, and your DH doesn’t realize that things have changed. You guys need to have a talk about rebalancing the household labor.

[Anonymous]

OP.. go pro..

Office-working husband respond most to anything that comes on paper. They are conditioned to terminology and format.

So start issuing formal memos. And follow with schedules, billable hours and graphs. Also call scheduled meetings and take minutes ..

Post a schedule with what you can and will do, plan for him fairly, post in the kitchen and don't comment.
Do, your share, fill his blanks as done or undone, do it for a week..

she where the blocks will fall.. Them husbands do not usually like any paper trail on them being not doing their part
so once you start official formal recording that is publicly displayed and just do your share.. they reconsider.

Some husbands are very generous in suffering watching you do all the work so you need to just
stick to your side of the job and leave his to him.

Photo record might be helpful enforcement tool and memory refresher. Pre and post operation home task.s

[Anonymous]

Some husbands know how to do nothing all day long at home.. they leaned it on the job. There is lots of commotion and movement
but no work gets done.. Mind this .. he commotion is most likely happening when you are approaching.

It is like the good old bumper sticker "Look busy, Jesus is coming".

[Anonymous]

To papers. One hand - work division. The other Hand - divorce papers. Let him pick.

[Anonymous]

I am wondering how many of you are gun-owners?