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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone think it's odd that Op has time for typing all these paragraphs. And it could have been explained in one or two.

At midnight on a Saturday? No, I don't think it's odd. How busy are you usually at that time?

With a 3 month old? Why isn’t OP sleeping now to get in enough rest for the inevitable wake up? Or is OP not planning on handling it?

You’re f’in ridiculous. OP has to work. They have kids. Employers aren’t paying people to have kid time. This is a huge part of the current issue and you fools that think this is how it works are running it for everyone. Work is what OP is doing during work hours. His wife is on leave. On leave, you are home to handle the child care. If she can’t handle the older child, the solution is not to halve their income, it’s to hire child care. This is simple. You’re being unrealistic and crazy.

Maternity leave IS work and his wife is almost certainly trying to figure out the balance once she returns to work and the baby is cluster feeding nonstop.

Yes, paid work can’t be interrupted during the day but OP doesn’t get a free pass for middle of the night wakeups.

Let me guess, you outearn your husband and he’s terrified of you. Enjoy. You picked him.

This is a weird take.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why can’t anyone take the baby with them when they are getting the older child to and from daycare? It sounds like neither of you regularly take care of both kids solo. No wonder she was stressed!!!

I would say that dad takes the baby and the preschooler in the mornings while mom showers and eats breakfast and feels normal for a couple of hours. Then mom takes the baby and the four year old in the afternoons. That way she can get to the school on time and dad has a little bit of time to decompress at the end of the workday.

You guys have two kids now. You both need to be able to take care of two kids on your own.

This. The other thing I’m sensing is that maybe OP doesn’t want his work to know he’s stepping away at 2pm CA. That’s one reason why this plan is solid start. OP takes both DCs in the am, baby goes on the 5min ride to daycare unless they’re asleep, and then OPs DW does the 5pm with both kids unless baby is sleeping. The witching hour is right around the corner from 5pm so someone needs to help DW if she’s expected to put dinner on the table, but at least divide and conquer the AM and PMs differently.

FWIW, I am a SAHM and none of my kids went to daycare so this juggle your wife is experiencing was normative for me. It was hard and I did hire a sitter 2 mornings a week so I could go to the gym, but even then I took a toddler with me to the gym daycare and only left the baby at home (and on their schedule which made my life easier overall). Emergency sitters are hard to find but maybe more reliable breaks will make snow days easier to manage for your DW.

[Anonymous]

She needs help. Get a nanny.

[Anonymous]

Your wife sounds unreasonable and off base. But I assume once she goes back to work, you will need to have more paid childcare anyway, so is there anyway you can start now with some additional help?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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

A marriage headed for divorce.

Ughhh.. Harsh but yeah..

Agree...it's only going to get worse once she goes back to work and the baby gets more mobile.

[Anonymous]

You all need a nanny, cleaning lady, mother's helper...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You all need a nanny, cleaning lady, mother's helper...

I had a cleaning lady, mother's helper, part time cook when kids were little even when I was a SAHM.

[Anonymous]

Get her a mommy sitter next time you have s busy day. She is either a narcissistic b"tch or crazy or hormone addled. You did nothing wrong. Ask her should you fly out for meetings next time. Ask her if your job matters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I struggled with work life balance early in my career, but things have improved since I started working 100% remote for a company based on the west coast.There’s a flexible culture around time off, which has been great to spend more time with our two kids (4yrs, 3 months). As a result, I never work/take my laptop with me on vacations or work on weekends. Sometimes I’ll work in the evenings to catch up on stuff, but I’ll do that when wife/kids have gone to sleep. I have to travel to our home office once a quarter for 4 days at a time for planning meetings, but I usually schedule my flights to minimize impact to family life (leave late Sunday afternoon, return Thursday night or Friday am on red eye). Another plus is that I’m able to attend daytime events at our 4 yr olds school, which is really meaningful to me.

DW is still on maternity leave for another month with the 3 month old, while our four year olds preschool is a 5 min drive.

Due to most of my coworkers being west coast based, mornings are slow, so I’ll take the 4 year old to preschool. At 5 PM, DW leaves to pick 4 yo up, and I take over with 3 mo old. However, it’s not uncommon to have lots of requests and meeting in the afternoon, so sometimes I won’t sign off until like 5:05 or 5:10, which bothers DW because she likes to pick up 4 yo at a consistent time.

I recently moved into a management role, which has me much busier during the day, in and out of lots of meetings, and doing admin work in my downtime. As a result, a lot of days, I’ll only have time for a quick lunch, which means I don’t have the time to do the household tasks I was able to do before (folding laundry, dishes, etc) When I come down and eat quickly, DW always remarks something like “you want to spend some time with your kid?”

However, things came to a head this week with DW and I regrading work life balance. Our quarterly planning meeting was this past week. Due to my new role, I was told that I only needed to be involved in one days worth of meetings. It didn’t make sense to travel cross country for one day, so fortunately I could join remotely. Unfortunately, the one day would involve two presentations that I’d be giving to different csuite members, so I felt it necessary to spend a great deal of time preparing these presentations.

Of course, the day I was scheduled to give these presentations, the shit hit the fan on the home and work front. Our 4 year olds school had a snow day so she was home, which is always a challenge. ILs are local and they’d normally help in this situation, but they were out of town. I helped out with the kids for about an hour in the morning, but then lots of work related fires had to be put out, which resulted being called into meeting, which then dovetailed into my presentations for the csuite. I basically didn’t leave my desk for 5 straight hours, which, I can’t stress enough, is incredibly rare, even in my new position. Along the way in this madness, DW texted me “we’re all doing great down here, thanks for checking in!”

A day later, DW tells me that she feels that I have an unhealthily work life balance, and I’m not prioritizing our family’s needs over work. She pointed out that she would drop everything at work if it was a snow day, so why shouldn’t I do the same. I see her point, but at the same time, this was an impossibly unusual circumstance, and I can’t just not attend a meeting where I’m presenting to the csuite.

I guess I just don’t know what she is expecting of me. Yes, I can work harder to ensure that I log off by 5, but at the end of the day, I think my situation is really great. I know many other people in much worse situations (having to go into an office, lots of travel, regularly working on vacations). I’m truly trying to understand my wife here, but I just don’t understand how one very bad day, along with signing off 5-10 minutes after 5 pm equates to not prioritizing my family over work. Am I totally off base here?

She is not appreciative of your efforts but she is still in the phase of postpartum blues so keeping that in mind, be patient. That being said, as you too are adjusting to having two kids, both of you need to come up with a plan so changes are easy on all of you.

[Anonymous]

So many incels in this thread.

[Anonymous]

You both sound like whiny millennials…and this post illustrates exactly why people are better off working in person.

Hire childcare!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So many incels in this thread.

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

[Anonymous]

This is going to get worse not better. When she tells you who she is, listen.

[Anonymous]

I’ve been in this situation and we hired help. Yes, I was grateful my DH worked from home and could pop in and out to help with the kids so I could use the bathroom, but I was also resentful he wasn’t around more which is silly really because the alternative is for him to be in the office 10-11 hours a day and me to have zero help. So we hired a part time nanny and life was better.

[Anonymous]

I think you are looking at this from a point of view of actions related to work and home, which is reasonable. But she is also postpartum and may have some emotional needs. I personally had postpartum depression and anxiety, and I was admittedly not a very reasonable person. So yes, you are correct that she’s expecting too much, but I think you need to just give her what she needs and more, to the extent you can.