Second Shift - sucks for dads too
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Anonymous
| OP, the PP who said to suck it up and learn to eat some leftovers is correct. Having a dual working parent household is tough, but insisting on cooking from scratch every night is just making it harder. |
Anonymous
Your DH should be paying the bills on his "second shift". Seriously, is the WOHM flex now that they can do the SAHM job too! Well, congratulations! |
Anonymous
Again, you’re really reaching here. You chose to have a more relaxed life and stay home. Why do you feel the need for us to validate you? Just enjoy your life. |
Anonymous
That’s just not true. |
Anonymous
I still do all this. Spoke to a bday party venue for 20 mins to ensure they had my kid’s party on the books since their system was down. Reached out to my bank about a complex issue which required lengthy documentation. It’s not all or nothing. But I have no choice because I am a single, working parent. This is just a normal part of my life. No one else will do it. I’m not the only one in my position 🤷🏼♀️. Sometimes getting rid of dead weight simplifies life. |
Anonymous
We have never encountered anything like this, perhaps you have bad luck with services? Are you in a southern state with worse consumer protections? |
Anonymous
So can people clarify what the problem is? DHs of WOHMs are not happy with the second shift or all married dads not happy with the second shift? Maybe the problem is that having a SAHM wife at home and having money to outsource grunt work makes it easier for me? And maybe the DHs of SAHMs in households where HHI is not high and so dads have to pitch in find the second shift hard too? |
Anonymous
| OP, you need to get a grip. I worked FT, in office with a husband who worked long hours. I did all the morning and evening stuff, managed to clean my house, feed my kids, do laundry and enjoy my weekends. You and your husband are just lazy and not organized. I also enjoyed time with friends as did my DH and kids. You are just too much. |
Anonymous
I don’t know any WOHMs falling apart. The OP is a man. But your sarcasm and smugness say a lot about how you feel about your choices. |
Anonymous
Definitely not lazy, we both have advanced degrees, but probably disorganized. So you did everything and your DH just worked? That actually probably works best honestly, I think coordination eats up a lot of our time. How did it work in the evenings? Our kids are elementary and middle school, we have activities 4 nights a week, kids have homework and we both commute 30-60 minutes? How did you squeeze everything into the 5 hours from 6:00 - 11:00pm? |
Anonymous
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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. |
Anonymous
I'm a different poster. But here's what we did-- drastically reduced the coordination by giving each adult total control over certain broad topics. So for example, DH is in charge of ALL food. He plans, shops/orders, and cooks, every dinner and 3 meals a day on weekends, without fail. Nobody gets to have an opinion about anything he decides to buy or cook. I clean up after dinner, and after each weekend meal, every time without fail. He is also 100% responsible for the car. I am the lead on small-potatoes school stuff, and on swimming. He's the lead on soccer and piano. I handle all kids' clothing and medical/dental. We try VERY hard not to micromanage and second-guess each other. This saves a lot of time. BUT, it only works if both parents are very, very reliable and can be trusted to complete their jobs on time and to the agreed-upon standard, taking initiative and not needing any reminders from the other person. |
Anonymous
We tag teamed any practices, but 4 nights a week wasn’t an issue for us. We didn’t over schedule our young kids. We also set up car pools with other parents. Only one of us had an hour commute. We didn’t set ourselves up to fail. You just do things as they need done. Our kids helped pick up and I never had a house too messy to clean efficiently. You need to do better. |
Anonymous
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I wanted a soft life long before that was a thing. My working mom did not cope with it all well (and my dad was not that helpful.)
So I married a high earner with an eye towards being a SAHM and only had 2 kids. It’s worked out rather nicely if I do say so myself. You women that want to do it all, more power to you. I just never wanted that. Ever. |
Anonymous
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You need to look very hard at your schedule and consider what you can eliminate. Go systematically through every single thing on the calendar.
We have our life pretty tightly scheduled to be time-efficient. For example, soccer is near a good Wegmans, so DH drops DD at soccer then goes to Wegmans and picks up an order that he has pre-placed, and gets any other random things. Then he picks up DD comes home, and unpacks it. Look in your schedule for opportunities like that. If you can make things very routine so that you don't have to think so hard about what to do when, it'll be less mental effort. |