How Much Does Your Husband Helps With Childcare and Housework?

[Anonymous]

The other thread got me thinking - how much do your husbands with FT job do? How involved are they with little kids and household chores? My husband is a huge even though we only have one child and I’m at home. People calling OP lazy while her husband gets a pass is a little much. How much does your husband help? Would you be fine with doing everything pertaining to childcare and housework if your husband worked FT?

[Anonymous]

I think the ratio is different if you’re a sahm versus working. SAHMs should have the house cleaning, errands and cooking in my opinion. But at night I think both should share with baths and reading.

[Anonymous]

He does his best. He’s a surgeon and his schedule can be brutal as well as the pressure.

[Anonymous]

If I stayed at home I think M-F I would be okay with doing the bulk, but that shouldn't get him out of spending time with his child or give him a pass to be a slob.

My issue is the husband not wanting to spend time with the kid, like you barely see them during the week, but on the weekends you're going to spend hours working out or doing your hobby, nope that doesn't work.

Same for after work, you can change diapers and do bedtime.

Heck if my Boomer dad did that in the 70s and 80s these Genx and Millennial dads have no excuse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:He does his best. He’s a surgeon and his schedule can be brutal as well as the pressure.

Mine too. And he moonlights on weekends. I’m a SAHM and do all the the childcare and house cleaning and cooking. We don’t have any hired help. Sometimes he will run the vacuum at night when I’m putting the kids to sleep. He likes to grocery shop so he will do that when he moonlights if things are slow. He also does a lot of homeschooling with my older children late in the evenings after he comes home or sometimes via FaceTime if he isn’t around. He loves to teach and quite frankly he is better at it than I am. I do more crafts, projects, literature, baking and such with the kids. He is a master of making all his time home count and turning his downtown at work into classes for our children.

[Anonymous]

We both work full-time, similar hours, similar pay. I do probably 80% of the day to day housework and 60% of the child care, although he does all of the technical/fixing stuff (except big projects, which we outsource). Which a) is still a huge help relative to not having him and b) we only got to this point with couples' therapy (not that this was the major issue that brought us there). It's not fair in some sense, but it's also manageable now that they're not infants or toddlers anymore. (We're paying a lot for childcare now, at my insistence.) When they were younger, it was a fight to even get him to wake up in the mornings and do anything with them. Now he sometimes takes initiative on his own with doing stuff with the kids or doing dishes, and generally listens to me when I ask him to do something. If you told me this was going to be the situation before we had kids, I would not have had kids with him. But I'm fairly happy.

[Anonymous]

We’re both working from home with a toddler and newborn. We share in taking care of toddler although DH is doing more since I’m nursing newborn. DH makes dinner nearly every night and vacuums. I do the rest (not much!). We have a nanny for kids during the week days.

[Anonymous]

I’m a DH, work full time from home and am the primary bread winner. We have 3 kids. I cook virtually every meal, do grocery shopping, most of the laundry (even my DW’s) and drive the older kids to school. DW focuses on the youngest which requires significantly more attention.

[Anonymous]

We both WOTH (ore covid) and dh did a solid 40-50%. He would do daycare pickup early (4) to not keep dd there too late. Makes dinner several times a week, does dishes the days he doesnt make dinner. Usually breakfast on weekends. He also does everyones laundry most of the time. He took a month off paternity leave when i went back to work with both kids and really bonded with them as babies. He does work weekends sometimes so i do everything then and he has traveled more. We are both happy with how we share the household and kids.
Hes a morning person so usually gets the baby up and gets her ready and then makes breakfast while i get the oldest up and sort everyone out now that hes working from home during the pandemic. Its nice.

[Anonymous]

I’m a single dad with full custody of two children. I have a weekly house cleaner and a mixture of childcare but I’m pretty much managing on my own. It’s pretty much non stop but it beats the old days.

[Anonymous]

DH and I both work full time and make the exact same salary.

He does most of the chores. He does the dishes, the laundry, cuts the grass, and vacuums every day. He thrives on routine. We have cooking split. He does not fold laundry, I do that. I do any sort of “deep” cleaning as well as the windows, I cook a lot of things in bulk that we store and I also bake bread and goodies regularly. I do any landscaping that isn’t cutting the grass like weeding and taking care of my flower beds. It’s sort of like neither of us will do the chores we utterly hate and whenever we see a gap we fill it. I also plan everything and do all our bills, tax prep, allocate retirement, etc. I have a lot of little DIY projects around the house like changing fixtures or repairing some random broken thing. Sometimes he fixes or paints something. Its a fair system.

[Anonymous]

We have a toddler and I'm 30 weeks pregnant. I WFH 25 hours per week (always, not just because of covid). I grocery shop, all cooking, do my own/kid/common laundry, and all day to day cleaning. I also take on the "mental load" of parenting- keeping wardrobes seasonal and current size, doc appts, preschool stuff, arranging childcare, potty training, etc. DH handles everything pertaining to the dog, his own laundry, all dinner dishes, 1x a week deep cleaning floors, all kid baths, taking out the garbage, and fixing things (he's super handy). He also let's me sleep in every Sat/Sunday til 8:30am ish as he enjoys those 2 special morning hours with our daughter. I think we're even.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The other thread got me thinking - how much do your husbands with FT job do? How involved are they with little kids and household chores? My husband is a huge even though we only have one child and I’m at home. People calling OP lazy while her husband gets a pass is a little much. How much does your husband help? Would you be fine with doing everything pertaining to childcare and housework if your husband worked FT?

DH is the main parent. That was our deal, because I didn't want kids. We both work full time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the ratio is different if you’re a sahm versus working. SAHMs should have the house cleaning, errands and cooking in my opinion. But at night I think both should share with baths and reading.

Why?

DH does as much as he can given his schedule. I have worked anywhere from 5-65 hours/wk, and what he does around the house doesn’t really change. He can only do what he can do.

[Anonymous]

We both work full time, we each do half the childcare and half the chores.