Reply to SAHM’s - anyone successfully convince DH to support their staying home long term?

Forum Index » Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)

Reply to "SAHM’s - anyone successfully convince DH to support their staying home long term?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I work outside the home, but I think all these people dragging you for not going back to work are ridiculous.

That said, I think you need to sit down and REALLY talk through how life will change if you go back to work. And approach this not just with a list of tasks, but a boilerplate schedule. Like, what does it really mean if you have to leave the house by 8am for a commute? How does the morning schedule work? What are each of you doing? What does it look like from 5pm-9pm each night at your house — what has to be done and who is doing it? Who will take off work every time a kid is sick? Assuming he isn’t a jerk, he probably does believe he will pick up the slack — but the reality of how his life changes is likely very foreign to him.

But, you also have to be prepared for him to say that some of what you do could be cut out entirely. He likely won’t be wrong about some of this. I mean who really cares if the girls scout patches are sewn on on time? Why can’t the kids just eat school lunch every day? And who cares if other parents go on the field trips? You need to be prepared for him to negotiate that some of this just doesn’t matter.

My husband and I have a parallel debate on this topic. We outsource everything due to demanding jobs. I basically pay someone for 36 hours a week to be my stay at home wife while I work. This made imminent sense when our kids were young a d then had serious medical issues. I think we should now cut this role and do more ourselves and put that money towards early retirement. My husband is basically like “heck no” — we don’t want to do all this stuff ourselves. And when I really thing about what our schedule would look like without this person and we talk through it — I realize he is right. Sure, we could do all that stuff.
But we would be much more stressed and life would be less fun.[/quote]

[b]Question for you, how did you outsource (or not) the stuff that's hard to outsource? [/b]I am thinking of: going to school meetings, doctor appointments. Planning/deciding on out of school activities, making arrangements for vacations and visits to family. Organizing stuff in your home, when no one but you knows how it works best for how you live. Going thru kids clothes/toys to discard/give away, and shopping for the new clothes they need and the toys you know they want for holidays. Planning and prepping for upcoming visits of family or friends to your home.

I was outsourcing housecleaning, gardening, child care (daycare), grocery delivery, all the stuff that makes sense, but I want to attend school meetings and dr appts myself. And do schoolwork and see sports. I don't feel like anyone could possibly know my life well enough to arrange my leisure or entertaining ( tho I'm sure celebrities/super rich people make this happen with $$$)

Anyway, I am not trying to challenge you, I think your post is interesting and valuable, but what did you do about these types of things, did you share the mental load?[/quote]

I’m also curious how you found this person! How did you structure childcare and household management?

Did your child go to daycare and you hired this extra person to deal with doctors appointments? What was their title? Or did it start with a nanny whose role expanded? Please share! 
[/quote]

We started with a nanny years ago. I ended up with one kid with special needs and then one with cancer (I hope people don’t think I’m a troll now!!). This changed our lives in ways you cannot imagine. We basically had both a nanny and then evening and weekend help for years. Special needs kid is a baby forever essentially. My nanny during chemo was amazing. She did all the blood draw appointments while my husband and I split up the chemo days for almost a year and a half.

As my younger kid moved out of almost three years of cancer treatment, we still needed help. Now that younger kid is a lot older, and I have backed off a little on the evening/weekend help — but we will have some help several evenings and part of the weekend.

It is my daily person that comes mostly during the school day where my husband and I debate whether we should cut this out. The reality is that I pay for 36 hours, but I really only have 25 hours of work a week for her probably. She is basically a nanny/household manager. She gets kids to school and then does all the day to say stuff to run our household. But, I bear the mental load of managing all she does.

[/quote]

How much does all that help cost? Thank you for sharing [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics