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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Its very different being a SAHM in the summer vs. school year.  During the school year with older kids she gets a break, during the summer its 24/7.  Its very hard when your spouse doesn't travel to all of the sudden travel for weeks at a time.  I would offer to ramp down to part-time if you are against it.  Personally, I think you should support her and find a higher paying job.  That's what my husband did but he wanted me to SAH.[/quote]
Why? He's already doing most of the parenting and his wife has made it clear that she will expect him to continue to do that even if she no longer works. He doesn't need to kill himself doing everything so that his wife can stay at home while the kids are in school.[/quote]

[b]OP here. This is the rub, honestly. If she stops working or even goes part-time, I don't think the mental load is going away for me. Last summer, I was the one who researched camps, did sign ups in January (since the camps the kids wanted fill up quickly). I basically set the summer up to run on auto-pilot and I still had 10 plus calls or texts a day asking me to handle things. And other things just were ignored or not handled like dry cleaning. Since she didn't work, it never occurred to her to run the dry cleaning for me since I'm still working and had an extremely tight schedule. I'd ask, but like people say, it's the stuff you don't see that needs reminding that's exhausting. [/b]

Anyways, for the dry cleaning, I ended up just making sure it was handled during the weekend last summer. I did this for both of us (still do) now.

It's just an example, but it's the sort of thing that fell through the cracks.[/quote]

This in a nutshell is the "mental load" or "default parent" that causes me to have huge resentment towards my husband.  You, OP, are the rarity.  Although there are husbands out there who do more than their fair share, it's much more common to find this defaulting to the mom.

I think your wife is being terribly unfair, just like I would say to most moms who complain about what you've posted.

Both my spouse and I work. I make more than him by a considerable amount, I handle the lion's share of logistics even when he's handling stuff (e.g, pick up (I still have to lay everything out and remind him to make sure our youngest has a rain coat, etc.).  He's a good dad and does more than a lot of working husbands; however, he would never notice things like you mentioned about your wife not picking up dry cleaning.  It's exhausting and never ending.

I don't have any answers for you, OP.  Just my commiseration.[/quote]

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