Reply to husband as "junior partner" in childrearing

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I get that in many families the husband has the more demanding job, but I don't buy that this doesn't leave him with time to be more involved in logistics/planning for the kids. If he's at the office 10 hours a day, is he really spending all six hundred of those minutes working? Obviously not; that's not humanly possible. So one day, instead of spending his 15-minute breaks chatting with colleagues or watching sports highlights on YouTube, he could research summer camps or set up a play date. Sending a text to suggest a playdate takes thirty seconds. No one is too busy to do that.

In general I'm skeptical of "I don't have time" as an excuse. People have time for the things they really care about.[/quote]

You are right to be skeptical.

Even when I was the higher earner with the tougher job, I still did 80% of the parenting stuff. Pretty much all the planning/preparing. There was always an excuse why DH couldn't do it. Often he'd claim my job was more flexible because I had WFH options (this was pre-Covid when that was more rare, and his office was 100% in office with zero WFH at the time). But the reason I had that kind of flexibility is because I worked in a private-sector job where I routinely worked 50+ hours a week, put in hours in the evening and on weekends, and was expected to answer emails 24/7 even on vacation. So, yes, I had the "flexibility" to come into the office at 9:30 due to a pediatrician appointment, but only because I got up at 5am to prep for a meeting and respond to overnight emails. So DH would use this as his excuse for why he couldn't take the baby to the doctor since getting into work late required him to take leave (of which he has copious amounts, as he works in a union-protected job where his seniority means he has more leave than he can actually use).

We had battles like this for three years until I finally got fed up and burned out and decided to shift to a part-time role. I didn't take on more of the parenting stuff when I did this -- I do the exact same amount as before, which is the vast majority of it. It just means that I have fewer work responsibilities so there is more time to do everything I was already doing at home. Universal PK and affordable aftercare made it possible, not anything DH did.

Now DH works from home three days a week which means he can actually do some of this stuff, but of course now he says "well since you're part time it makes more sense for you to do it." So I've told him now that he's hybrid, I'm going to go back full time and he absolutely panics at this. I don't know for sure I'm going to do it, but it's interesting to test the waters and see how terrified he is of actually being a full parenting partner, even now that his work is more flexible and accommodating. The truth is that he doesn't want to do it and he is willing to do whatever it takes (including neglecting our kid) to make sure he doesn't have to.[/quote]

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