minoanmiss (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
minoanmiss) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
agonyaunt2024-11-01 10:56 am
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2024-11-01 10:56 am
Entry tags:
Care & Feeding: I'm a Stay At Home Mom. My Husband Wants That To Be Literal
He keeps making snide comments.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My husband and I had twins eight months ago, and because daycare is so expensive and scant in our area, we mutually decided that I would quit my job and switch to freelance remote work on evenings and weekends. I feel lucky that we had this option and would do it again, but being a stay-at-home mom has taken a steep toll on my mental health. I love my babies, but being the primary caretaker and working freelance on top of that has been extremely isolating.
I’ve been trying to take steps to improve my mood, and one thing I’ve done is make an effort to make more friends who have kids or else who don’t mind if my babies tag along when we get together. I get coffee, go to the park, have playdates, or take walks with friends at least two or three times a week, and it’s been huge for my mental health. Everything I do is during the day when my husband’s at work, so he’s not missing out on time with his daughters. But he hates these outings. He makes snide comments about them, and if something minor goes wrong (like forgetting a bottle at a friend’s house) it’s always because “you have to go out all the time.” I can’t get a straight answer about why this bothers him so much, other than statistics about car accidents and cold and flu season. I worry about those things too, but I don’t feel like our kids will be better off if they’re kept at home all the time. Do you have any suggestions for new ways to approach this conversation?
—Not a Homebody
Dear Not a Homebody,
The “new ways” to approach this conversation are to tell him calmly that 1) if he expects you to stay at home with two 8-month-olds all day every day, he is sorely mistaken, 2) you will lose your mind if you’re not allowed to venture out and see friends, and 3) he doesn’t get to decide or even have an opinion about how you spend your time. The statistics about car accidents and flu season raise some alarm bells for me, though, on whether he might have untreated anxiety that has resulted in his conviction that leaving the house will result in illness, accidents, or death. Some new parenting anxiety is inevitable, but if he insists that the right way to take good care of babies is to keep them indoors and isolate them, avoiding contact with anyone and anything, then you might encourage him to seek out professional mental health help.
Meanwhile: Good for you, finding ways to balance stay-at-home parenting, paid work whenever you’re not taking care of two kids, and tending to your own needs. This isn’t easy! And if he thinks he would be healthy and happy staying at home and never seeing anyone but his two children for months (and eventually years?) on end, I would tell him he’s bluffing. He has no idea.
Or maybe he doesn’t think this. Maybe he assumes that it’s fine for you because you’re the mother—that no one would expect this of him. In which case you have unearthed—or your twins’ births have unearthed—the ugly misogynistic heart that had disguised itself as a mutual decision about your staying home with them while he left home every day for work.
I can only hope for your sake—and for your daughters’ sakes—that this is a temporary aberration, that he’s struggling with something that has nothing to do with you, and that he soon figures out a way to resolve this or ask for help. Because if this is a matter of his showing his true colors—and he really believes he is the boss of you, and that he is within his rights to make snide remarks and do what he can to undermine, belittle, and try to shame you (not to mention dismissing what you need)—then this marriage will not, and should not, be long for the world.
no subject
Dear LW:
Watch the backyard carefully. If your husband starts carving a large pumpkin into a little room, RUN.
Seriously, WTF, does he expect her to stay cloistered with the babies? I really freaking hope this is anxiety and he remembers his wife is a human being.
no subject
1. Who's taking care of the kids when LW is working?
2. If it's Dad, does Dad have time to go spend time with friends, have playdates, walk in the park?
Because obviously you should be able to leave the house or see other adults while you're watching the kids, it's good for both you and the kids, and if this is anxiety over the babies, or wanting to control you, you need to deal with that asap. But a lot of times this has an undertone of "Why do you get to go out and have fun with friends and babies while I have to work all the time?"
And if Husband is on baby duty for evenings and weekends while you work, and either can't go out - it's definitely harder to go out with very young children on the evening shift than the day shift, and it can be harder for men to find other carer parents to spend time with too - or isn't willing to go out with the kids - or you're anxious about him taking them out without you - it might be a fair complaint, and worth figuring out a way to both get your childcare needs taken care of equitably and make sure he gets a reasonable amount of outside-the-house leisure time. That might involve finding out-of-the-house baby-friendly things for him in the early evening or weekends, or working together on getting him comfortable doing it, or it might involve juggling everyone's work hours a little bit, or finding money for a little bit of paid childcare time every week (for each of you!) while they're this young. But frankly it might be better for you, too, to find a way to kick them out of the house while you're working.
That said if Dad is pulling this and isn't on solo baby duty thirty or forty hours a week, he can go stick his head in a bin.
no subject
On the one hand if LW deliberately elided such a situation I lose most sympathy for her.
On the other hand, I am a little uncomfortable with thinking it's likely she did, considering the cultural ideas about women being mendacious.
on the third paw, we are a social species. It's not like it's not good for the babies to interact with other people as well.
On the fourth tentacle...
no subject
I don't think he's said outright that not getting his own time with friends is the problem or that she's actively hiding that. But if he is on evening baby duty, possibly neither of them have gotten past their stress and irritation enough to *realize* it's a problem. If it is.
no subject
"there is a legitimate concern, but it's not the one LW's husband is raising -
if the 8 month old baby is too young to have been vaccinated,
and LW is socialising with friends who have unvaccinated kids who are in daycare/kindergarten/school and/or is in an area with less than 85% of kids vaccinated
then measles/whooping cough etc is a legit concern"
but that would be covered by only socialising with parents whose kids were all vaccinated
no subject
I also wonder whether husband has certain expectations re housekeeping that he thinks LW is shirking because she takes the babies out often, rather than spending all her spare time cleaning. Except those expectations still likely wouldn't be met if she did stay at home, because caring for 2 babies on her own would take up most of her time anyway.
LW needs to gently coax the real answer out of husband before they can tackle his issue--maybe with help of a counsellor.
no subject
Interesting that they mention colds and flu but not Covid. I guess eight months is old enough that they would have had one shot, but still. (Babies by US recommendations should be immunized for flu at six months as well.) I tend to worry about RSV (a friend's toddler was hospitalized with it - I think it may have been partly because they got RSV shortly after recovering from a mild case of Covid), but I think in most cases healthy babies don't get it badly.
no subject