Care & Feeding: I'm a Stay At Home Mom. My Husband Wants That To Be Literal

[minoanmiss]

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.