'AITA for sometimes 'sitting down' when I do chores?'' UPDATED & SECOND POST
"AITA for sometimes 'sitting down' when I do chores?"
My husband and I both work. I make almost 4x what he does, so I’m by far the breadwinner. I grew up in a third world country with cheap labor, so my mom hired and managed the help, and ran the house.
Naturally, I’m not very good with home chores I didn’t grow up doing - like cooking and cleaning - so I hired (pay and manage) a nanny to care for the kids while I’m at work and make us dinner on weekdays, a cleaning lady to clean the whole house and do laundry every two weeks, and DoorDash on weekends, out of my own salary.
We consider all money “ours”; I’m just pointing out that I work extra to cover all those things, since I don’t do them myself. Of note, his mom never outsourced anything and did all those things herself; so there’s definitely a cultural element. My husband does more of the physical labor around the house - random gardening, fixing things, taking out the garbage, etc.
He does organize things when they get messy, which I’m much more relaxed about because we have 2 under 2, so things get messy again as soon as you tidy up. I do all the invisible load stuff - make and ensure we keep appointments, buy/stock everything everyone needs (including groceries every week), plan schedules and classes and trips, etc.
I basically keep the house running, like my mom did when I was growing up. Like I said, we have two young kids. I take care of them when I get home from work while the nanny cooks.
Husband and I each do one bedtime. On weekends, we each do one wake-up. So we try to split it pretty evenly. Once the kids go to bed, we both have a couple of hours to unwind.
I work at the hospital. Husband works from home and has a ton of downtime during the work day (hours when he works out, does whatever he wants, and does things around the house).
Is what I’m doing my fair share for the family? Husband sometimes thinks I should do more, because what I do “can easily be done sitting on the couch”. He basically hates it when I sit down, use my phone, or have the TV on (even if I’m holding/feeding the baby, watching our toddler, making calls or setting up appointments, writing schedules, ordering groceries, etc).
He wants me up and at it, visibly doing stuff around the house. He does not wish me to hire more help. He wants ME to do it. In my opinion, that fact that the things I do can be done while sitting down does not make them any less crucial.
Not to mention, he’s not very good at doing them himself. For example, we’ve been seeing a marriage counselor for our issues - that I naturally scheduled and paid for. I told him that since he thinks making appts is so easy, he could handle booking the counselor. Once it became his job, it NEVER got done and he straight up said to me “Never mind, we don’t need a counselor. Our marriage is fine”.
What do you think? I believe we both do things for the house and family that play to each of our individual strengths and what we grew up learning to do. Is our arrangement fair or should I step up and do more in my limited time?
Here's what people had to say to OP:
SchoolForSedition
You sometimes sit down? Outrageous!
Crafty-Comfortable54 OP responded:
Apparently, “most of what I do” can be done sitting down because there’s a lot of phone calls, texts, online stuff, etc. He seems to want me to get up and do things - in addition to what I already do, both for work and at home. Whereas I think we both do things that play to our strengths and that it’s a fair arrangement.
CopperDickedOwl
You could just let him handle all the things that he thinks that you are doing wrong. Lay back and let him prove his point, I give him a week until he wants back to the original set up. You are doing nothing wrong.
GlobeUnited
Your arrangement seems very fair. He needs stop thinking about what you "should" be doing, and instead, just appreciate what you are doing. He's got a good thing going, he should enjoy it.
Raisins_Rock
NTA. Paying for help is perfectly valid way to handle this. That said, I grew up in a similar culture. In that culture, hiring help was considered a societal responsibility. If you have the money you should create jobs for those less fortunate.
I think the idea that you need to be seen doing physical labor is beyond rediculous. I'm sure you could learn to do all these things but it is a waste of your time. Your time and energy is better spent at work and youd still have to do all that invisible stuff even if you were sweeping and scrubbing. Why does he want a burnt out exhausted spouse? It's just stupid.
Later OP came back with these edits:
1. I am not incapable of doing house chores and I do contribute to them getting done myself: I tidy up the living spaces, I do dishes if I see them sitting in the sink, I wash and sterilize the baby bottles, I set and/or clear the table, and whatever else on the day-to-day. When the nanny is on vacation, I do ALL OF IT myself.
I simply never learned to cook dinner or clean a big house. I’m sure I can read a recipe and put ingredients in a pot. I can iron a shirt and do laundry. I can learn to clean a house. It’s not “weaponized incompetence”.
It’s just not my forte or something I wish to use my time on if I can spend it with my kids (which is worth way more to me) or simply resting and recharging after working a very demanding job as a doctor.
2. I did not grow up rich most of my life; my husband did. I was a good middle class until finances changed and I was actually poor for a good 20 years. I went to medical school on a full scholarship and did it with no books of my own (either borrowed or downloaded for free), no computer, no internet, etc.
We still had help at home because we took on a lady that would work for us in return for housing/food/other necessities (we love her and consider her part of our family). I worked my ass off to come this far and be able to provide for my family. So spare me with the “you’re insufferable and rich”. That’s why the disclaimer is there
3. My husband works from home on a desk, so he sits down for that. But on his free time, he’s always going around doing things around the house, on his feet. We DO outsource gardening and have a handyman.
We don’t just pay for the things I don’t want to do. But he still finds things to do/fix/clean around the house. According to him, there’s always things to do and that’s what he wants me to help with.
4. I ONLY mentioned that I make more money to point out that 1. I’m carrying my weight financially and 2. I’m specifically paying for those chores I don’t want to take on myself, instead of dumping the responsibility on my husband to work more to pay for it.
If I DID NOT clarify that I’m making that money, you would come after me for being a gold digger and making my husband pay staff so I don’t do anything. Again, it happened on another post.
5. My husband was in a different field that could easily make him almost as much as I do. He decided he was unhappy and wanted to start over doing something different. I fully supported him. He went back to school (with a crazy tuition, as it was Ivy League) and took on this entry level position.
So he chose to make less money to follow his dream. I have no problem with this at all, I don’t want him to be unhappy just to make money. But I believe it is a privilege that he can afford to follow that dream and let me carry the financial burden (my job is already my dream, so I’m happy).
OP also mad this post a month earlier about her husband, which provides more color about their marriage, "AITA? Asking particularly for MEN’s opinions, as per the husband’s request.":
I had a baby 8 weeks ago. My toddler is only 1.5yo, so 2 under 2. I took 3 months unpaid maternity leave (had to save up during the pregnancy to afford it). My husband didn’t get any leave and had to keep working. He works from home.
During these 8 weeks, my husband has gone out to a couple of dinners, a late meeting (neighborhood committee), a wedding (that I had to tag along to, unwillingly, at only 6 weeks after a c section, to make him happy), late drinks following one of the dinners (he came home at 430am last week).
And he is scheduled to go on a bachelor trip later on (that was supposed to be a weekend in New Orleans and is now a 4 day international trip to Jamaica).
He also told me about having three couples over to our house, which then turned - without my previous knowledge - into a FORTY TWO person get together (yes, you read that number right) and he’s telling me he can’t end that event at 7 so we can put the kids to bed because “he can’t ask people to leave”.
So he has not been deprived socially in any way. Now he’s saying he wants to go to a double birthday party in NYC this Friday, which will naturally mean a late night.
I’m arguing that, as a father of two very young kids in the trenches of postpartum, he should be sitting out of some of these events to stay home and help me at night. Our nanny is off the clock at 7pm, 5pm on Fridays. So it’s at night that I need him the most.
He argues that 1. He’s home all day instead of going out to the office and having drinks after and 2. He’s able to wake up early after a late night to help with the kids. However, 1. It’s not my fault his job is from home and I tell him he wouldn’t get to be out for drinks every night if he has a baby at home that needs him.
And 2. While he does wake up at 7am after a late night, he then proceeds to be in a sour mood about how exhausted he is and I end up picking up all the slack for the next couple of nights to help him recover. So it all falls back on me anyway.
Of note, while I am on maternity leave now, I’m with the kids all day along with the nanny, so I’m not sitting around doing nothing. I also have a mental illness that requires me to prioritize my sleep, particularly in the postpartum period, which I have been completely putting aside in order to favor my husband getting good sleep because he’s working.
Also he gets reasonable chunks of “break time” throughout the day, so he is not working nonstop by any means.
Am I being unreasonable? Isn’t it fair that, as a father, he gives up some of these social events while his baby is a newborn? Should I just suck it up and let him be out and about for as many late nights as he wants?
EDITED TO ADD:
1. I am the breadwinner. I make more than triple what my husband makes, so I am not a gold digger
2. Because I work, I hired a nanny. I simply didn’t want to fire her just for three months of leave and lose her, so I saved up during pregnancy to be able to keep her. Working people need childcare. Simple as that.
3. My husband isn’t a terrible person or I wouldn’t have married him. When he’s home, he’s absolutely a dad to his kids. Specially on weekends when he’s off work. It’s this ONE issue about the crazy amount of social events during this period that I’m having a problem with
4. We did get tons of women’s opinions in a FB group, so then my husband asked if we could also get men’s
5. I didn’t know this would be a problem before kids or even after the first kid, because this all began after my husband went back to school for his masters and met all these friends that he now believes it’s crucial he network with. They’re not coworkers.
6. We are not relying on the internet to fix our marriage. We have recently started marriage counseling. We were simply curious what everyone else - unbiased third parties - thought because we both believe we are right.
UPDATE: he agrees he’s in the wrong and says he feels terrible that he’s been so inconsiderate. He says he knew it after the women commented but just wanted to hear what men had to say too. He says he will cool it with the events.
And continue to work on this in therapy. He should’ve seen my point just because I made it, but we’re both super opinionated, so I guess he was being either stubborn or simply delusional.
UPDATE 2: I decided I’ll be taking a one week trip abroad with my BFF when baby is 6 months (I don’t want to do it any sooner) and husband will manage kids on his own