Marriage and the Power of Divorce

Crone said:

Well if I'm being honest with myself, I feel there are benefits of daycare as well, but it would take nearly all of her salary, maybe all of it, to put them into daycare. We have a 3 year old and nearly 2 year old, and a 3rd on the way come February, so daycare costs are just going up.

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Yeah, but you can't just look at her earning potential, you more have to do a mix of your own earnings+hours worked. If you could earn what you earn in 20 hours a week (Just as an example), she'll have a point about splitting the chores, if you work 80+hours a week, she probably doesn't. I don't like to get too hung up on the actual money, it's a consideration (especially if she can't cover daycare) but a secondary one, because the thing to remember is stay at home moms give up human capital building, so they are going to earn less--so this really depends on where in life you met, what she gave up to have the kids ect, focusing purely on money often misses this (Which she'd rightfully resent you for) so it does get complex depending on the dtails. My wife, for example would probably earn a lot less now than if she had worked since we got married--if this were to come up with her, I'd have to consider that when I looked at what I expected in her split of the relationship.

But, as said, if you're working 80+ hours a week, then you should be expecting at least that much from her, and she should be able to cover daycare, at least. Ask her if she's willing to find work to match you in hours and it eclipses or equals daycare, then it's reasonable she works if she doesn't want to split the house chores. (Because working will also allow her to build her resume/experience and earn more later, too. So it's not just a straightforward thing, working is an investment, too)

So to start, I'd put it to her like that. I work X amount of hours a week, I'll begin splitting the house work, we'll get daycare after the new baby is old enough, and you need to work X hours as well, because I feel like I'm investing a lot more in this relationship and I don't want to be bitter about it. If that's not an option, then she needs to do more.

Crone said:

Yeah, if you'll let me, I'll play devil's advocate.

But Lithose, my job is watching and playing with the kids, and raising them to the best of my ability, not cleaning the house. The house is both our responsibilities!

(This is where my wife's point of view is coming from. Her job is the kids, and everything else is "extra".)

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I would disagree. House is the at home parents job and work is the "working" parents job. Kids are for both parents. Why would you have one parent miss out on the kids life? Work is bullshit and sucks..but needs to be done. Housework is bullshit and sucks...but needs to be done. Kids are the good part.

There is a big difference between sitting home and doing nothing after work vs coming home as the working parent. Lend a hand with something that didn't get finished, play with babies, talk to your spouse who hasn't talked to adults all day.

In some ways at home parents are constanly working, in other ways, they never have to go to work.

Lithouse, I agree. If one person never has to go to a job again in their life, they should seriously be pulling their weight at home.

Zoe said:

I would disagree. House is the at home parents job and work is the "working" parents job. Kids are for both parents. Why would you have one parent miss out on the kids life? Work is bullshit and sucks..but needs to be done. Housework is bullshit and sucks...but needs to be done. Kids are the good part.
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Yep, this is why if she has dishes/dinner clean up or late laundry ect? I'm usually off with the kids for an hour. She does take care of them during the day, but we split it at night and she does all the house work. So in a way we split the kids 70/30 (Supervision) and she does 100% of the house work (Well, except the lawn, but I don't mind that), and I do 100% of the finance. I'd call bullshit on her watching just the kids as her "job", the kids are one thing where both parents should be involved anyway, it's a job ut it's also the only thing that isn't a job. And honestly? It's one of those things you usually can't control anyway, so you're going to be putting in time.

Crone said:

Well if I'm being honest with myself, I feel there are benefits of daycare as well, but it would take nearly all of her salary, maybe all of it, to put them into daycare. We have a 3 year old and nearly 2 year old, and a 3rd on the way come February, so daycare costs are just going up.

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Daycare is obviously not an option. Not trying to sound harsh but you need to have a serious talk about her stepping up her game. If 2 kids is hard and the house is a mess, imagine 3. Encourage her! She can do it!

Yeah, while Daycare would probably aleviate some of her stress and give her the adult interaction she craves (assuming she gets a job and goes to work), it really doesn't make sense.

I'm starting off slow. I'm going to try really hard to keep up on the dishes as that's my chore, and that's fine. The conversation that we had recently I think I mentioned basically ended with agree to disagree... seems how most of our fights go. It just ends in apathy (maybe that's the wrong word), as we both don't want to fight anymore, but nothing gets resolved. Agree to disagree isn't really the right term, but we both thought the other didn't do enough, for the house, but didn't talk about how we were going to fix it.

In hindsight, maybe I didn't bring it up because I know how touchy a subject it is and I didn't want to have that fight, in that moment. It would have lit her up if I tried to bring up who's doing more, and who has the more responsibility (my job vs her taking care of the kids). Just not worth the fight, but maybe some day it will be.

So we'll see how it goes with me being more on top of the dishes, if I'll see returns in other areas because she see's me keeping up with my stuff.

Noodleface said:

Crone I can almost relate.

My wife is terrible at keeping the house up. I would take a picture of my office again but I fear Picasso will zoom in again and crop a family photo to use a pic of me and my wife as his avatar. The little man right now is basically a tsunami when he goes room to room, he leaves a path of destruction. When he goes to bed she couldn't care less that there's a path of toys throughout the whole house. It's nothing big, it takes less than 2 minutes to pick them all up and put them in his bins, but she can be just fine to walk through it all night.

She's never done dishes, which normally I wouldn't care too much about except she gets bent out of shape if I skip a day. Also she's one of those fucking shitlords that uses 90 different bowls, utensils, and ingredients to make something like scrambled eggs. I probably use 1 plate all day.. but I digress I guess, I do the dishes.

She's gotten a little better at laundry but she's still pretty fucking terrible at it. I never have a day where I am without clean clothes, but a lot of times I have to travel down to the basement to find the stack of folded laundry (major stacks) left down there. Sometimes she'll get on a roll and fold everything on top of our bed to do one mass clothes putting-away-session and do all the folding then just leave it because who the fuck knows.

She's also an awful cook and that wouldn't matter anyways because she can never make up her mind what to eat. The other day she didn't eat lunch until 4:30 because she couldn't figure out what she wanted..

The cleaning stuff has been an issue here for awhile. I've taken care of the little man for full days before and it is not as bad as she makes it..

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We are married to the same woman.

What if your wife says the au pair has to be ugly

Cad said:

Just be like, "she looked ugly in the pics, don't know what happened"

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That's why you make the big bucks.

How does anyone even eat a boiled hot dog?

I used to microwave them as a kid.

Hoss said:

I'm about 115% positive that no one can have raw hot dogs.

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By raw I meant uncooked by you. Safe to eat normally

Noodleface said:

By raw I meant uncooked by you. Safe to eat normally

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As a child, I always ate cold hot dogs. Ain't no one got time to microwave.

Pan frying is better than microwave.

Microwaving always turns them into shriveled up raisin wieners for me ugh. Boil that shit or fry it if there is no grill around.