Here is the story. i have beeen a SAHD for the past 7 years. We have 7 year old triplets and a 10 year old son with special needs. I left my job to be home with the kids when the triplets were born. As it made the most sense financially, personality wise and logistically (I was a field sales rep for a fortune 50 company and travel is not an option). Since staying home my wifes job has taken off. My problem is this my wife has little respect for what I have done and what I do. She leaves for work at 8:00 every morning. comes home at 7:00 at night. When she gets home at 7 she eats dinner checks her e-mails and is in bed herself by 9:00. Some nights she helps straighten the kitchen after dinner or helps get the kids ready for bed but most nights she does not. Her family looks at me as a freeloader who does nothing and I am begining to wonder if she is not thinking the same. Today she anounced that she will be able to retire in five years provided that I go back to work. I don't have a problem in general with this idea accept I wonder what the hell she thinks I have been doing the past 7 years. I do the majority of the house work, cart 4 kids to activities all week. Am responsible for the household finances, home repairs, field trips. I am 46 years old I quit a very good sales job to take care of three infants and a three year old. In five years when she retires I will be a 51 year old man who has not worked in 12 years. She does not understand how difficult it will be to get a job under those circumstances and that if I get a job now to assure that I will be working when she retires that she is going to have to cut back on her career to help with the housework, cart the kids around, stay home with them when they are sick. Go on field trips. My staying home has allowed her to get to the point that she can think about retiring in five years. Now on top of her family looking at me as a dead beat now she does. I can't win. I don't want my kids growing up knowing their parents for two hours a day. Any advice on how I can get her to see what she is doing?
Lost identity
Seven years is a long time. You need to put a stop to being taken for granted.
Seems likely this should start with yourself, and it will take some time. Think about what the world would say if just the genders of the parents were reversed. I think pretty universally the provider and in-laws would be (rightly) seen as pretty awful, out of line, and out of touch.
More than once I've had to lay into my own mother. She held the sexist idea that since I'm male I "should" have a "job". This is a woman who was herself a home maker for at least 12 years. If we had rearranged our lives and cut our budget to live on what I made and my wife stayed home she would have simply thought that was wonderful. You need to name the sexist discrimination you're experiencing. There will be shock and denial, but it's so obvious that should fall away pretty quickly.
You have to respect your self, and then you have to insist that others do the same.
Joined: 2010-05-02
Dad Points: 5