Anyone have a husband that is a Stay At Home Dad?

Hello ladies. I am in need of support of someone that has experience with their husband being the stay at home parent. We just started this arrangement about 1.5 months ago and it is taking its toll on the entire family. I knew it would be an adjustment but I feel as though I am slipping into a depression and don't know what to do to help fix this before it gets worse. I feel like if I tried to explain the background and recent happenings, this post would be pages long... So, I would love to know first if there is anyone out there that can relate and then I can try explaining a bit.

A short summary is that prior to the twins, I worked part time and my husband worked full time. Then after having the twins, I stayed at home with everyone for 4 months. It was hard but I really got into a routine and enjoyed it. My husband lost his job just before I was due to go back to work part time so we made the decision together that it made sense to have me work full time and have him stay at home. My job is more stable and my full time salary is almost double his. My husband is a wonderful dad and is great with the kids but that is where it stops. I do basically everything else and his lack of initiative for anything is about to push me over the edge. I feel like his project manager. And on top of that... I am so sad that I only get to see the babies and my 3 yr old for an hour in the morning and a couple of hours at night. Our weekends are filled with errands and other obligations. Ok... I will stop here and see if anyone else has some experience with this. I need help badly...

 

:hug: I am sorry, that is really hard.

I have just started being a sahm again after working for 8 months.

My husband was laid off last year and I got a ft job a couple months later. (I had been a sahm for 10 years). I worked and he stayed home. The first thing I had to realize was that he may not talk about it but losing your job and as your role as a breadwinner makes you depressed. IT causes a lack of initiative and motivation.
I know it was very hard for me to see things either not getting done or not getting done the way I liked them to be done. What I realized was that I could not come home and nag him about things not done or not done a certain way. I needed to let him figure it out. Let him decide his own methods etc. IT HAS TO BE his. He needs something that he is solely responsible for. Being at home is isolating and depressing even before you lose your job. Just because you loved it doesn't mean he has to love it, especially because he didn't choose this role. It was forced upon him due to life circumstances and that sucks.

Giving up that control is really hard. We talked about who had what responsibility and got very specific. It was very hard but I dedicated myself to not picking up the things that were not done if it wasn't my responsibility. I did not complain about how things were done or if things were done. He slowly came around and by the time he got a job 8 months later, our house was running quite smoothly. I can say the switch has really helped us. I am so appreciative of how he feels after working all day and he is now helping more as he understands what it means to be home.

Good luck.

 

My twins are 11 weeks old and when I return to work at the end of June, my husband will be a SAHD. So, I don't have experience yet, but I will and would love to keep in touch. I've often wondered how it will all work...

 

Thank you. That is really good advice and a new perspective.
Just a question... How did you handle letting him only be responsible for his "jobs"? If his job is dinner and I come home and there is no sign of dinner and when I wait only so long before I know dinner will not happen until it is time for babies bath/bedtime and then later my son's bedtime. Do you just wait for awhile and then declare it cereal night? or what? I know I need to improve at biting my tongue but I don't want to take it so far that it start impacting the kids (late bedtimes, missed school events, etc.).
I do think that your advice is what I need to be doing. Right now I am only making it worse.

 

We should definitely stay in touch! Instead of complaining to our husbands, we can complain to each other.

 

Great question. I asked myself what he would do in this situation which would be ask, "what's for dinner?" or "when's dinner?" It was rough the first few weeks. most days we had a chicken breast and nothing else. I think it helped when my 10 y/o would say to him, "Is this all we're having?" LOL!

I had days where I had no socks for work. Imagine if that happen to him! I would just tell him, "I don't have any socks for tomorrow. Have you finished the white load of laundry yet?" I asked as if it was my expectation for him to do his job, and for him to know I was not going to do it for him.

ETA:I also wanted to say it is VERY hard to bite your tongue when there are tufts of dog hair rolling across the floor! :bad: It took a great deal of discipline on my part to not say anything but I do feel it was a great experience for both of us. We really learned a lot about each other's perspective. It's not something you can learn from switching for a week or two. It is hard but worth it in the long run.

 

It's a deal! I'm going to PM you later with some thoughts on how I want to organize things upon my return to work and you can tell me if I'm crazy!

 

OK... I am inspired. We need to have another sit down about jobs, etc. We did this initially but now that we have been doing it for a little while, we know better what works/doesn't work. After we have this talk, I am going to try with everything in me to keep my mouth shut and also keep myself from bailing him out.

If you don't mind, can you tell me how you split household jobs? Mainly, what tasks did you keep? For example, I feel like grocery shopping is a total nightmare going with 3 kids (2 of them babies). Did you keep this job? Or was this a weekend job for him? You can PM me if that is easier because maybe not everyone cares! TeamTurner and I will be keeping in touch so I'll share with her!

Thank you again. I feel like I may not cry for the first time in several days.

 

Feel free to pm me anytime!

Our job split was basically I wrote down everything I did when I stayed home and gave it to him.
I made it detailed even to say I vacuum every other day, mop every other day, errands run, mowing the lawn, monitor homework getting done, soccer practices, laundry, making sure soccer uniform was clean for game days, etc. food shopping, etc all became his. he didn't do it the way I did but it gave him some groundwork to go from. I had been running the house for 10 years and worked my way up to where I was. I felt I couldn't expect him to just jump in from nothing and do it the same. The same as when you leave a regular j ob you pass on the things you were doing and it is the new person's job to figure out how they want to do the responsibilities.

Yes, it sucks going to the store with all 4 of our kids but I did it, why shouldn't he? Before he stayed home, he NEVER went to costco with kids. he would only go alone on the rare weekend. I always went with at least 2 kids if not 4.

The ONLY thing I kept was paying bills. The reason I kept this was that was the one place I was not willing to "let go." In the first month he didn't pay any of our bills and we got a bunch of unpaid notices, we had an outrageous interest payment on our credit card etc all because he didn't make the payment. I didn't want to mess with that.

I did things he used to do which was cleaning up dishes after dinner, stopping to get things on the way home from work, staying home with the 3 youngest and doing bed time routine while he took our oldest to soccer & track practices, taking ds to cubscouts, trying to finish up anything he asked me to do that he didn't get finished that day before he had to take dd to her practices, etc.

We really continued to stay in these roles on weekends too. We did not flip back to our old roles. I think it was helpful and part of the total experience. I appreciate him more and I believe he appreciates me more.

ETA:Oh, we did learn that he is better at spending less on food than I am. Then again I always felt there was nothing in the house and it drove me batty but it did save us money and no one went hungry.

 

Please do! Would love to exchange plans!

 

My husband stays home with the kids, too. He started when I was pregnant with my first(he is 20 months now and the twins are 9 months - every other week we get his girls (13 and 9)). We have a love/hate relationship with it. It works well for us, but I think that we both feel like ... ummm ... I don't know the word ... aggravated alot of the time. I work 12 hr shifts so he does everything when I am at work - then when I am home he wants a "break" which is fine but when does Mana get a break (that's what Nathan calls me)?! I can't complain much b/c he really does keep EVERYTHING up when I work. But say I need to go in on an off day, he def gets an attitude about it.

I think his is alot of feeling useless which I keep telling him ah no!! Juggling all this is alot of work! But I think it still gets to him that I am the one making all the money.

I agree that nagging him is NOT the way to go - I have learned my lesson. I pretty much do the grocery shopping on the weekends and I make sure I get easy stuff for Nathan so at least he will have dinner. He also doesn't do dishes, bottles, laundry, etc like I do, but I have had to learn that I would rather him be doing them than me when I get in from work. We try to talk and leave communication lines open but I think there will always be ... issues - hahaha

I have thought about getting us both put on some antidepressants honestly!

 

My husband has been a SAHF since I returned to work when our twins were about 8 weeks old and he is doing a wonderful job! It was a little difficult at first to get everything done, but I guess one thing that seemed to help us out is that I put "the household" under his care and try not to infringe on his routine too much. He is very good about getting the basics done, but there are times when things do not get done as I would like (like extra laundry, clutter getting piled up, etc). I make a point of asking him what can I do to help him. This way he takes inventory and ownership over what needs to be done, and does not feel that I am criticizing or judging. In the same way, he has started to ask me what I would like for him to do when he has time to do it (putting up a shade, planting flowers, etc). I give him a lot of praise for the way he handles things, trying to point out the positives, no matter how trivial. I also make use of humor when things do not get done ("I wonder how stylish I'll be in my pajamas tomorrow at work?"). etc.

The other thing that we have been doing recently, now that we are not as overwhelmed, is to make the weekends our fun times. It is easy to get caught up in everything that you feel needs to get done and caught up on the weekend but we have made it a point to try to get all of the errands run, laundry caught up, bills paid, house straightened up, etc during the week so that we can focus on just spending time together as a family on the weekends (we bought a camper so that we can actually get away). This seems to be a powerful motivator for both of us to get things done during the week because we have something to look forward to, other than just more work and chores. Sure, the house will not win a good housekeeping award, but we are all very happy with the arrangement.

 

my DH was laid off recently and we've been discussing his ability to do the SAHD thing. he's doing lots of freelance and contract work so the decision is still pending. the up side is that it's given us some time to work through some of the kinks of expectations around dinner and housework while he's working from home fewer than 40 hours a week.

it's been about 6 weeks at this point and we're only just now getting to a point where things are starting to make sense. and that's WITHOUT the boys being pulled out of daycare yet. it just takes time to figure out how your roles will change.

this is just my opinion but i think you guys need to have a frank discussion about responsibilities. think of running the family as co-managing a business. that might help take some of the heated emotion out of it.

i would also stop making lists of things for him to do. he's got to figure out his own way of doing things. face it, you don't run the house anymore, not on a day to day basis. that's his role and he's got to figure out the way that enables him to do it best. that's been a difficult thing for me because i'm much more methodical than DH and even little things like the frequency with which he cleans the sippies (and the way he cleans them) can chafe at me.

it's a transition and you're only 1 1/2 months in. keep communicating and make your expectations clear. and try to accept that his way isn't necessarily your way, and that doesn't mean it's the wrong way.

 

I am feeling your pain. My husband became a stay at home dad to our twins when i went back to work almost two months ago. It was very hard at first, and has not gotten too much better to be honest. Our twins were 31 weeker's, so we were strongly encouraged not to put them in daycare. On top of that, my husband did not earn as much as it would have cost to have them in daycare or to have a nanny. So, he stayed home when i went back to work. He too is wonderful with the babies, but that is about it. If he gets one load of laundry put in (just washed, not dried) or gets the dishwasher unloaded, it is a good day
He is not good at multitasking, nor is he efficient. I did not expect him to get done as much as i did while i was a SAHM, but I did not realize it would be this bad. On top of this, when i get home from work at 4:30, he is DONE for the day. He will go out walking with the dog, go out in the yard, fishing, drink beer with buddies, etc. Anything to get out of the house and be off baby duty. Same goes for the weekends. While this annoys me, i honestly don't mind it too much, because i want to do as much of the baby care as possible when i am home. I miss them so much, even changing their diapers For weeks, i would come home, get the babies down for a nap, make bottles, make dinner, etc. I got burnt out. So now i often will just eat an energy bar and some already steamed veggies or fruit and let my husband fend for himself. I spend most of the weekend doing housework, but i am thinking that soon i am going to quit doing that and turn a blind eye. I like the idea that someone else wrote about keeping weekends fun. It is hard not looking at the hair balls on the floor though. My mother in law is a queen nag though, so i decided many years ago NOT to nag my husband. I pride myself on this. Another hard factor, even though i have to get up at 6am for work, my husband still thinks that we should take turns getting up for the babies sole night feeding (they are down to one!). This is usually around 3-4am, and then they go right back to sleep until about 8. So, even though he has to get up and feed them, which takes 45 minutes total, he gets to go back to bed and sleep for two more hours than i do. The worst part about all this is my husbands mood. I do think he is mildly depressed. He is so pissy. Every time i try to talk to him about it though, he gets defensive and denies it. Thank God we have a strong marriage, because this is the most stress it has ever been through. We are often bickering at eachother, if not all out fighting. I hate it. This is not how i want to be spending my babies infantcy. We worked so hard to have these two babies. Five years, three losses, 10 weeks of hospitalized bed rest, infertility, etc. I, along with you, just do not know how to make things better. I am trying just to accept that this is the way it is, and i need to find happiness, somehow. I wish i could be the SAHM. I was good at it. I loved it. I miss my babies so much while i am at work. I could go on forever, i already have. Sorry.

 

I am so sorry... I could have almost written your post! Except for the part about your husband being "off duty" on nights and weekends... I am very lucky that my husband still helps out. My husband is very much like yours in that he is not efficient at all and it drives me crazy! TOTALLY CRAZY!! Since i made my original post I have tried to take some of the good advice already given in this post and not critize or make suggestions and it is amazing how much that has helped both of us. We still have a ways to go for sure but at least some of the anger isn't there. I have also not been allowing myself to take over jobs that should be his that he isn't getting done. For example, the laundry situation is in bad shape. It has been 2 weeks since our laundry was done (he does ok at kid laundry) and rather than nagging him or just doing it myself at night... I made a joke by showing him the very unattractive underwear that I would be wearing in a day or 2 if laundry wasn't done. He laughed and then the yesterday he actually started the laundry process. But like you said... so far that just means throwing it in the washer and letting it sit and mildew... But I am going to bite my tongue and see what happens.

I think we are also similar in that we both really want to be the one to stay at home but yet it sounds like that will never be a reality because our salaries payoff so much more. That makes it so much harder on us but I think we just have to get over it and make this arrangement work... because honestly... as hard as it is to work and have a SAHD arrangement, it would be much harder if both parents were working... plus kids wouldn't get to be with a parent! So, I really want to try hard to make this work for everyone. I had no idea how hard this would be going into it though!!

Good luck to you and feel free to PM me anytime to vent.