SAHM and Spouse WFH

[toolenduso]

I am a SAHM. My husband WFH. Our son is six months old. There are MANY benefits to this setup, and I wouldn’t change it at all! I love that we both get to be so present in our child’s life and each other’s, and I love that we support one another.

Nonetheless I wanted to see how other people are navigating the more nuanced bits.

How do you handle parenting duties, housekeeping, and time for individual recreation when one parent is a SAHM and the working parent WFH? Any tips?

Like, there’s no clear division of it’s 5:30 PM, and I’ve been with the kids all day and you’ve worked all day and now we will divide and conquer… because the working spouse has time to pop downstairs during breaks and spend time with the baby, help with child care, etc.

In our circumstance, my spouse works 70+ hours a week usually, and I’d say 1/3 of that time is spent in meetings.

Also… Do you count working out as recreation or is it more of an essential function, like a step down from eating/bathing/etc. but still in that category? I.e., working out doesn’t count as recreation anymore than having a shower or a meal.

 

[regularguy]

@toolenduso My husband wfh for the first year. In a very small apartment. However, he worked a very standard 9-5, took a 45 min lunch, only had a couple meetings each week. We had a door open/closed system. If his door was open, baby or I could crawl in and say hi or ask him to hold the baby while I switched the laundry, he’d help me carry in the groceries, that sort of thing. If the door was closed, we left him be and I didn’t expect him to come out unless there was a true emergency.

Basically I was on the clock 9-5 for parenting and housekeeping. Whatever I could get done during the day, I could do. Everything else we split up on the weekend so one person could watch the baby and the other person could do the chore. We do have set things that we both do every day (like he unloads the dishwasher every morning, I clean up the kitchen as the day goes on.) He always hung out with the baby while I made dinner listening to a podcast.

I worked out at home during naps. He went to the gym 3-4 times a week. He wakes up early before either of us are awake and is back in time to make us breakfast. That was a big change for him because he used to exercise after work pre-baby. We made that decision when I was pregnant that his exercise is extremely important to him and his mental health but that it can’t get in the way of the family schedule.

 

[lorimidwife]

@regularguy Could’ve written most of this. This is our setup too.