Let me first say that I love my wife so much and I know that many SAHMs work very hard and I agree that motherhood is one of the most under-appreciated and hardest jobs in the world. That said, my wife's choice to be a SAHM is hurting our marriage. My wife is 36F and I am 37M and we have one child (4M). I always knew that my wife wanted to be a SAHM and we discussed it at length before we even tried conceiving our child. We agreed that I would work outside of the home (as an attorney) to provide financial security for our family and she would stay home with our children. We agreed that her responsibilities would be cooking, house cleaning, laundry, and errands. Two weeks after the positive pregnancy test, my wife put in her 2 weeks notice at her teaching job and stayed home throughout her pregnancy to ensure maximum rest and relaxation so that she could have the healthiest pregnancy possible. Once our son was born, we agreed that she needed to have days off to take time for herself, so we hired a part time college student to babysit for us two days a week so that my wife could have lunch with her friends, go to the spa, and do other things to pamper herself (we set aside $500/week for her to use as she chooses for entertainment and pampering expenses.) But slowly, she added on more and more days with the babysitter until the babysitter started coming 5 days a week. She also increased our housekeepers from one day a week to twice a week (one day for cleaning the house and the other day for doing all of the laundry.) She added a weekly yard service, dog walker, and grocery delivery. As it turned out she didn't enjoy cooking very much and I didn't want to force her to do something she doesn't enjoy doing, we now order takeout almost every night of the week. Eventually paying the babysitter $20/hr for 40 hrs/week became too costly, so we put our son in a Tuesday/Thursday preschool program so that we could decrease the babysitter's hours to only 3 days a week (M/W/F). My wife needs childcare each morning of the week because she works out daily with her personal trainer, but she doesn't necessarily need it in the afternoons (our son's preschool program ends at 2pm.) However the babysitter always stays until 6 or 7 pm until I get home and can help my wife take care of our child. When I come home (and I often work 10-12 hours a day) there is always a sink full to the brim with dirty dishes (that aren't cleaned until the next time the housekeepers come), toys all over the house, and my wife passes our son off to me because she needs a break from the long day she's had. She constantly gets mad that I am not able to put our son to bed most nights because of client meetings that run long. Recently my wife has gotten very angry and says that she never does anything for herself and that I need to provide her with more spending money so that she can increase her massage and acupuncture appointments to at least weekly. We are already paying for preschool, a regular babysitter, my wife's personal trainer, nightly take out, my wife's clothing budget (she gets $200/week for clothes), and new toys (my wife is very good at rotating our son's toys so that he has new toys to play with every month, so I do commend her on that.) I work really hard and come home and try my best to be an active father and husband, but I find that I am lacking compassion when my wife complains that she never does anything for herself. Our original plan was that she would stay home with our son and also take care of the housework and errands, but now the reality is that my son is cared for by other people full time and all of the household chores have been outsourced. I can't ask my wife what she does all day because that is disrespectful, but I am beginning to get very frustrated that I am funding her vacation lifestyle and I feel like she is taking advantage of being a SAHM. I know that I should probably just bite my tongue because there isn't anything that I can do, but I am feeling very defeated. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2HIZXXi
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