More and More lazy stay at home wives

Sort of off topic but I most certainly think that the loving attitude of a step-parent should be to treat the stepkids as his/her own. I don't have any stepkids in my marriage so perhaps it's easy for me to say (but there are step-situations in my extended family, so I am not totally foreign to the concept) but I don't like the sound of "your" kids/"my" kids in a Christian family.

musingsofacac said:

Well the not "not do much" was different when she worked before the Car accident in Dec 2012. She would cook maybe 20 percent of time and did 80 percent.

She would do a load of laundry or two, and would do the rest(probably about 5 load because we have about 7 per week - I have 5 kids 3 days a week).

She has never done vacuuming or mopping since we have been together, that's all me. She said she likes the way I do it and I do a better job than her - is what she said.

As far as dishes go, since I do 80 percent of cooking, typically I do 80 percent of dishes because she believes whoever cooks also does dishes and cleanup afterwards.

When she worked I did the grocery shopping, I would carve out an hour or two during my day and run to the grocery store. With my job as a programmer I have a flexible schedule, aside from meetings.

Does that describe it?

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The vacuuming is an easy fix. You could tell her you don't exactly enjoy it, and you don't mind the way she does it. Tell her you both have to do some of it.
When it comes to laundry, do you include folding and putting the stuff away too? If so, how about getting baskets for each individual old enough to fold their own, and when you empty the dryer you put the stuff in the baskets. Then if someone doesn't care to fold and put their stuff away, I guess they'll have to get used to having a basket full of clothes in their room.

cerette said:

Sort of off topic but I most certainly think that the loving attitude of a step-parent should be to treat the stepkids as his/her own. I don't have any stepkids in my marriage so perhaps it's easy for me to say (but there are step-situations in my extended family, so I am not totally foreign to the concept) but I don't like the sound of "your" kids/"my" kids in a Christian family.

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It's a tricky situation. You can't really treat them as your own because that makes them feel like you're trying to replace their real parent. You always have to walk a tight-rope there and make sure they know you love them but you're not trying to usurp anyone. They know that they aren't your child and they will resent it if you try to push that on them. You also can't discipline a step-child the way you would your own child. You have less authority and respect, less affection from them.

You can love them as much as your own children. But you can't treat them like your own.

I agree with CG. I also think it should be something the step-parent freely gives; not something that the biological parent should expect. If anyone tried to replace my son's father, my son immediately did not like them, even though he had not seen his biological father since he was in diapers. I think treating children who are not yours as though they were is disrespectful to the other biological parent, as well as to the children for putting them into a position that they did not ask for: step-families.

Musing, you have been calling your wife "lazy" since we've been posting. You did it a year ago and you are doing it now. It is your mindset, and believe me, that will translate to attitude in your daily life with her, even if you don't say it to her face. Your disappointment, disillusionment, dissatisfaction, unmet expectations....all those will come out in your non-verbal language, if not your verbal language. If your wife is sensitive to others (emotionally intelligent), she will respond to your negative emotions towards her really negatively, and likely start to "live down" to what you believe about her. You will do both of you a favor if you start to nurture more positive thoughts about her.

cerette said:

Perhaps it would be fruitful to know what the OP means by "not doing much"?

Take me for example: I am a homemaker/full time mother. I do all the cooking, cleaning, food shopping (by public transit, I don't have my own vehicle!), taking care of our child, preparing for outings (packing whatever snacks, change of clothes etc etc) which includes church etc, except my husband's breakfast which he makes himself, and once in a while I ask him to buy milk on the way home from work. Now, the way I usually do it is some days I spend many hours getting all the cleaning, washing, cooking, shopping done, and the day after I don't do as much (since I did it all yesterday--I don't scrub the bathroom daily, or pull out the stove and clean behind it every day...)..so if you were to walk in on me on a busy day you'd think "wow!" but if you came the day after you'd think "boy she sure seems to enjoy that 3rd cup of coffee and Christian Forums at 1 PM!!". So, my point is, what counts as 'much'. Is it the amount done on any given single day, or is it the general situation over a more extended period of time?

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No. It's never 8 hours for 8 hours. I work outside the home full time, but I don't work every single minute of those 8 hours. I goof off, I surf the web, I walk around and talk to co-workers, I go to lunch - religiously - every single day I work. I spend some time gazing into space. Some days are insane-nonstop-I want to run away-ahhhhhhh. Others are meh .... not a big deal. I think it all breaks down very similarly.

Musing, you have been calling your wife "lazy" since we've been posting. You did it a year ago and you are doing it now. It is your mindset, and believe me, that will translate to attitude in your daily life with her, even if you don't say it to her face. Your disappointment, disillusionment, dissatisfaction, unmet expectations....all those will come out in your non-verbal language, if not your verbal language. If your wife is sensitive to others (emotionally intelligent), she will respond to your negative emotions towards her really negatively, and likely start to "live down" to what you believe about her. You will do both of you a favor if you start to nurture more positive thoughts about her.

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Yep. And interesting that this is two wifes in a row that are "lazy." That is when I start to ask is it the wifes that are lazy, or the husband that is hypercritical. And if, according to the other thread that women who chose lazy husbands are in the wrong for choosing lazy husbands, the OP must be at fault for choosing two lazy wifes.

ETA. I think I just lost control of the English language.

Maybe some SAHMs are lazy but the ones I know are far from it.
Example 1 - was a nurse, had to go on disability due to an illness. She has days when its all she can do to get the kids out to school (she has 2 children, one of which is autistic). Yet, she pushes herself to take the disabled one to therapy weekly, keep up with the orthodontist appointments, keep the house reasonably clean and cook meals when she feels up to it. When she ends up in the hospital, we (her friends) help out. Her husband is a math professor at a local college and teaches online classes along with onsite classes.

SAHM 2 - always been a SAHM, 2 little ones, due with the 3rd one in May. Her husband also has health issues. She spent over a month running between here and Tucson when her husband was hospitalized. She recently re-started her home daycare business.

SAHM 3 - me. Disabled husband, 4 kids left at home. My house is usually just this side of a wreck because I'm not home enough to really "clean" the house. My husband does what he can. I homeschool and take care of my grandson while his mommy and daddy work. IF you were to look at my house you'd swear I never do a lick of housework (there's enough dog hair floating around to knit a litter of puppies), there's usually dishes in the sink and the children's bathroom probably breaks the health code. BUT...I'm homeschooling, chauffeuring the kids, have my own activities (bible study and a support group), cook from scratch daily, including baking bread a couple of times a week. My husband does what he can, usually laundry and maybe running the vacuum. He doesn't do much of the driving because of his health issues. Yet if you were to see me in the early morning sitting on the couch drinking coffee and watching TV, you'd swear I'm "lazy". If you were to see me now, sitting on the couch, watching a movie, you'd swear I'm "lazy". I'm not...but after 12 kids, I have really low standards. As long as there are clean clothes, the dog poop in the backyard gets cleaned up and the kitchen gets cleaned up after dinner, I'm good. I live in the desert, there's dust EVERYWHERE...it's a fact of life. When it bugs me too much, I clean it. If I'm looking for the rest of the baby's toys, I might move the couch. I only clean behind the fridge when we move. Behind the stove? Are you kidding? The rest gets "deep cleaned" a couple of times a year...when I think about it. If I were to sit and fuss about how "lazy" my husband is, because he doesn't work, I'd be one ungrateful wench. I'm just glad he's alive.

You clean behind the fridge when you leave the house. Otherwise, uh no.

Thanks for the comments on my stepkids-post. I understand that the kids know there is a difference between a biological ("real") parent and a step one. But, let's say you have a situation with your stepkids and your biological ones at the same time. They're all misbehaving. How do you deal with it? Different discipline? I'm not saying this as an accusation, just honestly wondering how people deal with these sorts of things, surely it must happen all the time...? Surely the different discipline would make the stepchild feel just that--different, not his/her real child like the others...a negative feeling added to the already negative situation (being disciplined when misbehaving).

Hetta said:

You clean behind the fridge when you leave the house. Otherwise, uh no.

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Hetta said:

No. It's never 8 hours for 8 hours. I work outside the home full time, but I don't work every single minute of those 8 hours. I goof off, I surf the web, I walk around and talk to co-workers, I go to lunch - religiously - every single day I work. I spend some time gazing into space. Some days are insane-nonstop-I want to run away-ahhhhhhh. Others are meh .... not a big deal. I think it all breaks down very similarly.

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Before I became a Mom I worked full time too, and had lunch and other breaks. I didn't count that time as "not working" though..I was exhausted by the time I got home in the early evening, even though I had had breaks during the day. Similarly I don't count my husband's lunch breaks as him not working, he simply works full time outside of the home..

Hetta, I have now read the post to which you responded about cleaning behind the fridge, so I get it now. Sorry for the confusion.

I honestly get from your posts that you have a misogynistic worldview.

I'm commenting on this post simply because it is the exact same problems we had early in our marriage. Not the exact scenarios, but basically the same situation. And it took a good two years to work through it.

Like your second wife, I'm fairly educated and was used to working and going to school when I married. For whatever reason, there was no serious expectation to do housework when I was growing up. So it was very new to me when we got married. We had our first child barely a year later, and I became a stay-at-home mom because that is what we wanted for our family. It was a very difficult transition for me. I mean, I was stir crazy, tired, overwhelmed, completely unhappy, and even though I felt like I never got a break, the house was a mess. Always. I was always behind on laundry, dinner, dishes, everything. And it infuriated my husband. Now I have three kids and I have been doing this a long time, and in my opinion (and my husband's) I am very good at it. But the transition from working woman to housewife is frankly traumatic, and I imagine that is even more true for your wife, who has been a working woman much longer, and is not truly a parent the way a mother or father is who raised a child from birth and cares for them daily. I am not at all surprised she is "lazy" in her new role, because honestly there is so much involved in "switching gears" that it is really hard to do. (Personally I found SAHMhood to be far more difficult, stressful and time-consuming than any outside-the-home job I had prior.)

Secondly, it really seems like you are overly concerned with a fair split. You said at one point that you do/did 70% of the housework and she 30%. Does that really matter? I mean, are we keeping score? As long as it is actually getting done, that seems perfectly fine to me. It's not that big of a difference. I would also suggest that such a split is your opinion of the situation. Early in our marriage, my husband claimed a similar split, when in fact I am certain that I did more work than him. At one point, he threatened to quit helping at all just to prove his point. And in all sincerity, I did not notice a difference. It turns out, his way of helping was not one I considered helpful at all, so he was wasting his time. Also he was not noticing a lot of things I did. So I really have to take that with a grain of salt when I hear it from other husbands. I am not saying you are lying, but I'll bet it's not as true as you think it is.

Thirdly, you seem to be trying to kill two birds with one stone when you mention how little she helps around the house, and how her doctor says she needs to be more physically active. Like you think it is important to her health that she helps with housework! While that is a convenient opinion, I don't think it really works that way. For example, I can fold a few loads of laundry while I sit on the couch, but that is no more exercise than browsing Facebook! In fact, I can do them simultaneously. Even loading the dishwasher only requires me to stand for a few minutes. It hardly makes a difference in the scheme of things. What would probably benefit her health more than housework is going for a short walk or doing stretches - none of which are productive. So... it might be time to divorce those two goals.

musingsofacac said:

ValleyGal,

I actually try to do just that. That has been the tight rope I have walked for sometime. I try to concentrate on the fact that while I believe she is lazy in her homelife (and our marriage) she is a loving step parent to my kids. Yes she sometimes lacks patience with some of them and I have to help her, but overall she is loves them and it shows in their response to her.

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All parents sometimes lack patience with their children. I don't care who you are, your children will test your patience.

Why don't you try sympathizing with her instead of trying to fix her?

From what you're saying, it really strikes me that the problem is that you have unrealistic expectations.

You have said that your wife has a good bond with your kids but that she doesn't help you with them. That doesn't make any sense to me. How did she bond with them if she's not helping with them? What, exactly, is it that she's not doing that you think she should be where your kids are concerned?

musingsofacac said:

My younger children wanted to call my wife "mom" after just a year or two of us being married, but she told them "no" they already had a mom. She shows respect for their mom(even though privately to me she can't stand her).

But I disagree on the discipline - yes if you are using physical discipline that would be different. But we use sentences and taking things away and other forms of non-physical discipline, so I see no problem with my wife disciplining my kids and she does.

She does not try to take the place of their mother, but at the same time she does consider them her kids too, she has poured her heart into them and has great concern for them. I realize some people might not be able to understand that, but it makes perfect sense to us.

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I disagree think it's a parent's job to train a child. The bible certainly says honor your mother and father not your mother and who's she's married to and your father and who's he's married to. I think it's out of order to discipline another person's child unless both, mom and dad, parties agree.