Frustrated Dad

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-09-2009
Frustrated Dad
2943
Wed, 09-09-2009 - 3:28am
I really need some opinions on my situation. I am a 30 year old dad with 3 children. I work 10-12 hrs a day 5 days a week and every other Saturday. I am pretty much a homebody, the only time I really go out is on Sundays during football season to watch the games. I do what i need to in order to support my wife and kids. But I am at wits end with my wife and need some help.
My wifes day is as follows. She wakes up any where from 10am - noon (which means 2 of our children (11 and 7) wake up feed themselves and walk to school) at which point she will got downstairs to the kitchen to light a cigarette and call her sister or best friend. During the 1/2hr to an hour that she is on the phone she will make (for herself)and drink about 3 cups of coffee. At around noon when the baby wakes up (11 months) she'll feed him change his diaper and set him on the floor and mostly ignore him as she calls her mother. Usually around 12:30 she'll head out to do errands leaving me with the baby until 1:30 when she'll get home so I can rush out to work where I'm 20 minutes away from and need to be in by 2.
Heres the thing i have no problem being the sole financial gainer in the house hold but I expect certain things. I guess thats the reason for this post to find out if my expectation are to lofty. I expect her to get up in the morning with the children make them breakfast help them pick out cloths make sure they have their homework and send them off to school( I would even help in the morning but i got sick of waking up in the morning while shes still sleeping when i was the one at work last night). I would like breakfast every once in a while made when i wake up i don't expect it but it would be nice. I would like the baby up before 11am I just don't think he should be sleeping that long. i expect laundry the be cleaned, folded and put away! The laundry in our house gets washed and dried them it usually ends up on the dining room table for half the day then it makes its way over to the living room where its folded and left on the couch for a day or two (is it to much to ask to have it put away). I expect the house clean! Cleaning the kitchen for her consist of of doing the dishes and mopping the floor! Cabinets, frig, counters, stove maybe once a month. Cleaning the dinning room consist of her wiping the table and vacuuming one area of the carpet. Bathroom, living room are cleaned in the same manner and the children's room and bedroom upstairs can go months without cleaning! I expect lunch made before i got to work! No breakfast and lunch not even a packed lunch/diner!I expect a home cooked diner for my children! Not pizza, macaroni or canned spaghetti!!! Is this to much to ask? i expect diner when I get home, real food not something she sends me on yoville or farmtown, which she's on until 2am!! DO I EXPECT TO MUCH? I thought these where to things a stay at home mom did? Are my expectations to old school? I need answers I feel like I'm being taken advantage of and I don't know how much longer I can last.

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Avatar for mom34101
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
In reply to: daddy_gil
Sat, 03-06-2010 - 11:16am
You're a slacker who makes chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast. ;)
Avatar for rollmops2009
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-24-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Sat, 03-06-2010 - 11:19am

No, certainly it is not. However, I also don't think that not seeing them off is necessarily negligently hands-off.

In any event, my comment was prompted by several posters proudly proclaiming their helicopter tendencies and the positive effects of same.

~o~ ...^^^... ~o~

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

Oscar Wilde

Avatar for rollmops2009
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-24-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Sat, 03-06-2010 - 11:21am
Yeah, seriously, what's up with that? ;) Would that my mom had been that kind of slacker.

~o~ ...^^^... ~o~

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

Oscar Wilde

Avatar for mom34101
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
In reply to: daddy_gil
Sat, 03-06-2010 - 11:30am

My parents were very hands-off with schoolwork too, and we mostly had top grades. But I think that if one of us had needed more help, it would have been different. I also think that I'm more involved in my kids' education than my parents were largely because I feel a greater need to supplement than they did.

I believe that kids need to learn to be responsible for their own schoolwork, but parents need to do their part too. Hovering is bad, but sometimes I feel like people on these threads (not you, just musing here) are in a contest about how quickly their kids can turn into mini-adults. (My kid was capable of walking through 2-ft snow drifts for 2 miles at age 7 to get himself to school! Mine was driving himself to preschool at age 2! and so on.... ;)) They're still kids after all.

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-15-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Sat, 03-06-2010 - 11:32am
Again, and my last time "trying" to debate this, we do not know much about the father and when he sleeps or how much time he spends with his wife. Thanks. If there is something else that was said that can be debated, I will be up for that. Otherwise, the subject is really, pretty much, closed :)
iVillage Member
Registered: 12-01-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Sat, 03-06-2010 - 11:32am

I kinda feel the same way -- LIza takes her home work and school work very seriously and she is responsible for her own deadlines but I"m there to help as she needs me to. I"m not hands off but I'm not over involved either. Sometimes I will type a paper for her but I never correct it as I type even though the editor in me really wants to LOL.

Liza doesn't cook a damn thing... but then again neither does her mother... whatever.. she'll cook eventually. i'm hardly losing sleep over it.

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-15-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Sat, 03-06-2010 - 11:34am
I never said "hovering", I said involved.
iVillage Member
Registered: 07-15-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Sat, 03-06-2010 - 11:38am

ITA with you. I don't think many people would be able to do what we do. I know people who complain but then they say the grandparents take them overnight or for the day, etc. We don't have that. We have a hard enough time getting a sitter to watch them because I can't see spending the same amount of money it would cost for us to go out.


We do everything ourselves and most of the time I don't feel we get much support because no one really understands.

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-15-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Sat, 03-06-2010 - 11:42am

I see many people calling Sunday "Sunday Funday" because that is the only day their dh's are off and they spend it as a "family day". IME this happens mostly with families who have a sahm. In this day and age you can't have it all and most times if there is a sahm, the fathers are working long hours (maybe even 2 or 3 jobs) to pay the bills so she can stay home. I personally do NOT think these sahm should be complaining at all. Again, JMO.

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-09-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Sat, 03-06-2010 - 11:44am

I lean towards being a hovering parent.

********
Ducky

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