Hi ladies, just curious if you have any thoughts of this. I've (30) been a SAHM since late 2020 when I got laid off from my corporate job due to the pandemic when my son was 3 mo. It wasn't in my plans to be a SAHM at the time I got pregnant but with the state of the world for the last 2 years, I didn't want to place my son in daycare and go back to work. Because I'm at home and my husband (35) works, our division of labor is more traditional in that I take care of the home and my son and he earns the money. Not only is this a bit hard for me because I never planned on this lifestyle but it was the opposite of what I experienced as a child.

My mom was breadwinner while my dad worked a job that paid him about a third of what my mom made. There were tons of problems in their marriage, more than I can go through here but my dad basically lied to my mom about his numerous marriages he had before he met her (saying he was divorced only once when he actually had 3 ex wives) and he hid a pretty serious drinking problem for the first 12 or so years of their relationship because of the long hours they both worked. Also my dad is from a different country so he could easily hide bad shit from his past given the language and geographic barrier.

While most of the problems were my dad's fault, I couldn't help but notice my mom's response to any time she had to do domestic work for my father. Anytime she helped with laundry or did the dishes or anything else that was a "typical" wife job, she would huff about it and lament to me that this is what was wrong with the world, women doing household chores for their incompetent or lazy men. Because of this, I've viewed pretty much every chore I've done for my family as a great disservice to me and womenfolk across the world. I've honestly been pretty miserable to be around because the stress of having a baby and adjusting to the role of SAHM was a lot. I saw anytime my husband asked me to fold laundry, pick up his dry cleaning or make him a simple meal at the end of his 10-12 hr day as a complete insult to my intelligence and value as a person. I would do it but be pisses about it. And then in therapy, I realized this was modeled for me when I was a kid by how upset my mother was about doing chores for my father and I want to break this pattern.

To this day, she claims he was taking advantage of her and never held up his end of the deal. And maybe that was true given how secretly drunk he was all the time. But I now am tasked with figuring this out: what is the line between a stay at home wife doing her side of the agreed upon divison of labor versus a husband taking advantage of his wife and expecting her to just serve him and the children because she is a woman?