A mom expecting her husband to do the daily 8:15 a.m. school runs after he gets home from work around 12:30 a.m. each night has received backlash from users on Mumsnet, the U.K.-based online forum.
In a post on Mumsnet's Am I Being Unreasonable (AIBU) subforum shared under the username Brighton5555, the wife said she is a stay-at-home mom to two children, including their eldest who is a child with special education needs.
The user's husband runs his own food business and normally leaves for work around 11 a.m., and comes home around 12.30 a.m. "He works hard but he has no other responsibilities. He completely gets to focus there because I carry everything here [at home]," the wife said in a later post.
The user said she and her husband have an agreement where he takes their son to school each morning and she picks him up. "The only things my husband does [in the house] is this school run and taking the bin out once a week. Nothing else," the wife said.
An October 2021 study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Family Issues, which looked at mothers' experiences of the work-family balance and division of household labor during a COVID-19 lockdown period, found that "mothers who split childcare with their partners had a more positive experience of the work-family balance during lockdown, compared with mothers who did the majority of the childcare."
A 2016 Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data found that stay-at-home moms and dads account for around a fifth (18 percent) of parents in the country. The share was reported to be nearly identical to what it was in 1989, with a modest rise in stay-at-home dads.
The wife in the latest Mumsnet post explained: "I don't like school runs" but she does all the pickups, along with "all the housework, cooking, cleaning, appointments, admin, planning, paying bills, taking kids to clubs/activities...you know the list is endless."
She said her husband recently said that he's "working so hard" at his shop and that it's "really not fair" for him to have to do the morning school runs, "hinting" that his wife should do it.
The mom said: "I could take my child but I don't see why I should...Am I wrong ? am I being lazy?"
The wife argued that she's "already up each morning and all the work of getting the kids ready for school is done," while her husband "literally just drives our child [to school]" and "then he literally does one thing a week - the bin."
She said: "I get he works long hours..." but he "doesn't have to do it" during the weekends and school holiday periods.
Several Mumsnet users came to the defense of the husband, who said he must be "exhausted" from working more than 12 hours a day.
User mountainsunsets wrote: "Sorry but I do think if you're the SAHP [stay-at-home parent] then you should be doing the school runs. If he doesn't get home from work until gone midnight he must be exhausted."
Dotjones agreed, stating: "As the SAHP you should be doing the school run. The home admin stuff like this is the trade off for not having to earn your living in paid work."
Mumsnet poster user1473878824 said: "This has to be a joke. He works over 12 hours a day and you're complaining that he won't do the school run because you don't like it?"
User Crunchymum, however, questioned the husband's schedule. "Why are his hours so late? Why does he work past midnight? Sounds like he deliberately avoiding partaking in any family life?"
Others were more diplomatic, such as Whaleandsnail6, who suggested the husband "does more of other things to even up the balance but I wouldn't expect someone who didn't finish work until after midnight to get up to do the school run if I was at home."
User southlondoner02 said: "I would do the school runs as he's back so late but look at the general distribution of work. Does he work every day? Does he spend any time with his child? If he has, say a couple of days off a week then I'd be looking at sharing out the jobs more equally on those days."
Newsweek was not able to verify the details of this case.
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Soo Kim is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. She covers various lifestyle stories, specializing in travel and health.
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