Myself and my husband have recently had our first child. Prior to having our baby we discussed that during my maternity leave, my day job would be looking after the baby. Household chores wise I’d do as much as possible in the day during baby naps but we’d both be doing chores. We’d always split chores 50/50 before baby so this felt fair. In the evenings husband comes home around 5pm and I tend to ask him if he’d like to make dinner or if I should. I say that if he would like me to cook I’d appreciate if he can care for the baby as trying to do both is hard (my baby doesn’t like to be put down and just play by himself for long. 5 minutes max before he starts yelling!) and cooking one handed is hard and kinda dangerous. I don’t want to leave my baby crying in his play pen and when cooking with him in a sling he kicks his legs and I get worried about cutting him by accident, so I prefer if one of us cooks and the other cares for the baby. Most of the time my husband says he will make dinner as he likes to cook, so I continue caring for the baby. If he gets home late like around 6pm I make sure dinner is ready on the table and I just deal with the baby crying, as it’s not every day.
Recently we had a massive argument and he said that I am “the only woman in the world who acts like I can only care for the baby and can’t possibly do other things at the same time.” He said it’s unfair that he doesn’t come home to dinner on the table and that all of his friends do and his dad always did. I was blown away as 1) I thought we’d agreed that wasn’t how we were doing things and 2) I don’t perceive every woman who’s home with a baby has dinner on the table every night for her husband.
Am I being unreasonable here? Should I be having dinner on the table every night? I feel really guilty but also I feel like I’m doing a hell of a lot and expecting me to juggle the baby all day, do the chores and then have dinner ready every night the minute he walks through the door is really unfair?
EDIT: I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who commented and messaged. I don’t have time to reply to everyone so I just wanted to say a big thank you. You’ve all helped me get my thoughts in order and given me a good perspective on things. I’m going to sit down with my husband and discuss everything. I’m probably going to show him this post too. Thanks again <3