newhusband

Thank you everyone for your feedback on the housecleaning issue. if I didn’t make myself clear, the issue I had wasnt simply hiring the cleaner it was a sense for my wife to care about the state of our home.

I’m going to get a housecleaner for the sake of shalom bayis, but I have a feeling it will solve the symptoms (dirty home), but not the underlying problem (caring for the home). How do I deal with that issue is what I am looking to figure out.

I don’t want to fix the symptoms by throwing money at the problem today because its going to morph into a bigger problem tomorrow. I feel very open-minded on trying different things to change the dynamic in the home but at the same time giving in anytime my wife wants something will only make me upset. I don’t want to resent her, I am all for a partner in marriage, I’m not looking for anything less. But if I work full-time and support the family, and a housekeeper cleans the home and makes the food and babysits the kids that is not a partnership and I fear that is the directions things are going.

Am i being unreasonable?

I floated the idea of agreeing to a temporary housekeeping arrangement to help while she is pregnant and she flat out said she wants the housekeeper permanently, not because of the pregnancy, but because she doesn’t want to clean the home.

While we were married for only a month before she was pregnant, between sheva brachos and a deep cleaning that I did before she moved to our home there wasnt a big need for cleaning, but she never really took the initiative either. Her mother always cleaned their family home while she lived with her parents and my mother always cleaned my family home when I lived with my family.

I really don’t want to be an evil husband that forces her to do things she doesn’t want to do, but I also want her to care for our home. I’m worried when we have kids she’ll just want a nanny and a cook and an xyz whenever she doesn’t want to do something herself. I was always raised with the philosophy that just because I have the financial means to outsource some things around the home doesn’t mean they should be, and that I should never hire someone to do something I wouldn’t do unless I wasn’t able to do it myself.