Money Moral Dilemma: Should I ask my partner to pay me for childcare?

Augustus_the_Strong

No, this would not be a good idea for so many reasons. But the way to balance it out would be to each put a proportion of your incomes into a joint account to be used for household spending, say 2/3 of your income, whatever it is. This ensures that each partner is paying a fair share. It can be used for more people - eg my partner's brother used to live with us when he was a student and he paid in his (lesser) share too.

Anna1664

I think that you should know your partner well enough to judge whether having a conversation around this is appropriate or not. Me and my partner have a great understanding that 'neither one of us is physic'. Everybody's life situation is different and how you split money, house hold chores and caring duties is unique to you and your situation. One thing you could think about is your splits not just on child-care costs but on all household costs and or everything and whether it's in line with your salaries, work hours and the amount of house-work or caring duties you both do and the life-style you both want to lead. Me and my partner both have things we like doing, don't like doing, don't mind doing and things we would prefer to pay somebody else to do but right now to save money. We both take on the things that we like doing (and often this is something the other one doesn't like doing so it works out really well) other times neither of us 'really' like doing a chore but will do it if asked/or to make the other person's life easier.

pigpen

you could charge him for sex instead.. I believe it is a better rate

crmism

I think you should give serious consideration to the welfare and wellbeing of your child, and give up work altogether. It isn't all about money and social life, you know. You are its parent and need to look at yourself and accept responsibility. Besides, by the sound of things, you will be better off financially if you spend more time with your child and not pay someone else to look after it.

JimmyTheWig

Augustus_the_Strong wrote: »

No, this would not be a good idea for so many reasons. But the way to balance it out would be to each put a proportion of your incomes into a joint account to be used for household spending, say 2/3 of your income, whatever it is. This ensures that each partner is paying a fair share.

So in this scenario say he earns £500 a week for working 5 days and she earns £300 a week for working 3 days.
On her two non-working days she has the full-time job of looking after a child.
Lets assume when neither is at work that household chores are shared equally.

Lets say bills come to £600 a week.
By your method, he pays £375 for bills and she pays £225 for bills.
That leaves him £125 a week to spend on himself and her £75 a week to spend on herself.

They are both working hard 5 days a week.
Why should he have more money to spend on himself than she has to spend on herself?

gayleygoo

I think a lot of the comments are very harsh on the OP.

In a partnership, roles should be considered equal, even if they are very different. To me it doesn't matter whether the OP works outside the home full-time or part-time, as when she is at home she is still working looking after the child and doing other stuff that needs to be done. The income should be shared equally after all household expenses have been paid.

E.g. OH earns slightly more then twice what I get in TCs/CB. So we try to split the bills proportionally, so that in theory he "pays" twice as much as I do. In reality we don't strictly do that and he technically ends up with more money than me each month, (I buy most of the groceries but he has to maintain the car etc) but if I ever needed or wanted anything, he'd pay because we consider our finances joint. We have separate accounts but think of it all as "in the pot".

I don't think you need to be paid to do the childcare, because I don't think partners should pay each other for family/relationship activities. However the childcare bills should be split proportionally to your income, rather than 50/50. What would happen if you both worked full-time but he still earned much more than you? I hope your OH sees your contributions to the household as just as valuable as his, rather than consider value only as a paid wage.

Petra_70

POLAR_BILL wrote: »

Why would anyone even need to ask such a dumb question? Why would you want to get paid for looking after your own child? Surely when you choose to have children you take responsibility for looking after them?

Mojisola wrote: »

The child has two parents - how much looking after is the other one doing?

Exactly. It's ludicrous! No-one should expect payment for looking after their own child. What kind of relationship must you have if you are even THINKING this?

RubyStar3 wrote: »

I am saddened by the replies to this post. It is surely not essential to loose all financial independence when entering into a relationship. I think an ideal solution is to have a separate bank account from which all household bills, including childcare are paid. Having added up what is required to fund this account each month, you can then agree how much each of you contributes to it from your respective incomes. If your incomes are equal then presumably you would contribute equally, or you may want to do that anyway. Otherwise a contribution proportional to income might be OK. Any money you each had left over would be yours to spend as you each saw fit, large extra joint purchases would need to be agreed.

And you joined this forum today, just to say this.

scrabbly

Is this person out of their mind ? PAID to look after their own child ???
This would , of course be "income". I suppose she would be quite happy to pay income tax on this money as it is extra to her PAYE income ????

aquarius02

If you even think about this one, you have severe mental problems. Go and ask him. I guarantee that his response will be unprintable. That's if he doesn't leave you. I have never read such diatribe on here before.

DDDDD1

You must be joking, if it was the other way round would you pay your partner for looking after your own children. If you want to get paid then set up your own Child Minding business and look after other peoples children.... but then again if I was looking for a Childminder I wouldn't look at one who wants payment for looking after their own children. I thought that was what a parent did, you have a child then you look after the child for the rest of your life. until the tables turn that is and they end up looking after you! That must just be me and my family then...:)