Dad-to-be Slammed For Expecting His Pregnant Partner to Continue to Pay Her Share of Mortgage and Bills While on Maternity Leave

In a move widely regarded as a bad one, a soon-to-be dad in the UK has been slammed for requesting that his heavily pregnant partner continue to contribute financially to the household living expenses while she is on maternity leave.

The woman in question took to popular internet forum Mumsnet to ask if she should have to dip into her redundancy pay while caring for their newborn in order to keep the family afloat. She also mentioned that her partner “earns a very high wage”.

Well, this did not go down very well at all.

“Absolutely, as long as he pushes half the baby out of his vagina and takes 50% of the parental leave and associated pay drop. What a fucking dick. Leave the bastard,” one passionately supportive post read.

“Is the baby not his then?” asked a boardie. “This makes no sense whatsoever to me. You’re on maternity leave because you’re having his child and he wants you to continue to pay half the bills?”

“Not if it’s a partnership. No, you are a family, not flatmates,” wrote another.

“If a man isn’t willing to support his partner while she has their baby then I regard his as a lost cause. Why have a baby in a relationship if you are still expected to go it on your own?”

And this zinger: “Will you be invoicing him for his share of the childcare?”

These women are making a lot of sense here.

At what point do you pool your resources and raise a family together as one financial unit? I feel like this could have all been handled much differently if they had combined their income as soon as they began living together. They are a family, they are working towards the same goal — raising their child together the best way they can with the best resources they can afford. How can they do that if they are keeping tabs on one another’s personal finances?

Possibly the best response came from this mum who shared her thoughts clearly and with a whole lot of common sense.

“I think 50/50 in any relationship is only fair if it leaves both partners with equal spending money afterwards. Whether on maternity leave or not, if you’re in a committed and long-term relationship I don’t see how it can ever be fair if one partner has lots and lots of spare income to play with and the other is struggling to make ends meet.

“Particularly given you’re off work to care for their child, you shouldn’t then be penny-pinching or stressing to pay the bills if they have the surplus to cover it. But I would expect to have these discussions before having a baby together.”

What do you think?

Source: Mumsnet