I have been mostly retired for 5 years this month, and my husband is “retired” (since 2022) but he works 30%ish on things he chooses to. In the years since we retired we have already slowed down. I’m 64 and he will be 66 soon. We are consciously “doubling up” on our active vacation travel for the next couple of years. We are both pretty fit, and work at staying that way, but some things we would have done 5 years ago we might think harder about now. He has also been diagnosed with heart issues (very healthier brother had 6 bypasses at 60 - it’s genetic).
Even if people can’t retire, I would say don’t put off what you really want to do until it’s too late.
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Just to be clear, though, you chose (fretful)mother for yourself, as opposed to (fretful)woman. In general, this is “Parent Cafe”, so we are sorta defined here by our roles as parents.
So if I am understanding correctly, is it me using -man for myself, as opposed to -dad, which strikes you as patriarchal?
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Oh, like you, my handle is a reference to popular culture (the magazine that Marge Simpson reads). My issue is the lack of symmetry! So I would refer to DH as FretfulFather. I’m not sure what the solution should be, but it caught my eye. I think particularly in a discussion of retirement, which is so closely linked to both financial wellbeing and “what to do” including chores, it’s very hard for me to disentangle it from patriarchal concerns which likely made me more aware.
Yes, I understand the concern in context! I’ll think about how to restore symmetry, which is in fact a better representation of our values and relationship.
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I worked part time at the same company for about 20 years, although by the end I was very close to full time. Thanks, in large measure, to my having the wonderful luck to find a terrific sitter for my kids. I was able to still be a room mom, volunteer for the PTO, and belong to a great mom’s center. It truly was the best of both worlds. Although no work at home in those days and by the time I commuted and paid the sitter, I really didn’t make all that much money.
My DH has retired and I have expected him to pick up more of the chores that he can do. Due to physical limitations, there is a lot he can’t do. But cooking and dishes he can. At first, he was assuming I would do the dishes if he cooked, but I did not think that was a fair with me working full time and doing all the other chores he can’t do (cleaning, laundry, yard, most food shopping). It is still an area of conflict and frustration for me. We will renegotiate when I retire!
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I agree 100% about not putting off what you really want to do! In 2018 I took a hard fall skiing. I was not hurt, but really frustrated as I have skied all my life, but wasn’t getting to ski enough at that point in life. H and I decided in 2019 to get yearly passes so that we could ski more. We have not looked back since then. Most years we ski 20 -25 days a year and travel all over the western US to get the best snow. I honestly feel that after 7 years of doing this I am a better and more confident skier than I was in 2019 even though I am now 7 years older.
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I don’t have any issue with @NiceUnparticularMan’s handle and, in fact, get a chuckle out of it. Names like his and how he referred to his wife are not triggers for me, and I sure hope he is not now self-conscious about his choice, especially given how he’s explained it.
Our son had an account here during his BS application cycle (before I found the site), but he would never tell me his screen name, and I was never able to discover it. 
My references to our kiddo morphed from ChoatieKid to ChoatieCadet to ChoatieLT to ChoatieCPT. Once, I even referred to him as ChoatieToddler. Boarding school is far enough in the rearview mirror that I’ve dropped the cuteness and just refer to him as “our son.” DH has a few posts here as “ChoatieDad,” but he has moved on and leaves this board to me, although I think he may lurk a bit just to see what I’m up to.
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I find it interesting, in light of all the posts referencing career outcome studies when looking at colleges, seeing just how many (moms and dads) ended up choosing to stay at home after kids were born for may years. Some chose to return to the workforce, others did not.
For our family, I went part time about 7 years before full retirement. I had my own practice for decades, and having one’s own business seems to add another level of stress in many areas. That said, I may have continued to work part time for a while longer, but covid interrupted that, and I essentially retired (save for a small amount of committee work) at 67. DH retired from full time work last fall, but is till doing some part time consulting and loves it. He loves his field and staying educated on the latest stuff (takes free graduate level classes at the local state U) and will probably never fully retire.
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Just weighing in that I noted the lack of symmetry too! And wondered about it! (And for the record, you are one of my favorite posters on CC, so it’s nothing personal!)
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The fact that H had health issues soon after retiring is partly what motivates me to keep active and mobile as much as I can. Because you never know. I’m trying to travel now while I can. I’m also saying yes to new opportunities that interest me. Some of them are things I always wanted to do ( dance classes) and some are things I never saw myself doing ( weightlifting).
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As usual, I didn’t think of the patriarchy in choosing names. Shawbridge is an obscure reference. Then I designated ShawWife, ShawSon and ShawD – should be ShawDaughter to preserve symmetry but too many letters – referring to their relationship with me.
On the broader theme of this thread, ShawWife and I are getting many of the benefits of retiring without retiring. I’ve slimmed down my consulting firm to focus on what I like to do. Clients used to want us to travel to them a lot (I had monthly trips to London for years and at least two years I also had trips to Frankfurt and all through the years trips to the Bay area, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, Singapore, and various countries in South America and Europe). These same companies got used to not spending money on travel and prefer Teams whenever possible so I get to stay home and work while looking at the river without any financial sacrifice.
ShawWife has amped up her work after the kids started HS and is at the peak of her career. I would not want her to stop. We always traveled and now do it with a lot more freedom. We are looking at houses to avoid the winter – can’t see that I’d enjoy icy driveways and walkways at age 75 – but they need to enable her to have a studio. We have traveled a lot (both for my work and for pleasure) and so neither of us feel a special need to increase it. In fact, we are so happy with our home that we need more of a reason to leave. We will try to schedule some bike trips – and with more support than in the old days – and go to Italy every other year, California a couple of times a year, Florida annually, and would like to get back to Japan and Korea as we enjoyed our trip this past spring so much.
We have gone hiking every summer in the Canadian Rockies (one of my favorite places in the world). I’m now trying to figure out if that is a good idea post-spinal surgery. I’m a lot better off than I was pre-surgery but I would not want to do anything to cause future problems.
On the division of labor, we have taken more traditional gender roles except for a few things. I earned/earn 95% or more of our income and contributed that to our wealth. I traveled a ton when the kids were at home. ShawWife did 95% of the cooking and house management. We had a housekeeper/nanny when the kids were little and have/had a cleaning person and a handyman to help with stuff. This enabled her to dial down her career but not stop it or get a job teaching that would have essentially put her art-making at a very low level in that period. We jokingly say that ShawWife handles the visible world (cooking, the house, etc.) and I handle the invisible world (planning, travel, insurance, investments, electronic networks). The only gender-role dissonances are that ShawWife is great with power tools and house maintenance and you would not want me near that. In addition, I do all of the shopping offline and online (both food and house purchases but beyond that, I buy a lot of her clothes – I already have purchased the dress she will wear for ShawD’s wedding and would take ShawD clothes shopping when she was of that age) as ShawWife hates shopping. I even buy most of her art supplies. And, I do the strategy and planning for her career (and have served as the financial backdrop for enabling her career to flourish).
At the point where we have to stop working because of mental or physical decline, I don’t know how/if the task allocation will change. We will be a lot less functional (not sure at that point if I could make it to Costco, for example, or whether she would be up for cooking, let alone the kind of entertaining we do). I’m guessing that we outsource and rely to some extent on ShawD, who is local and could conceivably live in our house.
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We are visiting our son for ten days. When DH and I were working, we had to travel during school vacation times, and usually for four or five days max. Let’s just say, retirement allows us a lot more flexibility!! And if nothing else, that makes it worthwhile!
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I was really glad you had brought this up (and surprised I hadn’t noticed it myself)! I remember your original question re: NUMom got a laughy emoji or two, which I didn’t understand, for this is the kind of subtle patriarchy that needs to be brought to our attention (I deliberately am not using the phrase “called out”) and can lead to civil, productive discussions.
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Will you pick my dress for DS’s wedding? 
What a great help that would be.
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Not a problem. ShawWife’s friends are always surprised. I picked her dress for ShawSon’s wedding as well. You might not like my stylistic choices:
On dresses for ShawWife, I helped her get her dresses for ShawSon’s weddings as ShawWife HATES shopping. There is a store in Canmore AB that we visit every summer with brands she likes and I encourage her to shop (I have to sit in an uncomfortable chair and review things as the come out). The summer before last, I persuaded her to buy a dress for ShawD’s wedding (which was just an inkling in our eye at the time). We got a dress and “coat” from an Australian company called Alquema that was artsy and elegantly designed and was on sale. I found the “coat” and something similar to the dress (color better matches the coat) from their online site.
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AMEN!!! As a teacher we had to travel during the heat of the summer, or during school breaks when everyone else was travelling.
Since retiring 9 years ago, we have been away every spring and every fall—I looked forward to shoulder season travelling for 40 years!!!
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It seems like fewer women have the choice to stay home, even with little kids. My nieces with kids generally all work, with one exception whose DH is a high earner. My friends that stayed home with their kids for a few years have daughters that work. One has a wife that is taking a year off for child care. Even our neighbors with young kids mostly have both parents that work, as do the young parents i work with. Not sure if that is universal or if that will change as the kids get older or families have more children.
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My daughter is a stay-at-home mom, like many of her friends. They dedicate a lot of their time to volunteering at the school. My daughter takes on a leadership role, managing her children’s activities and school involvement. She is in charge of fundraising for the school district, serves as a classroom parent every year, and manages her kids’ sports teams. She’s constantly organizing, coordinating, and communicating. In many ways, she spends more time on these responsibilities than she would in a full-time job, often continuing to write emails and messages to teachers and parents late into the evening.
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That was me, once upon a time. And then poof, my kids were grown, my bank account was paltry, and back to paid work I went. When I went back, I had been large & in charge for so long that I had a confidence that was probably off putting at times!
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I did the PTA co-chair, team mom, room mom gig full time and part time for some time. It was fun until kids wanted some distance, as they became teens. It worked out for them & me.
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