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First, being on maternity leave means that your job is taking care of your newborn and physical recovery from giving birth. Your husband should be helping with household chores or hiring help for you. You're already doing a ton.
How old are your husband's kids? If they are young, then it seems like they should be helped as much as your kids. But if they are old enough to help, then they absolutely should.
It sounds to me like your husband should either find time to help you, hire help, or enforce his older kids helping you out.
My kids are 6 and 9 and they put their own laundry away. Those kids should absolutely be doing some chores.
How old are the kids?
Assign your husband the laundry chore (or at least the folding and organizing) for a week and maybe he will then be ready to ask the kids to help more.
Breastfeeding and pumping around the clock with 3 other kids is a full time job in and of itself. I’m impressed with all you are doing. But seems there are some pressure points and you need your husband to step up/get more involved at home.
Fellow step mom here- dad needs to parent and or give them responsibility to do themselves. We ran into a similar issue when my son was born. You are one person and can only do so much. Not everything should default to you just because you’re the female.
Soo many times I have to remind myself “what would my husband do if I wasn’t here” he’d have to actually parent, lol. It’s hard being a step mom as it is, doing his job on top of that shouldn’t be added to the list. Unless he’s picking up the slack somewhere else (sounds like he isn’t) you’re def in the right.
Stop doing your husband’s laundry!
Once you stop doing his laundry he will quickly learning how much work it takes, not only physically work but the mental load that goes along with it. Men do not realize that’s it’s more than the physical labor and it sounds like this husband needs to learn it and learn it fast before this mother has a mental breakdown.
Stepmom of 15 years and mom to two young kids (toddler and baby)… it’s time to have a sit down conversation with your husband about reallocating chores. You aren’t on vacation - you are working hard at taking care of your newborn. Pumping around the clock is a full time job too. He needs to contribute more.
But the parenting of his kids and whether or not they do specific chores - that’s not the hill I’d die on. I’d personally die on the hill of “you and I need to reallocate chores, and you are going to be the lucky winner of laundry, staying on top of dishes for the family, and straightening up every night. If you want to lighten your load and make your kids do X or Y, that’s your choice. Personally, I believe in teaching kids accountability at their age, but that’s on you as their dad.”
Teach them all how to do laundry and absolutely never do it again except for you and the baby.
to do it themselves or at least help with folding /putting away and they’re like “nah, I’m good”. So they have a mountain of laundry in their room. And my husband thinks I’m being an a-hole and treating them differently. Part of it is their age. Part of it is that they’re his kids and it’s not like his job is SO demanding that he can’t do a load of laundry for 2 kids while I do it for the other 4 of us. Am I in the wrong?
Nope. Kids need to have responsibility and learn to take care of themselves. My stepdaughter is amazing but she’s not responsible for her own laundry (since she was 11) and her room is a huge mess but it’s imperative I do not do that for her or let our staff do it either. It sounds like your husband (like most) has no idea the amount of work you do. I don’t have great advice in that regard other than stand your ground and try to explain the reason is that you’re trying to raise kids that will be responsible adults.
The breakup 2+4 seems kinda weird tbh. For all of you to be a family unit, it has to be 6.
Before the step kids, your husband needs to step up! Your husband needs to pick up a few tasks. Assign specific work to him. Let your husband do the laundry for the whole house. He will then hopefully start delegating some responsibility to the older kids as well.
NTA. I was definitely doing my own laundry by age 10, and you should definitely NOT be doing your husband’s laundry while trying to care for a newborn and a toddler.