WOI, it seems that your partner should have a complaint here as well, and maybe there is something that HE needs to say to her, that she would be able to “hear” better from him than from you and that is “although we are working from your house WE are still working and our business hours are ” 9 – 5″. It is NOT fair to me that you keep asking your husband to leave work and do errands for you and the kids as if he were sitting at home doing nothing. WE, he and I, are running a business and WE would both appreciate if you would respect that as my wife does. If we could afford to we would rent space so we would NOT be here, but we can’t. So could you please forget that we are here, and pretend that we are working elsewhere so we can run the business like professionals?” HE has every right to say that, as do you.
In addition, your housekeeper should take on more of the responsibility in the home and you should have less. Turn on the fire for her and teach her how to cook if your wife does not want to. But it should NOT be your responsibility. YOU should be in your office all day as if you left the house and went to work elsewhere. YOU need to define your work hours and home hours. When your wife worked in the city or she was in school, did you call her and ask her to run errands?
You both need to be respected and you both should make a list of HOW you need to be respected, because it seems like you are NOT being respected. You are being verbally abused and you are not respected in your work. I don’t know if you return the verbal abuse, but this is definitely something you need to talk about and put a stop to. Lets say your wife was on the phone in the evening with the parent of one of her clients. What if you started talking to her and tried to get her attention. That would be disrespectful to her. She would be very upset because she would be trying to be as professional as possible with the parent and she wouldn’t want you to interrupt her. She would expect you to understand that and respect her for it. WOI, it is the same thing. When you are working, you should be able to expect her to respect your work hours and not interrupt you to run errands. If she needs a favor she should call a friend like everyone else does and not interrupt her working husband.
In coaching one of my first questions to my clients is “How do you need to be respected?”. So I would ask you to make a list and ask her to do the same and then discuss it.