That two parents working doesn’t work

What about my family member who is a nurse? Should she leave because her shifts often run from 7am-7pm meaning she can’t see her young kids for a few days sometimes?

I'm not sure what point you are making with this example - that your family member should not have had kids? She's not a good mother because she presumably needs to use childcare and has not quit her job, even though she has young kids? Or does she have a SAHD then?

This is a pretty ironic rant considering YOU are the one who said you didn’t know why people had kids if they didn’t intend on spending every day with them to see them develop in fine detail. Now you’re apparently the champion of mothers working 12 hr days 😂

So I suppose your own view is yes she should quit. Why are you asking others?

Grumpyfroghats · Today 12:01
"@Citrines - what would have happened if you had changed your mind and wanted to go back to work? Would your DH have made any compromises to help support you?"

Yes, I suppose so, but we wouldn't have had 4 DC if we were both intending on working. I know I couldn't really have stopped him though and I was never interested in holding him back. He wouldn't notice the extra money if I was working. He told me before we had kids I would not need to work if I didn't want to and he respects that and he thought other things were more important. He wouldn't care about extra money because he doesn't need that from me. And I don't need him to do what Om doing anyway. There are more important priorities really and life is super-busy in a family of 6. Sometimes it's just much easier to specialise.

i work.

I like to be independent as my last two relationships failed and were abusive.
I don’t want to be beholden to any man’s income.

that aside my professional body chair has suggested work should provide 24 hour crèches to let women work more.
That is seriously too much. I guess the sweet spot is well paid , flexible work or WFH.

Instead of pitting SAHM against working women.

I think we should all push for more legal enshrined rights to flexible work and that would really help everyone a lot.

‘Normal job’?? What’s that then? Only the ones you’ve heard of?
Many many people in this country work beyond 6 as standard. I take it you don’t live near London?
The area I grew up in (and to some extent the one im now in) are affluent. You have to earn fairly high to even afford to live here. This is where my family and support is so no, I’m not about to move to a cheaper area hours away.
You sound really quite insular and blinkered if you haven’t heard of people working past 6pm even 🤣
What about my family member who is a nurse? Should she leave because her shifts often run from 7am-7pm meaning she can’t see her young kids for a few days sometimes? I take it that’s not enough of a normal ‘job’? Maybe she should demand 9-5 like you and tell people to only have accidents and illnesses between those times.

and loads of people also imply or outright say that mums who have children shouldn’t have bothered if they dare to want to continue their careers.

What does that have to do with it? Someone’s extreme views aren’t less dangerous because the person is old.

Someone isn’t less racist because there are old.

Claiming that women’s liberation is bad for women is a pretty wild claim.

Well yes and no.
Lets see… you do well academically in school, leading to a degree which your parents encouraged you to do - you wernt sure as you were only 17 when applying.
Got a good degree in your field, apply for jobs in your field at 21/22.
Get a fab job in the city, do well, get promoted. To do your job, the hours are 8:30-6:30 plus commute. It’s just what’s required to be taken in any way seriously. It’s taken 15 years to get to the position you are in.
I am applying this to a man OR woman.
Then you decide to have kids. You and your partner have to come to an agreement about the children and who will look after them.
Yes, you could bail out of all that and choose to work in tescos for 20% of what you were earning (or any local job) and get home earlier but where would be the sense in that? There is a choice but not really a reasonable one if you have followed that path.
You either hire full time childcare or one person steps away from paid work to care for the children. Why on Earth would the one on a good salary give up all their years of study to work in a less paid job all to gain 2 hours back? Not an option there. As I said it’s a short time and then they are grown and teens.
in any case I don’t really see the benefit for being around from 6-7pm when a child is grotty and tired and about to go to bed. Most parents of young kids call that the ‘witching hour’ as the child is tired. If that’s the only hour you get to see your kid during each week day it’s pretty depressing.

It was an elderly lady. Come on!

Was the poster not also commenting that her mother thought women’s liberation was a bad thing for women?
It’s very telling that all you got from that post then was ikea and kids toys…
Says a lot.

Well, those people are wrong.

However, they are not more wrong or less wrong than the many posters implying that working mothers are bad mothers whose kids are raised by others and who are still bad at their job.

It's about making a choice and living with the consequences. We all do it.

So funny that a poster above is talking about her old mum and toy baskets from IKEA and the response to it is a warning about the Taliban! Brilliant

pointythings - loads of people in MN stste it strongly imply SAHMs shouldn't be allowed. They are apparently pointless, but also simultaneously facilitate unfair advantage. Not in those words, but that is the very thinly disguised subtext.

People are trying to help the OP unpick changes that could be made that would allow her to keep her career without feeling like she’s juggling plates. She hasn’t expressed a desire to quit, and her OP suggests her DH doesn’t quite take on a full fair share: he has to be pressed to do housework (adding to her mental load), and doesn’t do the mental load. The mental load is by far the biggest part of it all, imo. If half the planning and thinking and systems and lists are taken over by her DH, she might find it easier to breathe and work and ferry the kids to activities, or she might have time for her brain to actually slow down and think about the swimming and whether it’s worth it, or even for her brain to slow down and concentrate on a book or hobby or life passion instead of “have I got £1 for ice cream day tomorrow and sun cream for the nursery bag and the new password for the parent portal”.

Omg, this view is so outdated and wrong is even hard to even start.
women were in the house completely dependent from their father first and husband later. They could not express an opinion, travel or have any choice even on their own kids as they had no financial power. If they had no husband they had no voice and if they were poor they had to prostitute or beg. They were abused and completely unheard. Do we really want to go back there and think they had it better??! Do you want to go to countries where women even fight to go to school and see how it is like? How great life is without personal freedom and independence? Maybe you work less or you do nothing at all, but is this life? Poor women had it especially hard as they had to work and they were practically slaves.
Thanks to the women lib movement, women can study travel decide vote and be part of the social scene as majors, ministers. Have a say in laws and their own rights. And they can choose to work and strive for all the professions they want to do. They don’t have to stay at home and do kids if they do not want. Of course doing it all is hard and some women have it easier than others as they can afford to pay for help or to choose to stay at home. Others have less choice , they either have to stay at home (lack of work, health etc) or they have to work as they can’t afford otherwise. Luckily we have a society that even not perfectly allows to do it, although without a choice is way harder and many women are exhausted. This does not mean we need to take the rights of the women away, and write the women lib movement has made it worst, it means things can be improved and of course they can, from ensuring a better load share with partners, more PT opportunities or even make it easier for workers to take time off when they need it (ie the 5/8 years kids are small) and then go back to the workforce.
but please be careful when we write things that can become really dangerous. I do not wish the taliban regime to any woman.

@Citrines is anyone saying SAHMs shouldn't be allowed?

Those of us who work are not saying that; we are saying there are other models and the SAHM model is not innately superior or inferior. We're tired of being called bad mums and bad employees. We point out that not all households have or need a financial high flyer to work. Not rocket science, surely?

When my husband was alive we both had standard 9 - 5 jobs. I had the longer commute. We earned enough for us to be comfortable but not extravagant. A lot of it is about the choices you make. @PurpleWisteria1 clearly lives in an environment with lots of very wealthy people working in high pressure jobs. That is a choice, it has consequences. We chose not to live like that.

And no, we didn't argue over housework. We were equals. It didn't go wrong until depression and alcohol use got to my husband and that was nothing to do with both of us working.

"The common story with SAHPs is that the working parent usually has to work stupid hours in a high-stress job to make up the cash shortfall. Why are people sneering that some of us value equality? I think it is much fairer that both partners work in normal jobs with normal work-life balance, rather than one stay at home and one work themselves into a heart attack."

So if someone makes millions they should just jack it in and get a £50K job in the name of equality because SAHPs are not allowed? Yes that would encourage business and enterprise and really propel the U.K. economy.

I mean arguing on here Sissynova. Why can't your DH do pick ups? Why can't he clean the loo on Wednesdays? Why can't he batch cook? What is the point of those questions?

I don’t know what field you or your friends work in where everyone is working till 6pm+ then logging back on in the evenings, but me and my husband earn 100k between us and work 9-5 only. My manager (next band of seniority) clocks off at 4:50pm most days and doesn’t log in outside of that. I work 35h a week and husband works 36.5. Sometimes one of us will work “late” until 6 but that is a choice/exception. Maybe your husband needs to change fields into one with better work life balance…..

The common story with SAHPs is that the working parent usually has to work stupid hours in a high-stress job to make up the cash shortfall. Why are people sneering that some of us value equality? I think it is much fairer that both partners work in normal jobs with normal work-life balance, rather than one stay at home and one work themselves into a heart attack.

What does that have to do with parents working? Why would there be petty dramas over who does what? Why would equality be a list of housework tasks?

Do you think all couples argue about housework just because they work? Do you think couples when one stays at home never have issues with who does what?

If couples don’t have respect for each-other and argue because one doesn’t do enough or one feels taken advantage of that only gives an insight into their relationship, it has nothing to do with working or not working.

How does anyone in a marriage “just decide” not to be employed? It’s a partnership, very few people I know would make such a unilateral decision about their employment and parenting and present it as a “just decide”. And how does this imaginary fait accompli help the OP determine whether she should quit work or curtail swimming for a bit or if a big declutter would help?

@Citrines - what would have happened if you had changed your mind and wanted to go back to work? Would your DH have made any compromises to help support you?

He wouldn’t have agreed and it never would’ve happened anyway because I earn more than him.

But then I also wouldn’t have agreed if he wanted to be a SAHP either.

@SouthLondonMum22 So what if you had a baby and realised, despite your plan to return to work at 6 months or a year or whenever it was, you couldn't bear to be separated and decided to be a SAHM until school age. What would he have done about that?