DH pressuring me to find a job

Your youngest is off to school - your DH is not unreasonable to expect you to now contribute financially. However he can’t have it both ways, any more than you can.

Exactly. And what is a suit if not a uniform?

Life is expensive. Inflation has caused mortgages and utility bills to skyrocket. Even good professions don’t really afford a high quality of life any more. That said, you are not communicating well as a couple on this issue. You need a shared short, medium and long term plan.

Short:
You look for family-friendly work during this school day to being in a little pocket money. It will be low paid.

Medium:
You identify your chosen career and your path to that career. Identify necessary training and work experience you need, how much it will cost and when you could do it. He will have to pay for this if he wants the benefits.

Long:
You enter your career when your children are teenagers and you have more time.

Totally this.

Who cares if he’d be leaving the house in a suit and you’d be leaving in a uniform??? You sound like a total snob when you’ve got no qualifications or work experience to get a high pay high skilled role. And really some of the most important jobs in our society require a uniform.

Sounds like your dh has a good idea. It gives you confidence to start working. Alot of the jobs he suggested work around children or you can wrap around care at the school. Might be an idea to approach your local adult education college asap as they run free courses to help mums return to work. Good luck in your job search

Yes it is reasonable for you to go back to work when your children are in school full time. It must be very frustrating being solely financially responsible for the whole household when the other adult is capable of working but chooses not to. I’m not sure what you mean about having to go out wearing a uniform. Time to put your big girl pants on and get on with it.

Your DH may want you to be earning but changing circumstances like that needs to be thought through.
OP what was your previous profession, or what career do you want to build?
Can you sit down with your DH and work out a sensible plan for how to move forward and what that’d mean re childcare and other responsibilities at home. If your unsure about what career you want to build the TA option others mentioned is a good option BUT your DH needs to fully understand that’d mean changes at home.

In advance of returning to the work, you need to have a clear understanding with him as to how you will split school drop-off and pick-ups between you both, the logistics of after school and holiday child-care, how days your children are too ill for school will be covered, etc. How your evenings and weekends will operate with regards to household stuff like cooking, cleaning, shopping, etc, etc. If he refuses to partake in any of this, refuse to be pressurised to return to work.

Though try and find something that suits you, so that you can start to earn your own money, so that you are not reliant on him and have something to fall back on down the line.

There is nothing wrong with any of those jobs, but I would make it very clear that i cannot take a job and also do everything including all the school holidays and sick leave children take. He doesn’t get to have his cake and eat it too- men with working wives have to contribute to the house and parenting.
take a job, minimum wage is fine. Manage it and make sure your dh contributes at home too. Think about going back to study in a year or two, perhaps in evenings.

I think you are both being a bit unreasonable. He to expect that you go to work without it impacting on his life in any way and you for being snobby about what jobs you are prepared to do.

I'd say just try to get a job - any job to get you back into the market. You might find you enjoy interacting with people outside the home. But time taken for meals, cleaning etc needs to be cut back in order to allow this to happen without impacting the DCs. If your DH is unhappy about this, he either needs to do these chores or question the economic viability of a cleaner versus your salary.

Apropos I don't understand why finances are so tight if he is a well paid London lawyer ? I'd be slightly worried he is squirrelling money away and encouraging you to work to reduce any divorce settlement.

Would he compromise if you went into training to utilise your degree? A part -time masters, a PGCE, law/accountancy exams so that he could see you would be working in a year or two, but would ease you into mixing ‘work’ with the changing needs of the children, but give you a job at the end that might pay more and be more in line with your educational background? (I did an open uni degree when my kids were young, and an MA recently so eased back into non-mummy life/work that way).

Just being cynical here, but could he have an agenda - ie is the marriage itself solid or do you think he might be considering a divorce in the near future … and if you are working he’d had to pay you less in a settlement? Sorry, I am just bemused, given you say that you are comfortably off, he works long hours so you have nearly all the responsibility and graft of the parenting, why he would encourage you to do any old job that a) won’t really fit around the kids (shift work requires flexibility and you’d struggle when kids are sick) and b) don’t actually pay very much?

I think there is more to this, if I’m honest.

You'll find school holidays are a big problem.

I started as a TA after a long break.

Wrap round childcare (breakfast and after school club) took most of my earnings. And there were lots of little things for dh / the family that I could no longer do. (Though I quite liked that tbh.) And the state of the house slid.

So long as your dh understands what he is asking / will get for this embrace it. I LOVED getting a regular lunch break and morning break. And it was nice to talk to have conversations with other adults that didn't involve our dc.

DH would

I always wonder why women bother marrying and having kids with these shitty men that aren't interested in spending time with their children? Are they just really bad judges of character, or what?

DH and I both wanted to maximise time with our dc when she was little, so we worked our hours around each other as much as possible.

😂 @C1N1C you and I haven't met the same men! There are millions of men who do absolutely anything to get out of any childcare whatsoever. That's fairly well known I would have thought.

Simply op, the amount of hours you can do, will depend entirely upon how much he is prepared to take on in the home/kids. And also how much effort you both want to put in to your dc.

Walking to school, cooking food from scratch, driving to and organising daily extra curricular, helping home work, decent stint of reading every day, tidy house can easily be 8 hours work.

Of course it can also be very few hours too, with only screens and chicken nuggets.

So it depends how you want to/can afford to bring up your children.

For my own life, I found that working 10 hours a week only during school hours,with me doing the vast majority of house and dc, was about the right balance between me and my dh putting the same amount of effort in.

Any more hours for me working in the week and he would have had to do more in terms of home/dc which he didn't want, and neither did I.

So yes, a discussion is to br had but he needs to know what the tipping point is of hours which would require him to up his game at home. This will be entirely your own family dependent.

Who are these men? I don't know any men who would want to spend all day, every day with their children.

He's in a high stress job where the only reward is covering the family's basic costs.
If he gets made redundant, or has a stroke or heart attack from the stress, do you have a cushion at all?

Ah another woman who is happy to criticise this dynamic when any man would happily switch positions.

So many women on here make out like child-rearing is some sort of burden, and that they're giving up so much, and that the man should be grateful. No! Men would kill to spend all that time with their child instead.

I think they're pretty low stress tbh. Have done both when I was younger.

Of course, they can be busy and any customer service role can be challenging at times, but they aren't the type of jobs that you typically go home and worry about. You don't have the burden of significant responsibilities or difficult decisions to make.

Different people find different things stressful, though, and I guess it all depends on what you're comparing it to.

They’re some of the less stressful jobs I’ve done.

It’s not sustainable or fair for a household to be indefinitely supported by one person. “Running a household” is hard work but plenty of families with both parents working FT manage it. I’m a single parent working FT and manage it.

Long term it isn’t great to be wholly dependent on your husband for money either. Clearly you are not going to earn at parity with him so it will seem pointless but you have to start somewhere. If you really can’t bear the idea of minimum wage work then maybe do a degree or vocational training. It sounds like you are not desperate for money so this might br an investment worth making. But no one in this day and age can expect to be supported in perpetuity.

That said, he is going to have to make some adjustments to his own working life if he is serious about this. It sounds as if both of you have slightly unrealistic expectations about this and it’s time you starting to find out what is actually involved.

@nimski and if she worked full time and then did all the house and kids stuff then 'double shift' would be a fair description.

If she works part time while the kids are at school then it's not 'double shift' and she's not doing more than him.

Your dh wears a tie because presumably he studied and worked his way up to the job he now has. Your choice was to not work, but stay at home. This is why you will have to wear a uniform and not your choice of nice clothing when you work.

If you are lucky enough to get one of those jobs that is. They might not want you, because you do come across as being work shy, entitled and a bit slow with managing even ordinary life.

But surely you understand this already.

You're not honestly suggesting that waitresses/retail are low stress are you?

🙄