DH pressuring me to find a job

No, but assuming that it was a joint decision, getting the OP back into work should be a joint endeavour and her husband should be supporting her to find a job/career path that she'd like to do, including by making it clear that he intends to take up the slack at home.

Wow my parents died at 75 and 79 in last few years Both my brother and I have previously had. cancer and we are both early 50s. So chances are I will be lucky to get much past 70

Hang on, but there is no mention of the OP wanting to not be a SAHM for 9 years? Many women go straight back to full time jobs after maternity/kids in nursery till 6pm (I didn’t - I wanted to be a SAHM till school age), so im presuming OP could have gone back to work after 9 months as millions of women do? She chose a career break (as I did) and her DH worked whilst she worked at home.

The difference now is the kids are in school, the level of work at home does not come anything close to what she will have been doing with babies/toddlers. Totally exhausting. So is it unfair to suggest the idea of a small job to help with the financial extras (holidays, birthday’s etc). I cant see anything wrong with that after 9 years at home.

Im presuming OP wasn’t ordered to stay at home by her DH and she chose to be a SAHM?

I love my part-time job (for many benefits other than money - we can live without my salary). There are a huge range of jobs you can do within school hours. Im happy taking less money now to keep up office skills, to not have a huge gap in my CV and still be home for pick up.

I do think its harder to get back into work, the longer you stay out. Many part-time jobs can lead to bigger things when the kids are older, you don’t need to be there at pick up etc and I don’t think its a good idea for anyone to stay out of work completely during school years. It sounds like OP hasn’t looked around at what is actually on offer and how a small job now could progress in the future.

Well, that depends a bit on what he was earning when the kids came along, I suppose. I could have afforded to pay for the childcare that I needed to maintain my career without DH's involvement, if I had needed to, and cover our living expenses on top. I was always the higher earner and we didn't actually need DH's income at all.

But of course, if a child has two parents, then they are jointly responsible for all aspects of raising that child. That's rather different from claiming that he couldn't have built his career without her support. We don't actually know.

I misspoke, he doesn't necessarily need her to take care of them, but he definitely needed that or for her to share the load financially for childcare if she was working. Because if he was a single dad, paying for someone to take of the kids all day while he works long hours to progress in his career ain't cheap!

As I said upthread, in OPs position, the only minimum wage type job I would be interested in would be one where the job itself was something I wanted to do (even if only to get me out of the house) or one that would lead to a role I wanted to do in future. In OPs position, I would probably want to train for an actual career, but would expect DH to either step up and take over some of tge 'wifework' or accept that we would be buying in a lot of help once I was working. I absolutely wouldn't do a job I didn't enjoy simply to increase family income by an insignificant amount.

Is op's husband able to offer his free labour to cover her while she restarts her career while being absent from her current role such as drop offs and pick ups, illness absences of kids, holidays, cooking and cleaning? If the answer is no then he has to up his game in that department, share the load with you or hire people when he can't step up.

What about her mental health? Is it good to be at home 5 days a week when the kids are at school? Ofcourse work at home (housework etc) is important but we are only seeing it from OP’s side. Perhaps the DH is thinking being outside the home would be good for his wife and I totally agree with that (as someone who has been in her position). He hasn’t pushed her to get a job whilst the kids needed actual childcare before school. Other than housework/washing etc (which all parents do around full time or part time jobs), its quite unusual to have any parent stay home with no job once the kids are in school.

Yet another man who benefited from wife being a SAHM, barely sees his DCs and now wants wife to go out to work + do all the childcare and housework outside her work hours too.

Whay does he do outside work hours OP? There's a lot of projecting on here by people who think you should take the most basic minimum wage jobs - that they'd never ever consider themselves. The same jobs that can't be filled here because people dont want to do them.

The tutoring suggestions are good. & working from home could suit you.

Why do you say that be could not have done it without her taking care of the kids? Presumably, you're aware that lots of people do build very successful careers without a partner at home to look after their children?

Have you never heard of childcare? Sure, he would have had to cover his half of the costs, and he'd have had to cover his share of the housework etc, but there is no actual evidence that he needed a SAHP at home in order to progress his career.

Why is op expected to get just any job while her husband had her support to pursue an actual career (and yes he could not have done it without her taking care of the kids). Double standards

I can’t believe there are 700 replies and not one of them from OP……

You sound stuck up and entitled to me!
Just get a job to help contribute!

Actually OP said they have no luxuries, not that they couldn't afford them.

Unless it was to do a job which I enjoyed, or which was going to lead to one I enjoyed, I wouldn't work for £800 a month if my DP were a 'well paid London lawyer'. and I had young school age DCs. It would probably cost us more than that in extra domestic help / after school care / other services needed to make the logistics work and make family life stressful for no real benefit.

I would however do training / work experience that would lead to a career I wanted to pursue longer term, even if it meant a short term reduction in net family income.

Sorry, wrong thread!

As a general rule, society still expects men to provide financially and women to do unpaid caring work.

The sooner that we acknowledge that men and women have equal responsibility for providing financially and unpaid caring work, these issues will keep on arising.

Of course, couples can decide to split those responsibilities differently between them, but then each partner typically has a different view of what's "fair".

The default position has to be 50/50 across the board, with each partner being equally responsible for everything. Any divergence from this needs to be by negotiation and mutual agreement - neither party can just demand that the other does more than their fair share.

But Op says money is an issue/ they want to buy a house and currently have no money for luxuries. If she could earn say £800 a month when the kids were at school, that would surely really help the household?

This thread has really highlighted to me how easy we are as a society on men who just choose not to parent.

Men do this shit all the time and no one bats an eye at it.

Some of the ageism/ sexism on here is horrific. I've always been the main earner. No way would I expect DH (who did the bulk of the school pick ups / drop offs around his flexible but less well paid work when DCs were young) to take any job he could get just for the £ if we didn't need it.

In OPs position I would think about the work I would enjoy that would fit in with DHs long hours law job and build towards that. I certainly wouldn't want to doo a minimum wage job just for the money when money isn't an issue.

If tech or business analysis is of interest, Code First Girls could be worth looking at and would fit in with some part time work to build confidence but would involve evening online classes. Something with daytime classes might work better. If teaching is of interest, I think there are now post grad apprenticeship routes.

@Lion400 I think life expectancy models are adjusted for lots of factors so each generation gets a different result? Ironically, everyone in my husband’s family live into their 90’s and most of our elderly neighbours are well into their late 80’s/early 90s where i live (admittedly an affluent area).

My family barely make it to 70, though (both parent died of smoking related illnesses, mum at 56 and father at 72, female cancers run in the fam too so aunt died at 47) so I think they’ve single-handedly brought the national average for their generation down a few years 🤣

Hmm. I see both of our quotes are from the ONS. If I put Age 1 and Female in to the life expectancy calculator, it says life expectancy is 91yrs!

How does that work? Average life expectancy taken from the population census for a Female is 82yrs, using the calculator - putting Age 1 (the youngest possible) it is 91yrs. Doesn’t quite add up.

UK life between 0-1 can’t affect life expectancy that much!!!

That’s life expectancy at birth. Gwenhwyfar specifically said the life expectancy of someone who has already made it to middle age.

A woman who’s 41 can expect to live until 87 on average.

See: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/articles/lifeexpectancycalculator/2019-06-07

Not true. From the ONS:
Women: 82yrs
Men: 78yrs

Makes ‘middle age’ approx 40yrs, give or take.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/lifeexpectancies/bulletins/nationallifetablesunitedkingdom/2020to2022

@BusyMummy001 , I know someone currently in a mainland Europe medical school. Straight As at A-level. It's as you said, simply not enough med school places for the number of bright and talented students who apply, *.