Reasonable to expect a surgeon to do this?

Pay for help if both your jobs are too demanding.

It’s a bit like the old “my partner is a long haul airplane pilot , is it fair I have to do nearly all the emergency pickups….”

or “ my partner is the commander of an atomic submarine , is it fair I have to do nearly all the emergency pickups”

or “ my partner is on deployment in a war zone, is it fair I have to do nearly all the emergency pickups”

Actually the submarine one is probably a fair moan because I am not sure we actually have any nuclear subs in commission at the moment…….

It's his child too. Not just OP's child.

8am starts very normal in surgery (I'm an anaesthetist so I start when they start!) - in fact in my previous trust we started at 7:30. Surgical ward rounds often start at that time too.

As for being able to drop everything to pick child up, again can be very hard/impossible during operating time (though as @welshweasel says, they won't be operating every day). Are we talking routine pickups, or an emergency?

He may be taking the piss. He may just have selfishly not considered childcare as you are there to pick up the slack, and he has "always" been able to prioritise his job. Hard to know for sure.

@Hateam or course he could! What do you think would happen if he suddenly started vomiting an hour before his clinic was to start? It's not ideal, and we all try to find cover so that we don't have to cancel patients in this sort of situation, but ultimately, we are human and shit happens!

What do you do, OP? Do people's lives depend on it? Because my cousin who is a breast surgeon is dealing with an absurd waiting list. She can't just cancel a list and walk out. People with cancer have waited weeks or months. For some of them their lives are literally in the balance.

It sounds like he needs an au pair or an old-fashioned Mother's (Father's) Help.

There is childcare that can be arranged. If he is a surgeon he will be surely clever enough to figure that out

I had surgery cancelled for all sorts of crap. My recent one took 4 attempts (no idea why). It happens 🤷

Just because he can't leave his place of work doesn't mean he gets to not pull his weight childcare wise. Perhaps he needs to fund paid childcare for after school and pick ups for example.

He can't just cancel.an afternoon long-waited patient consultantations either. How would you feel if you has waited 3 months for an appointment and then been told whilst you where on the waiting room that it had been cancelled?

Generally if at work or on call he has to prioritise work, but he won't always be at work and if on call he can have the kids as long as there's a plan b that can be activated within a few minutes (they will have a maximum time they can be away from the hospital, for my friend it's 30 mins to be in the department). Depending on the age of the child(ren) and wider family etc you may need to have a plan b eg a trusted neighbour you could pay to help you out, housekeeper etc.

What are the childcare arrangements? Who is responsible for them on which days?

Oh, and plenty of our students and juniors are parents too (or hope to be in the future). They are usually relieved to see that their boss is human too!

Then he should arrange wrap around childcare. Everyone does it. What makes a surgeon so special he can absolve all childcare responsibilities to the ex wife???

Of course he can't drop everything and leave work.

Even when not in surgery, he'll have patient consultations, meetings, possibly ward rounds or training sessions with junior doctors and medical students.

OP, you have a good income between you. Quite easily enough to hire someone to do drop offs and pick ups if that's what you want.

Even if he's technically on a non clinical day, I consultant is responsible for junior staff and will be called on in an emergency situation or if the juniors need his input.

As for clinics, no he can't just leave. Patients often wait months to see a specialist surgeon (which is what a consultant is!!) Plus he will ne doing follow-ups for previous patients etc.

Not all men are shirking responsibility.

I'm a surgeon so qualified to answer this!

Most consultants will only operate one (maybe 1.5) days a week. On a theatre day it's tricky to leave suddenly to pick up a sick child. I would at least have to finish the operation I'm doing, then cancel the rest of the list. I would try to come up with a better solution but yes, sometimes surgeons will have to leave halfway through a theatre list.

On days when I'm doing clinic or endoscopy, again it's not ideal, but family comes first, and sometimes you just have to leave.

Most of us will have 2 non clinical days a week (for admin etc), which are usually very flexible.

I do school drop off 4 days out of 5 (to breakfast club), my husband does it on my theatre day. All but one of my consultant colleagues have kids and plenty of them do the school run too.

On call days are also tricky, but cover would have to be found if you were taken ill, so same applies to sick kids. I'd cover a colleague in this situation without a second thought.

But his 'normal clinics and non-clinical days' are also something he probably can't just walk out of. He doesn't have to be in theatre for his job to be something you can't just nip out of to pick up a child.

If I turned up for appointment at my consultant's clinic and was told 'Sorry, they're just doing the school run at the moment' I wouldn't be tremendously impressed.

Similarly, I doubt the trainees and students who work under him would be particularly impressed if he breezed out of their vital supervision time because his child had thrown up at school.

He could certainly pay for a childminder on 'his' days with the kids.

Consultant surgeons hours are long and he won't be able to drop his patient responsibilities to do school runs. BUT his salary would pay for wrap around childcare for "his" days if you're aiming for 50:50?

He is still a parent and has parental responsibility. Then he needs to find a different solution but to force the ex partner into the role of the default parent to advance their own career is not fair. Do you not think surgeons should have parental responsibility then? Do you think it's fair to make it the problem if the ex partner and deny them a career?

Im married to a hospital Consultant. He leaves for work at 7am and is usually home between 7-8pm. I can count on one hand the number of school runs he’s done in 15 years. And any emergency at school is on me. Every second of their day is accounted for and they can’t just walk out on patients . It sucks, believe me there’s been times I’ve cried with frustration, but that’s just how it is.

Right. So you've waited six months for a hospital appointment, and you get there on the day to find your appointment is cancelled because the consultant has had to rush off to pick up little Johnny from playgroup.

You'd be happy with that, would you?

You do realise what a surgeon does, I hope? Think about what a typical day's work entails, and you will hopefully work out why he might find it a teensy bit difficult to interrupt his mildly important work to do school runs etc.

"Nurse, hold that wound closed for half an hour - I've got to fetch the kids from school. I will stitch it when I get back, if the traffic isn't too bad."

even if he is a surgeon, he will not be in the theatre every day. There will be normal clinics, non clinical days etc. He is taking you for a ride. I can understand that he cannot leave an ongoing operation but that is not what he is doing every day.