Who is living life the right way?

It has got me thinking about whether I’m doing the right thing or not by my own family.

Personally, I think if you are thinking that then you know it's not the right thing for your family, what is the point of working this hard to retire in 10 years and miss your children growing up? You will never get the time back with them.

Presumably if they are all in school this situation has been like it for a while, so ask yourself this, if you had a life limiting illness and were given 2 months to live, or (god forbid) one of your children received a terminal diagnosis, would you regret not spending the time with them when you had the chance, or would you be okay with it and think that you've done the right thing?

Be honest with yourself and that is your answer.

Money can always be made, things are just things, and you will never get your time back.

Unless you have to put your children in wrap around care (like a lot of people have no choice but to do) then I secretly judge parents who choose to do it purely for lifestyle purposes.

If you are happy, crack on with what you are doing. If you want to make a change, have a good think about what you want and how you can get there. Presumably you have a bit of wiggle room with your rental investments?

Sister B but that's because I love horses and value lots of time with children and for them to do lots of activities. Not too many but let them try lots of things. She is lucky to have DH to provide.

Sister A is living a life I wouldn't aspire to. Life is for living not working 60 hours a week. I imagine she just be very stressed but probably has no choice. Sounds like someone in my family and you can tell she spends v little time with her kids. She can't control her boys at all. The 7 year old still has a dummy 😮 and kids on ipads constantly when in restaurants etc as she genuinely can't manage them as she's not used to having them from what I can tell

Sister A sounds jealous of Sister B, who has much more time with her children because she's funded by her husband. Sister A "does it all" because she has too, but tells herself it's the better way to be, to try and convince herself she wouldn't rather be Sister B

Fair enough. It does irritate me when men want a parent to be at home but somehow, it never seems to be them. At least your DH discussed it and considered it himself.

He actually sounds similar to my DH, though he wouldn't want to be a SAHP but he isn't as career focused as I am so after reaching a certain level, became content with meeting targets and getting bonuses whereas I'm the one always chasing a promotion when the opportunity comes up.

To be fair to my DH, when we met I was the higher earner, he was just happy taking the easy road job wise. He had 2 degrees, he’s a learning nerd, but was happy in a call centre operator role. My job included travel and relocating. We talked about him being a SAHP at one point but I was made redundant during my second pregnancy. I’d worked my way up in the private sector and was being paid well above average for my role. Even after I went back to work part time after baby #1 I still earned more than his full time job. Once I was made redundant and even with industry connections I would never get a new role anywhere near as cushy as I had. That’s when we reassessed everything. I only went back to work briefly after our 2nd, thats when DH stepped up and I stopped working, neither of us has ever been particularly career focussed. DH works hard but he’s happy to clock out at the end of the day, he’s happy meeting targets and getting bonuses, but isn’t keen on promotions. But because he has qualifications and is actually quite good at what he dose he’s exceeded anything I could ever earn.

What would happen if you said you weren't going to work over the weekend and every evening? I assume you're a senior civil servant so you won't be badly paid, but you're probably also not well enough paid to work all the hours God sends.

I am public sector and I'll have weeks, even months, when I am working 60 hours a week but it's clearly bad for my health and it's not something I sustain as a long term thing. I've made it clear whenever I have taken a job that I'll put in the hours when necessary but that there has to be give as well as take. So far no one has had an issue with that.

I guess what I'm saying is, if you could cull your weekend working to pretty close to nothing, claw back even two evening a week and arrange to knock off work at 4pm religiously one day a week, you'd massively improve your work life balance. Working even less might improve it more but maybe small steps are the way to start.

We are gifted life- there is no "right" way to do it.
Clearly the lives of sister A and B are not comparable- sister A obviously gets no support whereas sister B either has a partner or a trust fund.
I would be wary of always living for tomorrow- sister A's children will not have a second chance to build great childhood memories, and clearly the children of sister B are much more likely to have great childhood memories.
Having an eye to the future is a sound strategy- but it is no guarantee you will do better in the future, life has a way of throwing curve balls.
Rental properties are also not the licence to print money they have been in the past, taxes have been coming for buy to let landlords, and will continue to increase.
In the future the "better quality of life" you have invested in will probably not impact the lives of your daughters greatly, as they will leave home and have households of their own.
There has to be a reasonable middle path between these extremes.

God, you'd have to pay me a ton of £ ro work 60 hours per week. What does your hourly rate work out at?

They usually do. One of those reasons is because even if they want a SAHP at home, they are rarely willing to give up their career to do it themselves.

It sounds like it's just the other way around with OP, she is the higher earner with the best career trajectory and her DH is able to do the school run by working less hours and also having one day a week with nursery aged DC.

They are doing what works for them

Because he has 2 degrees I have zero GCSEs, my years of work experience count for nothing when looking at career trajectories, not that I cared about a career, I worked to pay the bills. I was very lucky I was able to earn a decent wage given my lack of education. At the end of the day though, he simply had far greater earning potential, he is younger than me and I wanted another baby.

Happy?

Edited - I also suspect (he’s never said) that it was because it was his mum he missed most growing up and because he lost her so young he wanted our DCs to always have me around.

Not sure how you could conclude from the OP in isolation that sister A doesn't spend good time with her kids. May not be much compared to some but it may well be of good quality. And I'm not sure how you conclude that sister B is palming her kids off, as you put it. Some kids actually want to do activities and allowing them to isn't palming them off at all.

OP this comment, and others, illustrates how there isn't a right answer. Ultimately whatever you do someone will come along with a negative judgement about you so the best thing to do is what makes you and your own family happy. Every individual is different and wants different things. Not all adults, or children, are the same.

If you have the option to work less then do.
One of my children became very unwell a couple of years ago, it put everything into perspective for me.
I appreciate some people can’t but if you have the option to slow down and spend more time with your family then you won’t regret it.

If DH felt so strongly about it, why didn’t he become the SAHP?

I agree with this. My DH will be left a very nice inheritance due to his parents sending him to live with his grandparents when he was little because they were both working, he was the youngest, his older siblings lived at home, he saw them almost daily but it effected him especially after his mother died in her early 50s. He spent so much time away from her because her and his DF were building a nice retirement nest egg, she never saw it or any of the many things his grandparents took him to. I know he couldn’t care less about what he will eventually be left by his DH. I wouldn’t say he’s jealous, but he definitely envies the time his older siblings had with his parents.

We don’t have much but we decided sending our dc to full time childcare to take home a few extra pounds a month wasn’t worth it. Well actually DH decided, I was happy to go along. For us it’s about having someone home, doing school runs, sick days, assemblies, spontaneous trips to the park after school…

I know we are very lucky to be in this position.

i do find it condescending when people talk about only working mothers being a positive role model. I worked, I worked from age 13, multiple jobs at a time for many many years, travelled the world, had amazing experiences through work opportunities but now, just because I choose not to work while my children are growing I’m somehow less than or leading a bad example, it really pisses me off.

She said she is sister a

Hi op,

that.

it got you thinking. If you want to make changes because now that you have done this, you want to do that…why not? You don’t need to be only one side of yourself forever. Maybe you feel you capitalisé enough and want to venture on other difficulties land?

Good luck op 🌺

There is no “right” way to do life.

I’m sister B. Not your sister but describes me.

I have a sister A. I love my life and am very grateful. No expensive cars. That’s sister A.

I live quite like sister B except that I work more hours. I don’t think there is a right or a wrong but I would never choose to swap!

Is this a "hypothetically" question/post?

If not, then which sister are you?

...or are you just an "interested observer"? 🤔

My husband is a civil servant working similar hours and it's good in that it funds me being a sahm to our 3 kids under 4. But I feel like he misses out on a lot of them growing up and I do feel lonely at times. The job is great and makes a difference etc, but I think it's a bit like gas, it fills up any space its given. Maybe have a think about whether all of those hours are worth it. He does a 9 day fortnight so that he gets a magic wednesday to spend with us all

It sounds like sister A is jealous of sister B.

There is no right way to live life. If only it were that simple. Unfortunately there is no formula any of us can follow that will guarantee a happy, healthy and prosperous life. It’s a rather reductive way of thinking to imagine there is, not to mention lacking in empathy
as the implication is that people who don’t ’do life right’ are to blame when things (as they do for everyone) go wrong.
Why the need to be so judgmental? Well, I think lots of people feel the need to vindicate their own life choices by finding fault when others go a different route. But how someone else lives their life has no relevance or impact on yours.
Also, the very notion of choice over how to live life is quite privileged - in many times and places women have had very little self-determination and even in modern Britain some still don’t. Rather than thinking in a prescriptive way about the ‘right’ way to live life, wouldn’t it be more realistic to think about positive ways to live? Both examples you give seem to have positives, along with some potential drawbacks, both could work really well depending on the individual women involved.