To wish I hadn’t married a man with a well paid job

I’ve been in this situation. One thing I’d add from my experience is that it’s easy to lose confidence when you’ve been out of the workplace for a bit or have soft-pedalled your career, and then it becomes all too easy to tell yourself that you would be at work (or in a more senior position) but you can’t because you’ve sacrificed your career etc etc, when in fact that’s your loss of confidence talking and you could actually make the necessary changes to prioritise your career if you really wished to.

Not saying you should do any particular thing- I’ve had periods of SAHM, PT work and now FT work and they’ve all been valuable- but it is important to be honest with yourself about what’s out of your control and what’s within your control, and what’s the result of patriarchy etc and what’s actually the result of your own choices. I know from experience that it’s very easy to make a series of choices that each felt sensible at the time but taken together led to a situation I wouldn’t have chosen.

@CyanViewer I totally echo what @girlswillbegirls says.

Please go back to work. You are highly qualified.
As you said no amount of chats with other mums will substitute to have a career, being financially independent, using your education. You can do it. Start just looking into it, how you can make it possible. Spend money (lots if the kids are small) in the best childcare you can afford. You will be glad you did. x

A lot of people will post that you are ungrateful and should be glad you are financially comfortable.

But I sympathise. When my husband and I met we earned very similar. But as I took time out to have children DH’s career literally took off (he is a pilot).

Yes, we are okay money wise but I am resentful. The lion’s share of house, admin and child rearing automatically falls onto me cause I am at home and have the time. Dh does just enough not to piss me off. If I could switch roles and it not negatively impact my family I 100% would.

Dh gets so much self esteem and self worth from his job. I would love to wake up each morning get glammed up and and go to a job where I am respected and valued. Adult conversation would also be nice. Especially if my family catered to my sleep schedule the way we do for Dh.

Right now my everyday is very mundane and I can’t deny I am resentful. I even make an effort to go out, go to the gym and socialise in the evenings but the drudgery of the days are just mind numbing. When I explain this to dh he encourages me to get out and meet up with other mum friends during the day but no amount of coffee play dates can really make up for up how boring it all is.

@LostittoBostik it's not about being arsey, it's just frustrating when women sleepwalk into situations and then complain.

And to be honest, the OP made it clear she really likes the lifestyle her dh's almost 100k salary brings. That income would certainly have easily paid childcare for the first child, enabling her to keep up her career at full steam without compromising it. But she didn't and chose to have a second child.

People have pointed out that there are choices which lead to every situation. The OP made her choices, including living very rurally where childcare is less accessible. She also says she doesn't want to move. Or to discuss with her dh for him to maybe reconsider his work pattern.

They didn't "think it was fine". They were drowning and their dickhead DHs did nothing to help and prioritised themselves, letting their wives careers be trashed as a result.

Look at the post Covid divorce rate among parents of then young (primary) age children - it's extremely high

One woman's toddler drowned as she tried to look after toddler twins while also being expected to be on back to back zoom calls.

*foot down

I do agree with your overall point OP, and I don't know why everyone is being so arsey with you. You're very obviously right on the general substance (just not on wishing you were poorer as a family, which is what the original subject line seemed to suggest).

Can you agree with a DH a period when the kids are older where it's your time, and your career comes first? At that point he steps back/goes PT so you can focus 100 per cent and make lost ground?

That's my plan anyway. My DH is 12 years older than me, so when he winds down towards retirement and the DC are heading towards uni/leaving home I'm going to really put my food down during my 50s and 60s.

To be honest, a childminder to do school drop off and pick up can offer more flexibility if a primary school doesn't offer wraparound provision.

Very few people can do a school drop off for an 8:45 or 9:00 start and then get to work on time. Dh and I certainly couldn't so we used a childminder.

This is what I did too.

At my company, the more senior you are, the more flexibility you have. WFH was a thing before covid too.

You’re free to make that point, but you don’t need to frame it as a contradiction of what I said, because I was making a totally different point!

The point I'm getting at is if you don't have childcare until 9.00 standard school start time by the time people drop off and get to work it's 9.30.
Not every job has that amount of flexibility 2 or 3 days a week.
Lots of people are expected to be at work for 8.00-8.30

So ultimately something has to give. One other or both of you have to ask for flexible working - but employers don't need to give it.

Flexible working / reduced hours also means people are likely to be overlooked for promotion. Little point in both parties stalling their career.

The early years are tough. Very tough. They are sick a lot. Childcare is extremely expensive and even when in primary there are multiple days off or training days etc, where schools are closed. It's exactly this period when women have to put their foot down and refuse to give up their career no matter how junior they feel they are.

To see the women's salary vs childcare costs is very short sighted and also misogynistic. Why the men's salary is not taken into account?

That period in your life passes quite quickly and that's when you cannot come back to the same point. It's when it paid off all the juggling, all the multiple conversations with your DH/ partner that you want and need your career as much as he does. That you don't want him to go for the Big Job of 80 hour plus and travelling away because that fucks up your career big time. My own DH was perplexed when he heard that for the first time and knew I did prefer to do my awful night shifts for a while (requiring for him to stay put). If i didn't do that for those key years I wouldn't have progressed to where I am now.

As pp said before, it's all those decisions you make. We didnt have any "family help" or inheritance. Its important to see where you want to live, transport links, access to transport/ schools/ roads/ cities etc. its not about having the big house in the middle of nowhere. Also your DH travelling commitment, his flexibility etc.
The set up of two people with flexibility, and well paid jobs doesn't happen overnight. It requires a lot of commitment for years.

Of course. I’m not sure what you thought I was trying to say.

I posted initially simply to share my observation that I have seen a lot of fathers doing school drop offs and pick ups, agreeing with a poster who said it was becoming more socially acceptable for men to step up.

I mentioned in that post that it was an independent school, because that was relevant to the point that these men are likely to be high earners with”big jobs” and this whole thread is about men with “big jobs” not having an automatic excuse to step out of childcare.

I then mentioned in response to a poster who seemed to think that doing school drop offs meant having to start work at 10:30, that in fact our specific school allowed drop offs from 8, so it’s not a given that having a big job means you can’t do a school run.

(As it happens, I am rarely there at 8am myself and the parents of both sexes that I am seeing there are more likely to be around between 8:30 and 8:45.)

Nowhere did I suggest that I think anyone and everyone has access to private education or before-school care from 8 am.

@HotCrossBunplease can you actually understand that for many private school is just never going to happen, esp with VAT and multiple kids??

Most state schools do not have pre-school care starting at 8.00. Your very lucky if they have a breakfast club doing "toast to go" at 8.40 - yes give them toast then expect them to stand around in the playground and eat it!!!
In other words it's not really about providing pre-school care it's the school trying to manage the effects of poverty on kids.

I don’t think that a detailed discussion about the specifics of individual legal jobs is necessary or helpful on this thread. Regardless of what you intended to imply, I am afraid I did infer a somewhat defensive tone to what you said, tinged with a warning that I should not make sweeping statements about flexible working and law(something I never intended to do). If that makes me unreasonable, so be it.

Neither of those points was implied, nor can I see that they can reasonably be inferred. I was just pointing out that "arranging meetings" isn't a universal experience across different areas of law; in some areas there aren't really meetings, except for conferences with clients. Barristers I know also tend to have to travel a lot to court, so dropping a child at 8.30am (or 8am) and then being at a distant court might not help.

I hope you’re not trying to start some sort of “my type of law is more worthy than yours” collateral argument that has nothing to do with the thread?

Surely it’s self-evident that all jobs have variants which are more and less suited to flexibility? The point of my specifying my industry was, however, to show that I have first-hand evidence that even in law, a profession that is often perceived to be very high pressure and time-consuming, flexibility for men is becoming acceptable to employers.

But for what it’s worth, a couple of factual points:

1. My son’s school is open from 8am so there’s plenty of time to drop and be at work well in time for the start of the business day, certainly well before “10:35am”. Surely it’s attitudes like yours, suggesting that accommodating school runs means starting at 10:35am, which create stigmas and prevent employers from being willing to consider flexibility?
2. My colleagues and I are civil litigation and regulatory solicitors. We are obviously not in trial with the same frequency as barristers because, as I am sure you are well aware, good dispute resolution skills tend to result in settlements before proceedings are issued. If we are in trial then obviously we make alternative arrangements for our children.

Depends on the type of law? If they are in court, there's not likely to be any flexibility at all. You can't pop in at 10.35am after dropping infants at school with a cheery wave to a jury.

Yes, I agree with this. My son is in Year 3. He’s in an independent school so it’s a fair assumption that most of the parents are successful professionals. I would say that since my husband and I started doing school runs in 2021 there have always been minimum 40% men doing pick up and drop off on any given day, with most couples dividing it equally throughout the week, as we do. The more successful people are the more flexibility they tend to have. My male colleagues (law) also freely talk about arranging meetings around school runs and other childcare commitments. It really is becoming a social norm.

"It seems to me one setup that works best for equality is when two people are both in the same profession eg two lawyers two doctors two engineers because then each understands the rigours of what is required in each profession. I see a lot of successful and equal couples in this scenario."

Good point @ThreeLuckyStars and I also know lots of couples like this. DH and I both met studying law at university, so it wasn't a big surprise we ended up in the same line of work. A lot of the women barristers I know are married to / with another barrister, and doctors similarly.