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

Sounds to me like your best bet is to rethink and probably move to a less rural area. Then you can use childcare which covers the hours you need to work full time and start building up your career. Aside from anything else, your pension is taking a hammering if you're only working part time.

Yes it's an upheaval but the alternative seems to be staying put, having no decent childcare, you being stuck doing school drops off and pick up until the youngest is 11 and finishing primary school. And I bet the next thing is that living so rurally, you'll need to drive them to a bus stop for secondary school .... etc etc ....

Before you know it, you'll be at the end of your working life with a crap pension and years of frustration at not achieving what you're capable of.

Make the changes now - play the long game

And yes, the imbalance is real.
Thats why women need to behave they want the same things.

OP you aren't unreasonable and the problem is when women are delighted to tking a back seat.
10 years ago my DH was earning 3x my salary and fast forward now we are both earning the same, with him earning a bit more, but he might now look for a job with a slight paycut as is close to burnout in hus current role. And it's fair enough.

It doesn't happen by magic. Back 10 years ago I said to him my career was important to me and that I couldn't be the one focusing in the kids and the house just because I was the low earner. He really supported me in my career by doing his parenting part, requesting flexibility, dropping work when required (hospital appointments etc), the same as I did, but 50% of the time, so very equal approach.

He is now very happy we are both high earners. He is in a lot of pressure and can relax, he can conte.plate a paycut. He doesn't have to be the man with the big job. And I don't have to accept I'm the wife focusing on my kids because they are "my priority".

Talk to your husband. Tell him how important is for you to advance on your career. Make it happen.

I never understand why women think ‘well,naturally my career went on the back burner’ why? You don’t have to sit back and passively prop up someone else life.
you need to change your mindset and just go for it.

it’s never easy to do these things but it is possible.

Why would it be different? If you earn the same,less or equal to your husband, there still gotta be someone to pick up the kids from school and someone to stay with them when they're sick?
I can honestly say it does not bother me to be there for my children when they want or need me. Doesn't matter what I earn?

What are you actually unhappy about?

Do you want your life to have more value to the outside world or more equal income?

We’ve done this the other way around. When we got together, DH earned about 4 times as much as me. We prioritised my career and now I earn about three-quarters of what he earns. Obviously I’m not over-taking him yet but it’s meant we have a fairly equal partnership - our earning potential isn’t too far apart and DH is a very hands-on dad who pulls his weight around the house,

Oh get a grip and stop using virtue signalling just to be nasty.

It doesn’t mean your career takes a back seat. You need to work out an equitable arrangement for child caring responsibilities. My husband also has a senior job but he still has to do his bit. Given so many households nowadays have both parents working it really is not uncommon to see more senior people having to do a share of kids stuff. It’s becoming much more normal. You’ll always get the lazy twats who just make excuses and dodge their responsibilities.

I earn more than DH. I have four times his earning potential. Yet he has manouvered himself into a position where he is working ridiculous hours to push me into the domestic role. I’m furious!! It could be worse OP. I feel like I have the worst of both worlds. I’m not sure I’ll stay TBH.

If he wasn’t paid as well as you want in your thread title how does that actually help?

If you were a man would this be the case? Would it automatically be him whose career 'took a back seat' if you were the higher earner. I bet it would not.

I earn far more than my DH. Always have done and always will do but it was me who went part time when the kids were little.

My point is that he can take a step back if he wants to you just both have to agree to take the financial hit.

If it's always somehow 'impossible' for the higher earner to ever take time off with the kids then how can the lower earner ever progress? They are just trapped and it happens to a lot of women. Worst case scenario he then leaves you.

So you’re saying that on the one hand you want to pursue your career. On the other hand it’s too expensive and inconvenient to move somewhere that makes that easier to do. So you’d rather forgo an entire career’s worth of salary and self worth because moving house might be a bit of an upfront cost.

You won’t engage it questions about your husband making changes.

You’re really just here to moan about a situation entirely of your own making but which you are not really willing to change.

Apologies if I've missed it, but was this not discussed before you married or had children?

So as a result it’s naturally meant my career has had to take a back seat.

Why? At various times in our marriage we’ve both been the higher earner, neither of our careers suffered for it. What an odd concept.

Well you've answered your own dilemma. There are things you could do, but you don't see the point.

Other people might do things differently. For example, I've already explained that dh and I set out from the start to not let either of our careers become incompatible with family life so that when we embarked on babies, we were able to share everything as equally as possible. We chose not to live so rurally that childcare would be very difficult to source.

You've made different choices, and that's valid, but you now seem to resent them

You could do an OU course to have even better credentials than you have now.

I think it's only the end of your career if you want it to be. I appreciate being a working mum is not easy, I appreciate you say you're not in the "nanny bracket" but ultimately if you want to work , you can and you will.
My children are adults now ,my son went to school with 3 brothers whose mum was at the time manager of barclays bank. I'm talking 25 years ago. She openly admitted that all her wages go on childcare because she didn't want to lose her job. More recently my cousins wife is quite high up in a corporate worldwide company. Her kids are ferried constantly from nursery to school to childminders to kids clubs. She's says it's stressful but she openly admits she likes putting on her work suits and heels and earning her money.
I think if you're determined to it you can. You just have to ask yourself do you have that determination? There will always be obstacles if you sit down and think about them. You just need to decide if you can overcome them, plenty of women do

Have you thought about changing your career? I did to fit more in with my children's school hours? Have you thought about using your energy to retrain?

while some jobs offer flexbility there are a whole heap of jobs that don't and can't , many jobs require you to be physically onsite often at specific times.if you are in construction or on a production line ( these jobs can be well paid) and everyone needs everyone else you can't have one person starting late or leaving early never mind those on fixed shifts my DH spent a lot of time in building trade often everyone needs to be there befre 8am to travel to the site and they all come back at same time too so if you have a dental appointment you either have to drive to site maybe 40-50 miles and back again or the policy is that you are off the whole day as you are in a team with X number of members which can't operate minus one for 3 hours while you go to an appointment, they usually facilitated this by finishing lunchtime on Friday so you could book appointments friday afternoon
it is the same if you are a paramedic / police etc or work at a bakery or a car plant there are set hours you can't nip out for a school run, a concert or to drop at brownies. most jobs are not actually office and computer based