If you’re married to a surgeon please tell me if you think I’m being unfair?

6 hours a week to yourself is loads! Does he get that?

I think YABU sorry. If you're finding your current setup stressful can one of you go part time? Hire a cleaner?

Depending on the setting surgeons may be expected to see everyone they are about to operate on and personally re-consent, check if they have any questions etc prior to 8am.
My friends have experienced problems in terms of patient flow issues- beds in recovery, beds to move patients to ward, available porters, available ODPs etc to get everything turned over so even though their list technically should be able to be completed in working hours it never is, and the managers certainly won't see them cancelling the last patient of the day every day! Sometimes it's obvious & taking someone in for a 4 hour op at 2.30pm means everyone is going to be late but no one is going to let them knock theatre on the head at that time and send the poor patient who's fasted and waited home.

I would LOVE to have a day childfree to myself every week!

What can you outsource to help you day to day, if you're finding things a struggle as they are?

It sounds ridiculous to me. I wouldn’t want a relationship that was so one sided, with someone so obsessed with their job that it was to the detriment of their wife and child. Sure. The money will be good in the future. But this is the here and now. Life is now, not the future. If you’re unhappy, you need to change things. I’d be looking for a more equal partner personally.

I would imagine that his is a high pressure job and not very flexible. It's nice that he has a weekend day with little one to give you a break. If you're both working and earning decent money, can you employ outside help? Cleaner or childminder?

I am a consultant Anaesthetist so spend all day working with surgeons- both Residents and Consultants.

Whilst this description may have fitted some of them when I started decades ago, I am blessed to work with some really delightful surgeons, none of whom would meet your description thankfully.

What I do know is that we all have to be in early to prep the patients, and we have to stay until the list is finished, and then go and check on our patients afterwards, and make sure they are all ok/ talk about how things went.

i would never make plans to collect my children on aTheatre day, as it would never happen, as the lists always run late. We have a nanny, and her 12 hours have to fit in around my husbands work, as even then my days are too long for her hours.

Thankfully as a Consultant I am not in every day (although that is partly as our theatre days are long ones) so we don’t need a nanny every day. And my husband helps out a lot (he also has a busy job)

i also know that when I do get home after a 12-15 hour day (often without a break) I am truly shattered, and laundry etc takes a back seat. Food is batch cooked so I don’t have to prep after a long day.

I had my children when I was a consultant, there is no way I could have managed with the shifts I worked as a junior Dr/ plus post grad exams etc.

The surgeons seem to be under much more pressure than the Anaesthetists too- we let our residents go home after their shift has finished but the surgical residents are usually expected to stay until the end of the list (as are both sets of Consultants obviously)

Who is ever happy to hand over 50% of income in a divorce?

My husband isn’t a surgeon but also has a very all-consuming job.

On the one hand, I get frustrated that my career/hobbies/social life all have to work around looking after the kids, because I can never rely on him being available at any given time to look after the kids.

To cope with this side of things I work part time because a full time job + 99% of running a house and two kids is too much - would that be an option for you? Or if you prefer working full time, you can hopefully afford to ‘throw money at’ certain problems (cleaner, meal box subscription, babysitter) to make your life easier. I would also advocate trying to cultivate some mum friends - it is quite lonely when your partner is absent a lot of the time - but they are not the only source of solidarity and support out there.

On the other hand, his job is not just a job, it’s is a vocation and achieves something worthwhile - I knew, and respected, that when we met. I knew it would be inconvenient, but I don’t think you can demand to change things that are so integral to a person. I also remind myself that the kids and I benefit from the salary and security that his job brings.

I don't think this is uncommon in a lot of jobs? I'm married to a teacher and he will never be able to do any school drop offs because he has to leave too early. He also has almost zero flexibility to do things like leave early if a child needs to be picked up. He can maybe get time off for an occasional appointment if he can arrange it and set cover well in advance, but basically that's all down to me too as I work from home amd have more flexibility. If you need him to do more family admin when he's at home it sounds fair enough to ask him to do that, but the amount of time off he gives you at the weekend is pretty generous.

I really think this is about being valued not about just time
If you got no time "off" but felt appreciated it makes the world of difference

pp is pointing out that it didn't seem to occur to OP that women can be surgeons too.

They are very definitely people just like everyone else.

The trouble was, no-one seemed to have sent the memo to this particular lot.

I've seen less egos and arrogance at the Oscars.

You get 10-4 off once a week?!! Sounds like heaven ! I honestly haven’t had a day off in years !

Personally i think you sound spoiled and entitled.

I'm just saying what OP wanted, and also hinting at the implication that OP thought ladies on mumsnet couldn't be surgeons themselves.

I am not married to a surgeon, but a lawyer. When our DC were small, I literally never saw him, we might eat one meal together once a week, I couldn't plan anything with him. It was super stressful but now I can see when he came home he was too exhausted to help me, I was frazzled, had little adult company. In the end we sent our DC to a childminder two hours a week and I had a break. It really helped.

To add to my previous post, my DP is extremely proactive with our child and the house. Doesn’t need to be told, if a job needs doing then it’ll be seen and done. If I’ve had a rough night with the baby and DP is off to work early has been known to get up at 4am to tackle say the kitchen before work if we’ve both been worn down and knackered and things have gotten out of hand. Similarly our child is their pride and joy and they consider it a delight to do anything with them/for them (we did conceive after a lot of fertility treatment though, so maybe influences our take on parenting).

Not again!!!!!! You've posted this about 5 times over the last couple of years.

I’m assuming this isn’t serious.

Nothing could be more valuable than hearing from a female surgeon who does most of the child admin. Shows that DP’s attitude is a man thing not a surgeon thing.

I don’t think solo parenting necessarily comes with being married to just ANY doctor, although at certain career stages there might be a fair bit of it.

But surgeons in particular are in a very high-pressure, high-demand and often inflexible role. And they are mostly men.

I wouldn’t personally want a man with a “big job” like surgeon because the trade-offs wouldn’t be worth it for me.

That’s a shame, my experience of many many surgeons has been there’s a range as they are of course……people.

I find the sweeping statements tend to come most commonly from people who don’t think of surgeons or doctors as people just like them. These people usually have a bit of a chip on their shoulder TBH. Most people comfortable with their lives and careers don’t seen themselves as fundamentally different from any particular profession, they see themselves as someone who chose to do something different.

A bit off-topic, but some of the occupations where psychopaths are overrepresented includes orthopaedic and neurosurgeons. I suspect orthopaedic because what they do is so physical and brutal perhaps, but I'm not sure why it's neurosurgeons as well. Maybe the idea of playing God with someone's mind?

How come you haven't said the same thing to the ones who have nothing to do with surgeons at all? At least she's a surgeon and that's related so can give her side of it.

I do think it's a specific personality type. The kind who feels entitled to play god, to literally hold the power of life and death every day.

We need these people in this job, but yeah... not easy partners.