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

Not my partner but a parent.

Sorry but this is not a flexible job. You commit to your shifts and you have actual life/death emergencies. You can’t just leave, it’s a zero flexibility job.

Have you ever been to his workplace? Maybe go and get a feel for what it’s really like.

It’s hard to be their partner/ family member, but some jobs just come before family. Medical, government/ military, running a major company, etc. it’s a trade-off,

Suppose the best you could get is him going part-time/ flexible working so he gets a weekday off or finishes early some days, but the current arrangement seems to be working in terms of your child’s needs met.

I had a nanny and didn’t really know my parents very well as a child. Trade-off. Some jobs just aren’t compatible with being a hands-on parent 🤷‍♀️

YANBU but people tend to idolise surgeons so you'll get YABU answers.
I'm a doctor but not a surgeon. My 'D'H surgeon is just the same and honestly he has no idea what's going on in the kids lives.
Plenty of women are surgeons now and I can guarantee they aren't ignoring their kids to hang around at work. It's a job. A hard, important job. But it isn't the only hard important job out there and your kids are only young once. I can tell you from having an older child who calmly informs me "daddy loves his patients more than he loves me" that it will affect them.
I'm quietly getting my ducks in a row.

They have both chosen their respective careers and chosen to have a child. They have to work with the time that is left to get their down time?
You can't make additional hours magically appear.
With the time that is available to them as a family she is getting a good chunk of it. It certainly doesn't sound as if he is getting more time.
If he was spending the weekend playing golf or something that would be very different.

That sounds like a lot of activities! And I guess it would become more about carving out me-time in between (reading a book while the teen plays tennis, having a glass of wine while cooking dinner)? Or like tag-teaming it so one of you can have a nice long bubble bath in peace?

Both these posts are spot on. High divorce rates, wedded to the culture, incredibly hard working, and the female variety are literally gods walking this earth, I don’t know how they do it.

We don’t invest in our people, our healthcare or work life balance. I’d suggest moving to a Scandinavian country or Holland so you can both have less pressure and more support from national nurseries which are free and a lot work 4 days a week.

The NHS is the worst employer in the U.K. in what it expects of people and what they have to give and give up.

Ive just advised my medicine keen DD away from medicine in this country for these reasons. The pressure, the terrible job insecurity as you climb the greasy pole, the competition around you, the constant budget cuts and being asked do more, the opening up of all NHS jobs to global applicants, yes you read that right, so now no jobs for all those that trained in medicine, nursing etc, now competing against thousands of other applicants, U.K. nationals are no longer prioritised.

The NHS has been underfunded for decades.

Your DH has a job, has worked incredibly hard to get it, feels under pressure to give everything.

Having a child means sometimes you do feel undervalued but life isn’t perfect. What’s the alternative? Divorce and be a single mum? Then find a new partner and move them in with your young girl? Not a chance if you read the thread the other night about interfering step fathers… not saying they’re all like that but how do you know until it’s too late?

Thingswill get easier the older she gets. Two and three are so hard.

Ah yes, that makes more sense. It is more difficult with 3 dc to achieve, as when older they most likely do different sports/activities (well, this is our choice, as they do golf, football, rugby, hockey, tennis and gymnastics over the weekend between the 3 of them😅). By the time we are done the weekend stuff, we are ready to just relax at home all of us. Dh will book concerts, football games and other events and take the older two....so our chill time is usually shared w the dc. Like today dh will take the younger two to cinema while I take older to tennis and prepare dinner.

I understand that, but that is in itself a choice to an extent, isn’t it? This woman has one child, works full-time, and does every single teatime and bedtime while her partner is at work. So she is trying to find her version of balance, not anyone else’s. I find it a bit disturbing how prevalent the attitude of “well I don’t get time to myself so you shouldn’t either” seems to be on here. How are women ever going to achieve equality if women striving for it in their own lives are just torn down and told to count themselves lucky? I hope the OP is reading still and knows that there are women out there who have ringfenced me-time while being present parents and in happy relationships!

Sometimes raising children you have to do the hard yards and double down on your wants and needs when the children are sorted. Sleep? When? Time to my self? Ha! Ha! Even a visit to the loo rendered a queue of needy complainants out side the door! But there were many magical times too many many more so it’s a thumbs up from me. You have them, you raise them that’s what I believe. I used to have a mate who lived next door to her mum and had help whenever she needed it. I used to watch wistfully…

I think what PP is getting at is that many parents will work shifts /Days around each other/are single parents/have more than 1 child and the weekend will be spent with both parents simultaneously at different hobbies etc.
I didn't read it as most women aren't lucky enough to have a DH who 'allows them this time'.
DP and I both work full time long hours and have teens, the weekends are an endless round of sports/lifts/cleaning/prep for the next week.
We prob get a couple of hours to watch TV or what not on the weekend evenings but that's it.

Did I blink and I wake up in the 1950s?
She should just give her career up on a whim?

I do think OP is a little naive about how much down time people in other jobs get, people working shifts around each other, single parents etc. But it's not ok to suggest she just needs to give up her career because she's the one who doesn't have a bloody penis!

I think it’s a lot to expect him to take your DD out all day on a weekend.

You don’t need a full day break every week, especially when he doesn’t get this either.

In the current set up YABU

However, it would really annoy me if my DP didn’t act like an equal parent/partner.

I would either completely scrap the one day a week of your free time.
Or alternate so one day a week you get the day off and the next week he gets the day off.

I would then set up a rota of what needs to be done and when.
You don’t have a commute and so you will naturally have more free time to get housework and cooking done but he should also be pulling his weight too.

There are surgeons who live alone and come home and cook and clean for themselves.
He is capable of doing the washing up in the evenings or unloading the washing machine.

You will be the default for parenting and housework because your job is more flexible and you’re at home more.
But he’s still an adult, partner and parent who needs to pull his weight and being a surgeon doesn’t trump that.

And you sound like someone who has either been totally conditioned to not expect any time to herself, or who is with a partner who doesn’t respect your entitlement to rest and independence.

You sound totally unrealistic about what liked is like when you have young children! It is loads.

It is.
And for now, this is the spare time you have.
Outsource whatever you can to free you up a bit during the week: cleaner, meal delivery, childminder/nanny

Yep. And it’s work. It’s unpaid work on top of paid work.

Too harsh by far, coping with one stress isn’t less than coping with another. The woman’s role of raising the next generation once more diminished as less important than everything…it’s the most important job in the world.

"he’s been at work since 6am" and he's bloody knackered and has all the stress and responsibility of his job to process.

"It’s making me very unhappy and feel very alone."

you're acting like a petulant child.

you can't seriously be expecting him to say, "sorry I know you're dying on the operating table but my wife feels lonely from sitting at home with our child so I need to leave now."

it's nothing to do with him, you just don't like parenting and working full time. otherwise you'd be thinking about how lucky you are to have a husband with such a significant lifesaving role, a big household income, and a lovely child.

there are many people out there who can't have children and desperately want them, who would love a full time job working from home, who don't have a big household income and are struggling day to day, who don't have a husband committed to providing for his family.

I know people who changed, dropped their careers to something more manageable in terms of hours, they wanted to be there with their kids after school and in holidays etc. one dropped his consultancy for brain surgery and took up anaesthetics be cause it was more maneagable and he could work four days. But that is really rare. Divorce rate for doctoring generally is very high, as is alcoholism, burnout etc. it’s not them it what’s asked of them, that’s the issue. we don’t train enough doctors and the hours/route to consultancy are unreasonable and not conducive to having any kind of life never mind family life.
We need at least ten new medical and allied medical, nursing, physio, O.T. obesity consultants and technical university campuses in this country. We have the raw material, ie the candidates four times over every year but no one, including us, has the political will or vision to invest in the future of our nations health. So that leaves us with a shortfall which we fill with overseas candidates whom are less qualified than our fifth year undergraduates. It’s an obvious opportunity to invest in our future which is forward thinking but we don’t do a lot of that do we in the uk.

The child also goes to nursery. So you get six hours a week to yourself to do as you please when your DH takes the child out. Does your DH also get six hours a week to himself to do as he pleases?
So many parents get ZERO hours to themselves each week.

I’m curious as to why you think the number of hours a woman spends in paid work is relevant to her entitlement to time for herself outside of office hours? Should a full-time worker be entitled to more me-time than a SAHM or part-time worker? All examples are engaged in labour, the labour just differs in the extent to which it is respected and remunerated.

To be honest if I were married to a surgeon I would be inclined to work part time to keep my home ticking along & balance out the fact I’m compensating for an adult working excessive hours.

I am assuming you have the extra income. Do you have a cleaner and is it possible for you to outsource meals ? Car cleaning ? Get in a nanny if you have a doctors/hair appointment or social occasion ? Holidays with dinners out while you have a babysitter & is your car professionally cleaned and garden done ? If your lifestyle affords this then I think that dramatically changes things.

“6 hours alone on the weekend is a lot, but I'm also quite sad for you. Its like you've already split up. Spend the weekend parenting and living together as a family.”

This is barmy. You can have weekends for family time and get some time to yourself! It’s not one or the other. What an odd mentality.

I’m sorry, but in what way is paid hours worked relevant? This is outside of office hours.

Besides, childcare is work. I would still think a SAHM deserved time to herself, I would still think a full-time nurse deserved time to herself.

*It’s