Full time job with young kids

If you have £400 left at the end of the month, why do you have no savings? Does it all go towards repaying your debts? How long do you have left on those?

Oh OP, on Mumsnet it’s the rule you must put your kids in childcare and have to focus on your high flying career!

You are perfectly reasonable to want to maximise the time you spend bringing your child up, and it isn’t a choice you’d regret - there’s more to life than money.

Sorry this isn't a proper response to your problem, but just to say that your son might hate nursery because he only goes for two afternoons. If you did decide to work full time/more hours, and he went for 3-4 days, he'd likely settle better and enjoy it. I just did the same as you did with our first (hated nursery) but our second goes 4 days and absolutely loves it! Just in case this helps the decision either way ie stop nursery completely or go for the job route.

I worked part time until both my children were well into primary school. I don’t regret it and you’ll never get the time back. However, I was older than you when I had my children and therefore more financially stable, although it was still tight.

It seems your desire to have a child has led you to having a child with someone you’d only been with for a year, which is why you don’t have the same view of you and work.

No one can have it all. You want to be at home, have children close together but you have debt, need good house doing and your partner isn’t on board.

Good luck in whatever you decide but think carefully and try not to let the ‘I just want children’ feeling cloud your judgement.

You absolutely need to work more. Don't have another baby either, that will just make things harder.

This isn't fair on your partner at all, not to mention how financially vulnerable you are as well.

If you look at her updates you’ll see the ‘nicer house’ her partner wants is one not owned by her ex with no ceilings. It’s not exactly a luxury life he’s after.

I’m not surprised DP is unhappy… working unsociable hours, paying £1,000 a month to pay off debt, paying a mortgage your ex lives in, living in a house without floors and ceilings, minimum pension contributions and you’re refusing to work more hours so that you can go to school plays in a few years time (how do you think parents with two working parents cope) and desperate for more children. Honestly, it sounds as if you’re massively taking the piss. If the genders were reversed this thread would be full of LTB and people telling you to get ‘your ducks in a row’ etc.

There is nothing wrong with being a SAHP if it works for for both, and honestly from what you said it doesn’t.

There’s a lot of issues here but I agree with most that yes - you need to work. Your child needs to spend more time at nursery, you need ceilings, children often get more expensive as they get older, and you’re not going to get yourself any more employable by putting this off. If you opt out of working for another five years, you’ll be in this exact position then - with a massive career break and no experience whatsoever. What happens if your partner can’t handle the stress and leaves or goes off sick? He’s not coping, your finances aren’t coping, and refusing to work is a luxury you can’t afford.

My husband and I have always worked full time. In offices though so appreciate shift work is harder to manage. We’ve made it to almost all the events, brought our kids to endless clubs, made their breakfast, lunch and dinner pretty much every day and had a lot of fun in between all of that. It’s hard sometimes sure - but not as hard as struggling like you are just now - our kids have a safe home to live in, two parents who love them, and everyone is fine.

I understand why you don't want to work full time when it wouldn't bring in much more than you're earning with two nights a week. But you do need to change something about your current circumstances. I think what you put in your OP - that your husband wants a bigger house and holidays - is a little unfair in the light of your other updates that you're living in a house with your ex and without ceilings in the kitchen.

I'd advise thinking outside the box in terms of bringing in money and look for work that you can do with your son, or from home flexibly in the short term, in addition to having a longer-term plan around retraining.

If you have experience in retail management, could you offer your services to small businesses that don't have the money to have someone on the books but might want some one-off or occasional advice on improving their management processes?

Is being a Secret Shopper a thing in the UK? (When you go to a franchised cafe or store and report back to the company on your experience.) Or delivering flyers. Pop your son in the pram and chat to him as you do the run.

On your half-day when he is at nursery and you haven't done night shift the previous night, can you do some work doing data entry or filling out surveys? Or something related to retail management for small businesses. I've seen ads for people to train AI. I'd want to look into the ethics of this but it didn't seem like skilled work and they would provide the instructions.

While holidays are a want rather than a need, I think you need to recognise that your partner has given you a very big thing that you wanted (a child) in the timing that you wanted, to his own detriment. I do think it's fair that he then expect that you consider his wants a little more closely. And holidays are so much more important once you have children because it's often the only good chance you have to connect as a family away from the day-to-day drudge (and in your case, away from your ex). Holidays help maintain your relationship, which is incredibly important for a child, more important than spending all day every day with one parent.

Op you've said that your wage is currently about the same as smp, so just over £800 per month, 37 hrs at minimum wage is a take home of just over £1700 per month. Even taking into account the extra childcare of £450 and the car costs of £250 that you've estimated, that's still nearly £200 per month that you as a family would be better off by. That's a significant amount of money. Financially you are not in a position to be working part time. You've got debts, you had to go back to work in order to pay bills at all, and your home needs significant work. You're being completely unreasonable. I'm quite a bit older than you but I can in all honesty say I've got no memory of whether my parents went to school events, but I can remember holidays I went in from age 4 to my teenage years.

I want to be with my kids and I don't really want them raised by other people.
Wow! What a statement!
Don't send him to school then!

You can't do more than that. Its a shame you weren't 100% on the same page regarding childcare and working but you are contributing massively.

Time flies by so quickly, if you're able to work part time and stay home whilst your children are young, then you're in a fortunate position. You can always make more money once they're in school.

I second this. Its such a temporary situation that you can never get back. I do think children generally are better off being looked after by a parent when so young, if its not feasible its not feasible. But I guess it comes down to priorities. I wouldn't be sending my child to nursery full time for a nicer house and holidays. But plenty of parents do want those things, so you can only do what you both feel is best.

Ah I get you. God this is a pickle. I can see you are really trying. Sorry if you've already answered, can you not work the 2 part days your little lad is in nursery?

It’s possible to compromise on this. It doesn’t really sound like the right time to retrain and work full time if you are thinking of having another baby. Can you talk about it and agree a rough timescale to you increasing your hours, maybe in a few years? Childcare from a very early age seems to have become the norm here now (I moved back from another country not so long ago after many years away) and many consider it strange or unreasonable for mothers to want to stay at home with their children in the early years. There is deep value in this and it is incorrect from a child developmental point of view to insist that being looked after by a primary caregiver and a professional are the same. They are not. You consider being a SAHM more important than a bigger house or nicer holidays. You need your husband to understand this and also you need to appreciate his point of view. If you talk more about it hopefully you can reach a compromise.