How did you work out childcare v working hours?

Your DH sounds like an absolute fool.

I worked for the NHS in a former life and I remember them making us all sit through a training session on Fraud as part of our induction. NHS trusts have entire teams of people dedicated to sniffing out and dealing with the kind of thing your DH is proposing. Not only is it grounds for dismissal if you're caught, you could lose your professional registration and even face criminal charges. I worked with someone who ended up being convicted for defrauding his NHS trust employer because he claimed to be working for them on days where he was actually working elsewhere. They take this sort of thing extremely seriously. Not to mention the fact that it's completely unethical.

You are both responsible for making decisions about childcare but he doesn't get to unilaterally decide that you are going to commit gross misconduct and fraud!

You need to find childcare for all the hours you're contracted to work. If you don't want to pay for FT childcare then put in a flexible working request and ask to reduce your hours.

you don’t need to? Why does he get to dictate what hours your child is in nursery and you have to change your working pattern to pay for it?

make sure he pays the difference in your pension contributions. And put aside savings to compensate for your likely loss in earning potential.

because this is a lose-lose for you. When you decide to ditch his lazy arse because you are doing everything, and is less work when he’s not around, or he fucks off with a younger model who doesn’t expect him to do his own laundry or care for his own kids, you are the one who’s screwed financially.

honestly, I’d reduce him and keep your hours. You’ll be better off. This is not equal parenting.

Of course you can't lie! Someone will definitely notice. There will be some emergency, they won't be able to get hold of you, and it will all come out!

The obvious solution is for your shift working partner to accept some responsibility and request a flexible working arrangement! It would be ideal if he were able to cover some days during the week reliably. That seems a much better solution than you endangering your professional reputation.

The squeezing around the kids - one way you could do this would be to work longer days on your non-WFH days and then to work shorter days (with management agreement) in order to collect your kids earlier from nursery on your WFH days.

Another way might be to compress hours to free up a day to be at home with them each week, or a half day, eg working 5 days in 4 or 4.5 days.

In terms of how other people reach an agreement - mostly, it involves discussing the finances, each person’s feelings about childcare (as well as cost and availability) working patterns, and what’s best for the DCs, and coming to a mutually acceptable conclusion. I know people who have had very strong feelings about what type of childcare they’re willing to use and for how many days, which is fine if both parties are on board but less so if not. I know couples where he expects her to pick up everything to do with the DCs but also match him earnings-wise - that’s not very realistic.

So if your DH has no constructive ideas on how to reduce the amount of time your DCs are in childcare for, without needing you to lie to your employer - well, I think you get the casting vote! Is it about the time in childcare or about the money?

Edited to add it’s worth considering whether WFH needs to be flexible or can be fixed days every week regardless of business need, if you’re intending to structure childcare arrangements around it. I would also be wary about making hours up in the evening even with management agreement with kids that age - you’ll be exhausted.

If your DH thinks its possible to fit 8 hours of work into 2 or 3 presumably he can do that for his job as well?

There was no "how did you work out childcare hours" in our house. Its not hard maths to take your working hours and add on any commute time - the answer is how many childcare hours you need.

This is mental suggest he does it instead and gauge his reaction. He's basically saying his career is more important!

I do work full time and flexibly but so does my DH and both mostly from home. He works 4 days a week so has youngest, then 2 full days of nursery/after school club and 2 school length days. BUT I start work early and DH does drop off, I do pick up. Both of us have minimal lunch break and shorter days I have already done my hours those days (I start at 7).

We agreed it jointly, both of us do our proper hours and both of us do equal amount of drop off/pick up

i don’t get why all the childcare falls to her?

they’re his kids too, if they’re both working FT they should be sharing the childcare.

otherwise what’s the point of having him around? Ditch him and then you don’t have to deal with his shit as well, because I bet he doesn’t pull his weight on housework either.

when I worked shifts we had a full time nursery place. They only went in roughly 3.5 days as usually out of my 6 day rota I’d have a late (4-midnight) and one day off. Dh would do the childcare after 5pm and at weekends when I was working.

he had an “inflexible” job which wasn’t really. It was all male and they simply weren’t used to men leaving for nursery runs. After a few initial moans about “can’t your wife do it” and him pointing out his hours and work was still done and more than up to standard, they wound their necks in.

If you are the primary carer it's your shout. Please don't lie to yoyr employer as he suggests, it's gross misconduct if you get caught and simply not worth it.
Husband should put in a flexible working request not to work shifts, or certain shifts.

I think the person doing the juggling gets more of a say!

No matter how senior you are, with all the nhs cuts right now you’d be mad to do this.

Are you really able to get away with 2.5 hours of actual work? I’m clearly doing nhs work all wrong where I struggle to fit in a lunch break and regularly work over time.

I used to work 90 hours over a 4 week block. My husband worked away every other week, so the weeks he worked i did very little, but the weeks he was home I was able do more. I think it was called annual hours when I put in my flexible working request (it was 15 years ago so I csnt actually remember 🤣). That worked for me, but it might not for you but could be worth looking in to, to see if you can something similar.
You definitely can't work and have your children at home, I tried that also and it was hell!

You asked how you work out childcare around work. Is your contract a certain number of contracted hours... Or is it output based? I ask as most jobs are based on contracted hours...not necessarily how many appointments are completed, for example. I'm surprised your husband doesn't realise this, but there we go.

ASSUMING contracted hours, his is how I would do it.

Kids are in childcare from the time it takes you to get from childcare to your place of work (and vice versa). So, if your childcare is 30 mins from home, and you start at 0900, I'd suggest aiming to drop them at 0820 (or maybe 0815) to make sure you get there on time. Same with pick up.

If you have the children with you, then you stop the clock, and restart the clock again after the children have someone to take care of them or after they have gone to bed. This assumes that you are able to complete the contracted hours any time of the day.

A working day is your contracted hours. So, children can't be taken care of by you during this time.

Your husband is nuts. Has he not actually looked after his children like ever?! I'm guessing he has no idea because he has lived in a cave all his life, and because you have probably been on mat leave for a large whack of time since your first was born...

Don't be dishonest about your working hours. That's terrible advice from your partner and could get you into trouble as well as being overwhelming for you.

I pay for wrap around care at nursery as a single mum. It's the only way I can work. Sometimes you have to a accept you don't have a choice and what you want and need don't necessarily align.

I do know someone who has a childminder look after their kids in their own house so they can still see them and get on with work but they eventually accepted they have to just shut themselves away as the kids demand their attention even with the childminder.

If the childcare falls down to you, it’s up to you to sort it, do as you see fit

This is bonkers. Either cut your hours, or get childcare for the hours you work..whether you WFH or not is irrelevant.

how you deal with childcare as a family should be a joint decision, and joint money

You absolutely can't work while looking after kids under 4, unless they are asleep, or you have stuck them in front of Cbeebies or something - in which case you're not being the present parent you want to be and they would probably be getting better care at a good nursery or childminder/nanny anyway.

You definitely shouldn't expect to get paid to only work a third of your hours. It's unethical, you are likely to get found out, and you'll probably end up overwhelmed at work and disliking your job if you try.

You need to have childcare in place for all the times that you and your husband are both working the hours you are paid to work. If you don't want to have them in full time childcare, then you and/or your husband need to reduce or compress your working hours.

That's what my husband and I do. After I went back after maternity leave with my eldest, we started off both doing 4 days a week, with a different non-working day each so we only ever needed three days of childcare. Now I do 70% FTE which means I have one full day off with my toddler and can pick my eldest up from school on two other days, and my husband is full-time but works from home so does the majority of other school runs (we use after school clubs for the days I'm not doing pickup).

We have jointly discussed the changes to our hours and what that will mean for our income, our longer-term career prospects, and the time we have to spend with the children/as a family. However, we've always assumed that any time we're both working, we'll have other childcare in place for the children.

If you are working, they need to be in childcare. It's that simple.

I have less childcare than my working hours just now (an after school arrangement fell through and my DP just got a new job so I am having to do more pick up and drop off temporarily). I have a very flexible role though and can make up hours first thing in the morning plus in the evening so I actually do get my hours done but it is stressful as that means little down time for me. Clearly only doing 2.5hrs of an 8hr day is not feasible though (my deficit is 1hr/day) and this wouldn't be feasible long term. My view is that the person who does the most childcare has more say over the arrangements and your DH can't just tell you to not work your hours. Could you both go part time if less nursery/childcare is important to you both?

very tight budget plus returning from Mat leave we were very depleted financially.

Wasnt just the cost though, I just didn’t want to hand my babies over 5 days a week and pay money we couldn’t afford. It took us many many years of infertility and baby loss to get our children, I wanted to be with them and appreciate every ounce of childhood with of them.
My DH adjusted his hours to finish work earlier and once I was pregnant gave up his weekend hobby & stopped the weekend overtime as he needed to do his share of childcare. Plus he really wanted to, like me.

This is ridiculous. You either work less or pay for more childcare.

I know a few couples of have formal flexible working arrangements where they do a couple of short days and a couple of very long days each or one does a couple of short and long days but the other does compressed hours and has a day off. I would suggest you look more at something like that and have it agreed.

Dont lie. It’s gross misconduct.

He wants you to lie to your employer and commit fraud. Obviously you mustn’t do that!

You need the kids to be in childcare for all the hours you are being paid for.

You need to book childcare to cover all of your hours. If DH works shifts, then if he's on an early shift, he can pick them up early. If he's on a late shift, he can spend the morning with them and take them to nursery before he starts work. If he has a day off in the week, he can keep them out of nursery and look after them.

Win win, he gets what he wants, that the kids aren't in nursery too much and keeps all of your full time salary.