To leave DH and kids to do this

Is there not an option to do this online?

You can do it, and there would definitely be some positives, but it will have a permanent effect on your relationship with your children. There's no way around that

Speaking as mum of 2 ds’s

I think it’s actually a good thing for kids to see a sort of reversal of traditional gender roles

I’m better educated than DH, and earn significantly more. Yes, I take time off if the kids are sick, but so does DH. I WFH, they hear me in meetings, they see what I produce. The next generation need to grow up with that being normalised as far as possible - it’s another way of reducing inequality

Go for it - if it was your DH who had the opportunity then presumably you’d be in favour. So you need to do the same for yourself

Why not wait until kids are grown? When I was at Uni we had a couple women in their 40s. Neither of their marriages lasted the course. The experience changed them as you’d expect. Could be hard for you and them to go back to FT together. If so be a gradual demise. You say you’re unhappy but what if you are happy but your family are miserable? Self actualisation is great and each to their own but you already love what you do and don’t have that long to wait until kids pass their exams.

My DC are similar age to yours - they would be devastated if I worked away from home Monday to Friday (potentially Sunday to Friday). In other words my absence would do damage to their emotional wellbeing now and well into the future.

You seem to be justifying this potential move based on the fact that you weren’t bothered about having kids to begin with but DH was.

If there isn’t a work-around, such as moving even a hour from a train or Uni, your children have to come first.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that these offers are a chance of fulfilment - contentment comes in different ways. Happiness can be found in different places.

By all means make your husband aware that you are feeling resentment but make sure your children don’t feel it or they will notice the upset in the home.

Sorry i should have been more clear i meant stay there mon-fri returning home at weekends

It’s a bit late to be doing this in terms of career isn’t it? You’ll onky have a few years of working it before thinking about retirement plans. I wouldn’t bother at your age.

Ooh this is an interesting one! My advice is to do it because you will regret it and resent you husband and kids if you don’t! However, realistically, would they cope? Would your children feel traumatised or abandoned? Men work away all the time! No one bats an eye lid so this is the same thing IMO. I hope you manage to do it. Good luck!

Can you do the conversion course remotely? After the course will you be fully qualified to do the job or is there more training?

As someone whose dad worked away at that age, I hated it and I think you’re being very unfair on your children! I also suspect your marriage won’t survive, but maybe that’s what you want. It will be easy for you to blame your DH!

My dad worked in Edinburgh during the work week when I was in my early to late teens (after some time doing contract work all over England) and it worked for us. My dad would come home most Friday evenings but sometimes we'd go up to Edinburgh for a weekend. He made some great friends,doing a job he loved and we stayed around our support network. My parents are both in their early 70s now and as strong as ever.

I wouldn't do it. Even aside from the negative impact on the kids and the marriage, it sounds like a lonely life - schlepping back to a student flat in a strange town, cooking for one, revision, telly, single bed, rinse and repeat four nights a week.

Why not their fathers?

Ten and twelve are still young! They are children and most children want their mothers.

Unbelievable thread. Honestly not sure where we went wrong or how we lost our maternal instincts.

I wouldn’t think twice about the hardship to your DH. I would think long and hard about the hardship to the DC (and it would be a hardship) and actually to yourself. Choosing to see them only at weekends and holidays for two school years is going to have consequences for them. Perhaps your kids are your home life and wider support system would mean minimal impact. I know that in my case, the impact would be enormous. There’d be no getting away from my DC concluding I want that thing more than I want them.

And actually reading your OP I’m not convinced that this is the solution to your problems, real and legitimate as they are. There are other ways of skinning this cat and I think the should be explored. Leaving the family unit to put an individual member first is a nuclear option (bearing in mind this is about you and only you, not about earning for the family/putting a roof over your family’s head and food on the table).

I'm not telling her to wait until the DC are older or to prioritise her DH. I'm simply saying how I would feel if my DP did what she is proposing to do. She can either take that into consideration, or not. Just offering another perspective.

I don't know any men with kids who work away Monday to Friday. Obviously I accept that it happens, but I don't think it's quite as typical as some posters on this thread are making out.
I also think there are plenty of women who absolutely would "bat an eyelid" at their DH announcing he was going to start working away all week if that hadn't been the case previously and they didn't know it was on the cards. I wouldn't want to be in a situation where I only lived with my Husband and the DC only lived with their Dad for 20% of the week. Just because it works for some families that doesn't mean that it's not a big decision or that OP's DH and children aren't entitled to be upset by such a big change to their status quo.

So basically its up to the DH to give her permission? I wonder if they had a family conference and the DH sought the OP’s permission before pursuing his own career by lengthy periods away from home.

The children are not tiny - if their WFH DH cannot step up and parent mid week for the term times then he isn’t much of a father.

So when will it be time for the mother?

The OP has already given up one career to be the SAHP whilst her DH progressed his own career including lengthy periods away from the home.

She lives in an area which makes her unhappy because DH likes it and doesn’t want to leave.
She has found alternative work as the children are secondary/close to secondary age and the employer wants her to progress that career with them.
She has found a way to do this via professional qualifications which have a good chance of bursary funding. This requires not being away from home for “weeks on end” as her DH has done but mid week for approx half the weeks of the year.

And yet still she is told to wait until the DC are older (by which time it probably will be too late) or to prioritise DH again.

So lets say she does that, stays where DH prefers and avoids expecting him to do some parenting mid week for half the year. Then her DC appear on MN dismissing her as “DM never worked” as happens here on threads daily because fundamentally women don’t value family care and home care any more than men do unless its them doing it.

DH has had 13 years of the OP bearing the DC, raising them, looking after his home, leaving him free to pursue his career unhampered including lengthy travel periods, living in his preferred location. Its time he did his share and let the OP centre her own career and recover some of the prospects she has given up.

There are plenty of men who spend mon-Fri working away from their families and nobody bats an eyelid. If your DH can hold the fort and he and the kids are happy for you to do it I’d crack on. Would you actually have to be away all the time or is some of it doable from home?

I'm sure you'll get lots of posters cheering you on and telling you to "chase your dream", OP but I'm just trying to imagine how I would feel if my DH announced that he was giving up his job to be a FT student (not just that he was thinking about it, but that he had already applied and "been offered a place"!) and my choices were:

1. Uproot my life and that of our two DC to move with him somewhere a 3 hour drive away.
2. Solo parent during the week whilst continuing to work FT as the breadwinner, which now also involves funding accommodation for him in his new university town.

I would be gutted to be honest. Especially if he tried to use the fact that 13 years ago I wanted to have children and he "wasn't hugely bothered" about them as justification for issuing this ultimatum. I would take this to mean that either he had been quietly resenting me and our children all those years OR that he was being manipulative in order to get his way.

I was. And my own DH is away more.

It didn’t bother me as a kid but I was obviously closer to the parent at home, and had very little respect for the opinion of the other. One knew the family routine and dynamic and the other didn’t.

One change that we do differently is that DH also does what I say so he doesn’t upset the balance, it was much more tricky when he tried to enforce his opinion having not been there.

You are welcome to make that point
Oh wow thank you 🙄

I disagree, I think having their mum gone at their young ages would be worse. Kids move houses and go to new schools all the time, and it would be before the exam periods of their education.