How to agree holidays when one is self employed?

[GreyishDays]

We have a new working setup. I have about 37 days holidays (have a special contract). DH is self employed and can take as much holiday as he wants, holiday impacts long term on our income, but not directly. Like if he was doing something involving scoping stuff and finding new clients.

So we want to take some holidays together and then roughly split the holiday childcare between us. He complains that I don’t have enough holiday and we spend ages wiggling it.

For context, I’ve done 10 years of all holiday and after school childcare.

I’m resentful that he won’t look after the children more than 50% in school holidays but then is happy to take time off work to go on trips in his work time to do what he wants. And he doesn’t ask about this.

I guess that’s just his good luck though. But then the income drop does affect us.

I feel like I’m missing the logic on it and we need a good starting position on it.

Any ideas?

How old are the kids? 37 days is a lot of leave, lucky!

They’re primary age.
I know it’s a lot. My pay isn’t great though.
The children have never done holiday clubs and aren’t really happy to, as a bit of background. We’re happy to not make them.

Actually. I just had a thought. If it was money, I’d hope to arrange it so we both had the same spending money each, even if one of us earns more.
Should holiday therefore be the same?

Anyone else got any thoughts? I have no idea whether I’m seeing this completely skewed.

I have 28 days AL and dh is self employed. I don’t quite see the issue. We split holiday childcare 50/50, same with dc’s sick days. Then dc go to holiday club part part of the week as well - they like it, but whet they did or not, they have to go. I don’t need extra days off as that’s plenty split between us, including time for family holidays and my own holidays (I go on at least 1 a year without dh or dc, so does dh). But if I needed, I’d just request unpaid leave.

I don’t think it’s fair for your dh to take more than 50% of the childcare in the holidays just because he’s self employed. It can be really difficult to take time off if you are the only one who can make decisions about a business or who is the point of contact for clients. Dh has busy seasons and quieter seasons so it can be easier at certain times of the year, but I’d never ask him to do more than half. I get paid for my days off and he doesn’t, and though we are financially comfortable enough that a few days or a week here and there is no big deal, it’s only fair to share the load equally.

But with both of us doing 50/50, a few days here and there of holiday club, we still have plenty of time left for a family holiday and each of us going away on our own. You may just need to get a bit more creative about your childcare options. If you won’t do holiday clubs, explore what else might work, like sharing days with dc’s friends parents, etc.

DH is a contractor. I get the statutory minimum but I work PT.

We're fortunate in that MIL takes DS (6) in the holidays if we haven't got the holiday.

DH has a week to himself to go skiing every year. Aside from that, he will take time off as needed. So this week he has taken DS skiing whilst I've been working.

I use most of my AL for school holidays but my work days means I can have long weekends away without taking time off.

We agreed that it's about work/life balance. We chose to stay in our unglamorous but cheap city so it doesn't matter so much if DH doesn't work for longer periods.

I think my problem is that DH is having a stress about me not having enough holiday.

So I think my question is, if we’ve split the childcare 50:50 and he wants more holidays (on his own) then what happens then? Is it just my tough luck that I have less holiday?

Can you take unpaid parental leave so that you can extra AL to use for you like DH does?

Couple of things in play here.

He needs to realise 37 days is far more than 'normal'

So start with 50/50. If he wants extra holidays then you can also take extra holidays - these will both impact income. And these need to be discussed, not one person just doing what they want.

Also, if this means one or two days in childcare - and some are fun such as the spy days, science clubs, tennis clubs and such - then frankly, the kids don't get a choice, parents have to work! If you have done ten years childcare then presumably they are old enough to understand!