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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To wonder why SAHPs enable their OH to 'do long hours' and 'travel a lot'

390 replies

ChristmasPlughole · 07/02/2012 21:48

OK so it is a thread about a thread but on the SAHPs don't earn the income, their dps do thread, lots of mners are saying 'dp can only earn lots of money if I stay home with the kids so they can travel/ work late'. And the implication is that's OK as they earn lots of money.

But why? Would't you rather have less money but bring your children up together?

What is the extra money for?

It's an honest question, I have friends who are almost 'single parents' during the week and their dps travel a lot too. And they have lots of money. But it seems such a lonely existence.

(I am asking about couples who choose to have one high earning parent - not couples who work all the hours god sends to survive).

I don't get it. I love dp and would hate him to do long hours and have two weeks go past before we spent a nice evening together.

It seems so Victorian.

OP posts:
SarahLundsredJumper · 10/02/2012 22:38

Gah!
What I am trying to say is sometimes one parent SAH and one parent WOH for long hours is a choice made ,sometimes its logistics , economics and practicality !

jellybeans · 11/02/2012 13:37

'I can't imagine an experience or memory that could be more valuable than having time with my husband and our children all together .' I agree Molly.

dreamingbohemian · 11/02/2012 19:52

Molly, I agree too. I appreciate that having money means you can give your family a lot more opportunities but it's perfectly possible to have great memories and experiences and be skint too. I've pretty much been poor my whole life, I've still had loads of laughs and fun and seen some amazing things.

LeQueen · 11/02/2012 19:57

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

MollyBroom · 11/02/2012 20:00

But my point is that if you have two good middle incomes coming in you are not stressed to the eyeballs about money.

LeQueen · 11/02/2012 20:06

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

seeker · 11/02/2012 20:06

Or if you have one middle income coming in you are not particularly stressed about money and you are not at all stressed about child care.

dreamingbohemian · 11/02/2012 20:10

Not everyone who's skint is stressed about money.

We have little coming in, but we have structured our lives so that we have little going out. On a day to day basis, it's really not that stressful. Yes sometimes I worry about the future but we are doing things to improve our lot that will hopefully pay off.

There is a huge difference between not being able to afford food, and living a very modest lifestyle, which is what we do. It's what I've had to do my whole life so I'm used to it.

It is actually possible to get by in life on not much money and still be happy. We're really happy right now and a big part of that is that we do get to spend a lot of time together.

Obviously it must be great to have money too, I just think you don't need money to be happy, and for me personally I would not want to lose my time with DH and DS just to have money that might not make us any happier anyway.

MollyBroom · 11/02/2012 20:17

I suspect by your defintion I am very poor, we have two salaries coming in which place us at earning around 80K. It is possible to earn that kind of money without someone having to work ridiculous hours or spend days on end without seeing their family, if the two of you are prepared to work together and raise your family together. We have a nice home, we eat well, we go out as a family at least once a week to eat out or the cinema, we have 2 cars, we have holidays every year, good pensions and savings. What else do we need?

I have nothing against having a lot of money, but I don't understand why you would choose money over time with the people you love. I suppose it is just as well that some people are willing to make that choice or we would have no one in the army for example. But it is not a decision I understand.

Yama · 11/02/2012 20:38

I agree with you MollyBroom. We are in a similar position. All of us leave the house at around 8am. I, and our youngest get home at about 4.30pm, my dh and eldest at about 5.15pm.

All evenings and weekends are spent together. The next step up the ladder for me would probably mean another 15 hours per week and a lot more stress. Same for dh. Not worth it in our opinion.

MollyBroom · 11/02/2012 20:54

I have to admit that I work longer hours than I would like, which does allow dh to work fewer hours. However I am hardly ever away overnight. I leave the house at 7 and get home just after 6pm. I have work to do in the evenings but unless it is report writing time or similar it can usually wait until the children are in bed. I also make up for it in the holidays.

schmee · 11/02/2012 21:10

MollyBroom - by making the decision to work when your combined income is £80k you are choosing "money over time with the people you love."

If you want to work and are able to then that is great, but I think you are showing lack of self awareness in your judgement of others.

MollyBroom · 11/02/2012 21:21

When my children were at home full time I was at home with them. I did not do that so that dh could go off and earn a fortune but because I wanted time with my children.Now they are older I work full time and my dh works reduced hours. My children do not need someone at home whilst they are at school. He is home in the morning with them when they are at home and he is at home when they get home from school.

I have already said that I have nothing against money, nothing against people choosing to work. I said I did not understand why you would choose a career or a lifestyle which involved either partner working ridiculous hours or being away from for long stretches.

I was making the point that two people can work very normal hours and still have a nice life as lequeen seemed to think you have to either be a city hotshot or on a minimum wage.

schmee · 11/02/2012 21:24

He is enabling you to work the hours you do then! Which is great.

MollyBroom · 11/02/2012 21:30

Not really, I work the hours I do because that is what my job requires, I would do that regardless of the hours he worked. He is also not enabling me to work excessive hours and travel all over the place so I never see our children. He could earn more money if he wanted to, he has been offered more money if he was willing to travel all over the place and live in hotel rooms and never see the children. Neither of us want that.

MollyBroom · 11/02/2012 21:32

Dp could earn all of our household income on his own so I could sit at home. I would not ask him to do that because I think we should both be entitled to the same amount of time with our family and we love going to bed and waking up together.

Yama · 11/02/2012 21:34

I agree with you MollyBroom. We are in a similar position. All of us leave the house at around 8am. I, and our youngest get home at about 4.30pm, my dh and eldest at about 5.15pm.

All evenings and weekends are spent together. The next step up the ladder for me would probably mean another 15 hours per week and a lot more stress. Same for dh. Not worth it in our opinion.

schmee · 11/02/2012 21:44

When it comes down to it everyone balances what they think their required income/standard of living is, their drive to have a career and the time that they spend with their family. They do that it the context of what is possible for them jobwise (in terms of flexibility) because this is the real world not an ideal one.

People make choices and it is rarely a clearcut case of saying, for example, "I love money more than I love my husband."

You've weighed up these issues and found a place that you are comfortable with which is genuinely great for you. But you are just in a different place on that line.

Otherwise both you and DP would be at home all the time with your children.

SarahLundsredJumper · 11/02/2012 22:01

Bit baffled about what you mean shmee
I think (may be wrong) that MollyBroom was talking about couples sharing the earning/parenting rather than one parent working 80 plus hours a week whilst one parent SAH.

It isnt of course always possible in certain jobs but it has worked well for DH and I . We have a good income and time with each other .

MollyBroom · 11/02/2012 22:08

Well we couldn't both be at home because then we would have no income and we would starve. Our children are also at school all day, so it would be pointless for us to sit at home waiting for them to come home.

I have nothing against SAHM, I was one for many years. However whilst doing this I just accepted that we would have less. I did not expect my dh to go off and earn the wages of two people by working mad hours and travelling. We did not, as lequeen suggests, starve. We just lived in a smaller house and shopped in tesco.

Now that we can both work our standard of living has improved, but time together is still a priority so we both work relatively normal hours and live relatively normal but quite comfortable lives. I would not want to ask my dh to miss his children growing up so I could have them to myself.

MollyBroom · 11/02/2012 22:09

I did also say that it was a good job that some people were prepared to sacrifice time with their families for a good wage or career.I am just not one of them.

dreamingbohemian · 11/02/2012 22:32

Just to support what Molly's saying -- in real life, nearly all the couples I know work normal hours for a decent wage and are home evenings and weekends (and this is in London). So it's interesting to me to see so many people on this thread saying working long hours is unavoidable. I'm not disputing that it is for them, obviously, I just dispute the idea that it's somehow impossible to have a nice lifestyle whilst still having lots of time together.

seeker · 12/02/2012 06:47

"I suspect by your defintion I am very poor, we have two salaries coming in which place us at earning around 80K. It is possible to earn that kind of money without someone having to work ridiculous hours or spend days on end without seeing their family, if the two of you are prepared to work together and raise your family together. We have a nice home, we eat well, we go out as a family at least once a week to eat out or the cinema, we have 2 cars, we have holidays every year, good pensions and savings. What else do we need?

I have nothing against having a lot of money, but I don't understand why you would choose money over time with the people you love. I suppose it is just as well that some people are willing to make that choice or we would have no one in the army for example. But it is not a decision I understand."

Ah- I see we are in the Mumsnet alternative universe again. Maybe we should define our terms on threads like this before we start. Anyone who thinks earning 80k makes you poor form an orderly line here..........

runningwilde · 12/02/2012 07:02

Your post sounds very naive op. Some jobs require a lot of hours and travel and the best way for that to work is with the support of a partner who stays at home. What is wrong with that? Life isn't easy and it's not all about fiddling a nice easy job for many people but finding a job suitable to their skills etc and some people want or need to earn a lot of money and why is that a problem?!

schmee · 12/02/2012 07:15

Sorry if I wasn't clear. What I am trying to say is that everyone seeks the right balance for them. At one extreme there is the family that home eds and claims benefits in order to stay with their children. At the other extreme would be a family where both parents work away a lot and childcare is done by someone else most of the time.

MollyBroom is able to have a fairly well paying job that has shorter hours than my husband and her DP is able to work just in school hours unlike me. That's lovely and sounds very well balanced for her.

If she really wasn't choosing money over time with someone she loves (her words) then she would be at home all the time with her family. She is making a choice to work, she just happens to have to work less hours and get paid less than my DP.