Work Life Family relationship balance HTF do we balance it (really bloody long)

[worklifedifficult]

Is this unreasonable?!?!?!

Me and DW both work in IT. I'm a programmer, she's a project manager. She works for a eCommerce outfit, I work in the IS department of a Big Financial Services outfit. We're both expected to start work about 8ish and finish 7ish (that's desk time). Before anyone jumps to conclusions we don't earn the huge salaries that are the perceptions of the IT industry.

We're a nuclear family living in London - I have no family to call upon, DW's family are all in Oz, we don't have many friends to really call upon for help as neither of us are from this part of London.

Our dd1&2 are in reception and Y2 they start school at 8:30 and can finish at 5:30 at the latest.

We've had some difficulties with organising childcare to deal with our situation.

We don't earn enough or have enough surplus to afford a qualified nanny, we don't have enough space in her house for an Au-pair and don't have the savings or resources to move.

DW and I are sort of in agreement that one of us should quit work to do the necessaries to look after the kids - but one of us needs to get a job with a salary bump otherwise we will really have serious financial difficulties (we have them now but just get through it). As an example this is our basic breakdown house 1200 (double, big single, boxroom) council tax 250 energy and water 200 pcm. Oyster (* 2) 280. Fortunately, nothing goes on debt because we've been very careful to avoid it.

Everything left over seems to hemorrhage on food, clothes, children, childcare, a bit of weekend entertainment for the kids when its raining, books, learning materials and trying to have a nice comfortabe-ish life. You know the sort that you would expect to be a given our careers and education.

DW is better suited to getting a salary bump in her career than I am, but each of us accepts that one or the other may have to quit work as we don't see it becoming easier over the next 5-10 years, sustaining the work and family/school obligations. As an example DW's boss (double her salary, his wife has a very big salary, a nanny and weekend nanny) got narky that she was starting work an hour earlier so she could leave an hour earlier to collect the kids from school. My boss (no kids, unmarried starts work at 7am) pulls a face cos I don't get to my desk until 8:50 cos I do the school run in the morning (I drop them at breakfast club at 8am and if the underground is behaving its-self get to work 50mins later).

Problem is is that its starting to cripple me and DW relationship, the work constraints and obligations causes us a lot of stress on top of the stresses of running a household and looking after the children. We end up in a situation where I vocalise it, DW internalises it and we end up having a bit of an unhappy time, snipping snarking, snapping. Which neither of us wants, we don't expect it to be easy but it seems to be a lot harder than we both expected, especially as we are both knackered after a long day doing stuff and never seem to catch up over the weekend.

We are great-full for our incomes, and from my own background and experiences i know there are many people in much worse financial situations. but and I guess here comes the question. How do we manage all of this? because we suspect that we're not, what should we do to make it easier, bar winning the lottery (ain't never gonna happen eh!).

I feel that we live on a knife edge of destroying our relationship and our children's psychological health and well-being over having to work. ABIU I guess.

M4 corridor might be good for your skills and commutable for your dw.

Grimma (if I may call you that), damn man you don't know how right you are. Could I do my job remotely? Posting text files over a 56baud modem to a build server, ssh-ing to manage the machine, rdp-ing if its a winbox. Why they need my bum on a seat in the city of London for around 10 hours for mostly thumbtwidling and awaiting the outcomes of "meetings" to "blue sky" "Next Steps"... is confusing to my mind. Especially when I have a lab at home that runs a heterogeneous mixed server environment as I specialise in writing systems integration "glue" code as part of my ongoing CPD...

Sholes24 I know there is life north of the M25, we've just never been there and its something we're not give much consideration to as its easier to run round in your own backyard, cos you know where everything is. Its cowardice and laziness on my part I suppose, but we are now going to seriously consider it.

JessieMcJessie aaaargh!!!! don't say that I hate change at the best of times... Having said that culturally, the part of London we're in supports 36 different languages from the 80 recorded ethnic gropings in the brourgh

OP - you'll be pleasantly surprised. I know I was. We moved to a city knowing no-one. It's easy enough to meet people when you have children.

Ahem. Glasgow can be interesting. I have nothing useful to add as I know nuffink about IT jobs. HTH

Move.

You've no real reason to be in London or even the south east other than being used to it and thinking London is more interesting. It probably is: there are some things you can't get in any other UK city, and I say this as a proud Mancunian. But it doesn't sound much like you're getting to enjoy any of the Londony stuff because you're so knackered. You're getting all the downsides and none of the benefits. A rental deposit would only be a few hundred pounds in most other UK cities, and presumably if you rent privately you'd be getting a deposit returned anyway?

This is us. We both work in London, full time, and with long commutes, two kids, and the grandparents are all over 200 miles away. What saves our sanity is that I work from home two days a week, so am here to empty and reload the washing machine, be around when the gasman has to come, and get the grocery shopping delivered on those days etc. Also school assemblies and things tend to be on Fridays, so I get to go to those. Not perfect, but we get by!

banana what do you mean by saying "Ahem. Glasgow can be interesting."?

Could you go freelance and work from home?

What about a childminder for 5pm- 7pm?

I was responding to this 'If you've never been North of Enfield them Glasgow is a huge, huge change. I feel culturally out of place there and I was born and bred less than 30 miles away....'

London is a very interesting place, but IME Glasgow can be just as interesting, but on a smaller scale. Just trying to put a different side to the above point. Glasgow has good and bad, but I wouldn't dismiss it just because someone hasn't ever been North of Enfield.

Ps yy to moving out of London - near me there is a 4 bed house with countryside views and garden and garage for £750 pcm.

Thanks

We're now seriously considering getting out of London... just spoken with DW and, thing is, I'm bored shitless with my job and any other variant of my type of work. She has better managerial/senior managerial prospects than me as she laughing pointed out I'm better round the house at cleaning (though she's terrified that I'll do all the clothes on a boil wash).

I'd rather put my energies into supporting her career and seeing the DC's through school. Even though I find it difficult keeping my cool with the 2 and a half hour warzone that homework was the other night and am utterly shite at brushing my daughters hair or giving them a hairwash.

Thing is for us its now the school holidays that are really giving us the shits... I've booked the first half of the Christmas holidays, DW's boss is sulky little mejda tossa who is moody about her taking the second half of the Christmas break - "suppose so" was his answer to her holiday request. But then his nanny is looking after the children so he and his DW can jet to NY for a post Christmas break - that's fucking unreasonable in my book. He maybe IT director but he doesn't own the place.

Next question: as a working couple with no family support how do you manage the school holidays as between us me and DW have only 50 days holiday and I worked it out that school holidays are around 65 days that's a 15 day deficit. And that's not accounting for personal days sick days family days. Today I'm off looking after the little angels cos they're ill.

I talked to my boss this am and his attitude was OK but as he's single with no kids he was a little confused as to why I had to look after the kids. Next time it'll be DW's turn. It has to be shared from our perspective.

It does confuse me that the school year is roughly 195 working days yet the provision in the workplace for two people doesn't match. ** I'd be up for a second wife to help with all of this but DW is a definite no on this - can't for the life of me understand why! I'd get so many extra benefits - oh! I'm gonna get flamed for that ain't I.

If the government set out school working days and employment working days why is there such an blindingly obvious mismatch there. Wouldn't encourage more family members into the workplace if there was that level of support. Raise standards of living, introduce greater tax revenues and increase spending power, reduce stressors in the family which are causes of marital breakdown. Is there a legitimate reason for the school year being at odds with the working year?

Yes I'd move if I were you!

When on your death bed, what would you regret? Not spending time with your kids or not working in London...? I use that sort of thing when I'm thinking about my work/life balance.

Well to answer the latter part of your question, the school year is built round the agrarian calendar so children got the summer off to help with the harvest. Which doesn't exactly fit the 21st century employment patterns, I agree. However that's not going to change any time soon. (Can you imagine selling that to the teachers?). And seeing how shattered my DS is at the end of the year, I don't think him 'working' for 48 weeks a year would work for him.

The holidays are a nightmare - again, that's why I freelance, I can do some work in the mornings and then activities in the afternoon. Again, it freelancing isn't necessarily the best long-term choice for me - but it's the only way I can make my family work.

Term-time working, freelancing, working from home, condensed hours, holiday clubs, swapping childcare with other friends, sending the kids to auntie Mabel's for a week in the holidays - it's not unsurmountable. But it all involves making changes. A fairy isn't going to come along and sort it out for you. I am sympathetic btw having just seen the ages of your DCs - the jump between nursery and school in terms of childcare needs is huge.

School holidays - thankfully, DCs are old enough to be left at home on their own now, but have previously resorted to having grandparents come to stay or sending the DCs to stay with grandparents, as well as using an expensive, but excellent, university playscheme.

There is life (and loads of companies struggling to recruit good software engineers) outside of London! DH and I are both in software and have loads of flexibility. Admittedly, we only have one young toddler DD at the moment, so not the same childcare issues, but we're trying to get ourselves into a good position for when school starts. I find that many of my software friends also have good flexibility, and there is less of a presenteeism culture in some companies around here than I imagine exists elsewhere. Commutes are shorter too, so less need for childcare and more time out of work. London is interesting, but from most places in the UK it's only a short train ride away :)

Another option is to ask for flexible working - easier to do in the company you're already in, but I also know of people who have applied for new jobs and negotiated flexible working patterns. Sounds like your current bosses wouldn't be onside though?

We use as much of our holiday as we can, then a childminder. There are plenty who have space over the holidays here. We've built up a relationship with one and she always just asks what hours we want now. She takes a week off herself in the holidays generally but we can usually plan to be off that week.

Alternatively once they are school age there are providers of holiday care - like supercamps or the local sports centre. Some of these you only find out about once they're at school as you're given leaflets via the school. And I guess they're only suitable once the dc are a bit older.

You can certainly call me Grimma but not 'man'

I don't know how people manage to work FT once their kids are at school - that was the point at which I dropped to PT. I think the only couples I know who both work FT with primary age kids either have an au pair or youngish, local grandparents, or one is a teacher/TA. Huge respect to those who manage it.

PT/home working of itself doesn't sort the holidays when the kids are small - DDs school ran an affordable holiday club. But there are non-school holiday clubs too - maybe you should make a new thread to see if there's any in your current area.

Feeling your pain, my friend.

We're in a similar situation, in a v well-known city an hour from Paddington.
Our saving grace has been my freelancing - I started before we had children because I didn't want to be stuck with 12-hour+ days.

As it is, I don't earn a lot, but it's a back-up to DP's salary and it's work!

So, we have the flexibility - plus DP works from home 3 days or so a week. DD is at nursery Tues, Weds and Thurs, and DS is at after school club. We share the school runs and it's working out ok.

Could either of you go freelance?
The downside is that you still can have the 12+ hours days, but on your own terms! I often work after the kids have gone to bed, which is free in terms of childcare, but can be a pain.

Good luck with it all - it's a tough one.

IME it's a myth that living outside of London and commuting in is cheaper. We did this two years ago and are no better off for it, although we do admittedly have a much nicer house than we would if we'd stayed.

Could you look at moving to a cheaper area of London instead? Wandsworth has the cheapest council tax of the whole country (and is a nice area in places!) but is still well connected enough to the centre to keep travel costs down. Could one or both of you take up cycling to work to save on Oyster costs?

School holidays are a PITA. No avoiding that. I ended up leaving my job entirely because holiday clubs for then 3 (now 4) kids would have ruined us.

Oh, feeling your pain yes. I am in London with 2dc and currently on maternity leave which meant I could cope with the school settling period for DS1. We were offered a full time place, and 1 week before term were told that they can only go part time for the whole half term. Ridiculous. None of the state schools seem to have any idea how to cope with families where both parents work. I do not mind paying for wrap around childcare but I DO mind if there is no provision, no understanding and a general surprise that you won't be around until after 7pm at the end of the working day. Grr.

Practically, is there any way you could apply to do 4days a week or even 5 into 4? I returned part time after DS1 and was pleasantly surprised that the tax rate helps so much,ie you lose your fifth days income at the highest rate of tax. That way you have 2 days coverd for school and are only looking for childcare for 3 days.

Many employers have emergency nursery places for kids, you can use these in the holidays for 2 weeks of the year.

Then find good holiday play schemes and use your work holidays to fill more gaps. You might get lucky and find other parents you get on with you could share with, so take their kids for 1 week over the summer and they return the favour.

We are about to face exactly the same problem though when I return to work next year and I have no idea how we will make up the full holiday calendar. Might end up paying a nanny and being down financially for a few years. To me that's better than having to leave your job because our school calendar hasnt caught up with the industrial revolution yet.

Thank you all for those excellent pieces of advice. Children, Work, School and London all are a bit of a screwup. I just wish the fairy of sorting out shitty problems would visit us and wave her wand.

Its really got to me at the moment. It seems to be that employers, schools and everything in between is just not geared to two working parents with no additional support... I have to admit when I see extended families picking kids up at school with a gaggle of aunts, grans, cousins in tow with elder children as well... I think you lucky bastards having all that help to call upon. I do know that kind of societal network has other issues and dynamics in play, obnoxious mil's, controling nans and selfish aunts - but at least a built in suport network....

So Why is it that there is no social provision (not handouts but a concrete infrastructure) for people in our circumstance, why is wrap around care so expensive (cost of living, inflation economics). Why isn't nanny-ing subsidised by the government, Early morning, late evening subsidised childcare- I'd rather my tax dollar goes to providing decent help for working parents... rather than paying EDS billions for crappy NHS or Justice Service software and then scrapping it. I wish my tax money was better used for the betterment of people of the nation rather than just squandered on frivolous wars, management consultancies who don't improve the efficiency of national institutions and lots of other stuff.

I know I'm whining unreasonably here - just wish I had something to remove the stress, worry and concerns.

Why? Well, to quite a large extent it's probably because - with shining exceptions such as yourself - childcare and 'homemaking' is still seen mostly as women's work. We're just supposed to magically multitask and deal with it.

The right to request flexible working to care for a child or adult is available to anyone but I'd make a fair sized bet that the vast majority who do so are women. If you haven't considered making such a request, you should. Sounds like you're halfway to figuring out a technical solution to how you could work from home ... make a case and present it to your manager and HR.

We specifically don't live in london for the same reasons you mentioned - also because it seems endless and grey. We love the quality of life we have away from the city. We just pop to London when ever we need a fix - which is less and less these days oddly as we have such an interesting life in our area. Lots of supportive friends, community spirit, alternative life style, great schools, lots of excerisie, short commutes and fun off the wall activities.