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.