to ask this of dh?

[CailinDana]

I am mainly a sahm but i have a pt job that i fit in around the kids. My boss wants me to take on more work at the end of the year. I love the job get paid well and it has good prospects. For our own reasons dh and i would rather not use childcare so he suggested i work saturdays while he takes care of the kids. I felt that would overstretch us and suggested he drop to 4 days so i can work 1 full day a week (which should be plenty for now). He gave me a whole load of reasons why he can't go part time. Fair enough, we'll just have to use childcare then.
This discussion happened a few months ago. Dh arrived home yesterday excited because someone is headhunting him. He said he'd like to go part time in his current job and do the new job part time. I was surprised and reminded him of all the reasons he gave before for not going part time. He looked guilty but claimed not to remember the conversation.
I am not happy. I have moved country and house multiple times for his career. I gave up a job i loved because we were moving yet again and i became a sahm partly because it was what he wanted.
Now i want him to make one small change to his working life to let me develop my career. And he's basically lied to get out of doing it.
Aibu to now expect him to drop to 4 days as clearly it is possible to do?

He was being an arse, I'm glad you pointed it out to him and I'm glad he's taken it on board. Now, keep your foot firmly down and see how else this inequity is raising it's ugly head before it's too late to change things!

Oh god Cailin nonono you're not a fraud at all I didn't mean to make you feel bad about your situation, obviously we don't always make the rational decisions we might think we would when we're in the thick of it!

I think I just meant you are so very sensible and rational and fair that you could absolutely apply that thinking to your own situation (which I see now you have!) I'm glad he's come around and will support your career. You sound very capable, I'm sure you'll be fab at it :)

Fabergeegg - you seem to be implying that because i've supported dh in his career so far that it's understandable that he lied to get out of supporting me? If that's what you mean i don't agree. If you read the op you'll see that originally i suggested he do 4 days and he gave me (fake) reasons not to, and i accepted that. I absolutely did not expect him to risk his job to suit me. Then suddenly when a new opportunity came up for him going part time was totally possible, no problem. That's my issue. He's asked a lot of compromises of me and if i was able to do it i did it regardless of how hard it might be. When i asked a compromise of him he made up reasons to get out of doing it. Not acceptable in a partnership imo.
I never expected him to go pt as my due, i simply asked.
Again if you read the op i said we'd both rather not use childcare but i was willing to anyway as dh "couldn't" go pt. As it stands the agreement we've reached is that dh sorts the children out one day a week, be that with childcare or otherwise i don't mind.
I am lucky that it's not essential for me to work and therefore i'm a sahm. However i also consider dh lucky that due to me he's had two children with barely any change to his working life and that also due to me he can rest assured they're being really well cared for. Expecting him to step up and make a perhaps unwelcome change for the good of his children isn't too big an ask imo - parents (usually mothers) have to do it all the time. I've had to make sacrifices to suit him and i do it willingly but i'd be a total mug to then accept his bullshit reasons for not making any sacrifices for me.

Go back to basics Cailin( Great name by the way!), keep it simple. Just tell that you will be working that extra day and he needs to sort the children. I really understand why you feel like you do, I have a similar situation. However you get nowhere pointing out all the things you have done. They tune out, literally do not hear. Just take the day, put the responsibility on him, smile and carry on. Good luck.

What's the problem - he will look after kids while you work on a Saturday, no childcare issues to sort out!

I wasn't meaning to suggest that it was acceptable for your DH to lie, Cailin. I think I said it was totally unacceptable that he lied. I was trying to point out that it may have been to do with careless, skewed, self-serving logic rather than a deliberate attempt to deceive you. Obviously I don't know this but the suggestion was made with helpful intentions, because you were inviting opinions on the issue. And I did understand your issue as you've recapped there. Without knowing the details, it's impossible to have an opinion on where your DH was really coming from.

Re: the rest, I was thinking of how much it would compromise my family's financial stability if my DH cut his hours (the job would suffer) and thinking this wouldn't be a fair expectation for someone who sees himself as the breadwinner. I recognise this wasn't the issue but is bound to have been a factor in your DH's emotional response to your request. However, I completely agree that the situation is unfair and that it's being badly handled. Given the financial climate at the moment and the precarious nature of employment, I felt it might be idealistic of you to choose now as the moment to think about going back into employment. But just to reiterate, I don't think lying is acceptable and I would also be furious if I were in your shoes.

Given the financial climate at the moment and the precarious nature of employment it would be prudent to diversify and have the OP build up her financial capacity. This view of the main breadwinner as having a special claim to the need to work is built on a view of one person working or being the primary breadwinner being a normal and sensible approach to earning enough for family life. But it's actually an inherently less sound way to mitigate against the risks of an unstable market.

I agree emmeline. If i don't take on this job properly now (as opposed to fitting it in around the children) then it's very unlikely i'll get an offer if anything like it ever again. How many people get offered a well paid job that they can do any day of the week as it suits them? How many sahms get that offer? If dh frops to 4 days and i do one full day we'll be about 5 grand better off.

Why can't you do it on a Saturday though so you have no childcare issues & then you'd be even better off?

We see each other little enough as it is without saturday being eaten up too

Hmm I see Emmeline but not necessarily. I'd rather have one high-earning, stable full-time post than two more iffy part-time roles. It depends on the job a bit.

My DH has a job that couldn't go down to 4 days (family business). If he tried to force the issue, his job stability and our income would be compromised. Meanwhile, I have an arts degree. I couldn't hope to come up with a career for myself that would begin to make up for the losses incurred for our family by DH stepping back from full-time work and that is particularly true within the current financial climate. Yes, if we'd got our ducks in the row at the start, it might well make sense. But not necessarily.

For what it's worth, my DH would love to support me in a career move, but it would definitely be simply because I wanted to do it, rather than because we thought it would benefit the family or because fair's fair. Having said that, I would admire anyone who went back to work in these circumstances, simply because they wanted to do. It would be inspiring but not something I personally could justify at the moment.

But I don't know why we're even having this conversation really since Cailin could choose to work on a Saturday? Or don't you want to, Cailin?

I just read that you don't want to work on a Saturday. Well, each to their own but that's too far for me. You think he should have been willing to go down to part-time hours in order to do a job that could have been done on a Saturday but which you would have preferred to do on a week-day. And you feel he should have shared these values rather than grasping for false reasons to keep doing his job. Have you no idea of what a hand to mouth existence most of the UK is living? There are a lot of people out there with no job at all. I agree with you that the deception was wrong, but about everything else, quite frankly, you seem spoilt. As I'm sure you wouldn't welcome further opinions, I'll leave the thread.

Faberge you seem to be talking about your situation rather than mine. My dh can go down to 4 days. If i were to do my job full time i would earn double what dh earns - it's not just a job for the sake of it.

I'm glad you've got it sorted, somewhat. I think YANBU and your feelings are perfectly justified, but just let me pipe in with a perspective as an academic, too: he may very well not have thought he was lying. As back says, a consultancy is different from just cutting hours; and you said, 4 days is effectively no different than 5 from the point of view of his job!

I have friends who have gone to 80% time after returning from mat leave, and realised that all they managed to do was take a paycut and are doing no less work all -- just more at home and on weekends. And now two of them are facing the horrifying realisation that as they head back to full time they're being expected to do that "extra" 20% they never didn't do before... All it really gets you is power to specify what days you teach, and if his Uni is any like mine, you'd get "But can't you just take Mon off instead of Fri that week? We really need you to teach this practical and it runs Wed, Thu, Fri..." Especially if "all" you're doing is childcare

Sorry, got a bit distracted by being angry for my friends, there. I deliberately chose to go back full time after mat leave precisely because I saw what happened to them. If DH (SAHD) asked me to take a 20% paycut so he could work one day a week, I'm not sure what I'd think. But the deal we currently have is that if he gets a job it has to be able to pay for the childcare, so that part isn't an issue for us. I would quite like if some male academics went part time to care for babies; I think it might start a road towards some respect for the female academics who do.

You seem angry faberge but i can't really see why. I'm not sure where the living hand to mouth reference came from.

I totally get what you're saying raggedy and i've seen that happen to friends in other jobs too. Dh doesn't lecture and no one monitors his weekly output so he shouldn't suffer to much from that. In theory he could go down to 4 days without anyone knowing as long as he got his work done. He already comes home an hour earlier every day to help with the kids and it's made very little difference to him.

too much

How about you rey the job initially on a Saturday & then if it goes well your dh can either choose to cut his hours or agree to use childcare. Thing is, most couples I know who don't use childcare & have no family DON'T see much of each other as when one works the other has to cover childcare.

That's basically what I currently do RedHelen. I only do a very small number of hours every month and I generally do it at weekends. It really doesn't work very well as unless DH takes both children out I'm constantly interrupted. Given it's a weekend there's no playgroups to go to and he can't go to places like soft play as they're rammed at weekends and it's too difficult to look after a toddler and small baby on his own. In the nice weather they can go to the park but that won't really be an option in the winter. The only reason I manage to get it done is because there isn't a huge amount of work. But once I take on more it'll become much harder to squeeze it in - I will need a solid block of at least 5 hours every week to do it.