To think PT working is more stressful than FT when a parent?

[MortifiedAdams]

Not a WOHM/SAHM debate.

Friends and colleagues who work PT seem to have so much more on their plate and seem more stressed than whose who work.FT. THe PTers still seem to have to do.most if not all of the childcare arrangements, the housework etc.

A few work shifts and one, when on days, literally does.not see her child all.of fri sat and sunday due to the way the hours fall (compressed over three days). Another has totally sporadic shifts so as soon as the rota comes out, is calling round the parents/ILs and babysitting circle to arrange cover for her shifts.

In comparison, the FTers (admittedly not many), have full time childcare in place, or have a more equal split of the domestic chores, and seem a lot less stressed.

I imagine the reason PTers do fewer hours is to make more time spent with their LOs, but they seem.to have to cram.so so.much more into that time that it must detract from the fun time.

Aibu to think that PT is the hardest set up with LOs?

I'm working FT, I'll tell you in a few months. What I would say at the moment is I feel less tired at the end of the week from going to work (with regular hours at the moment and a half hour commute) and having a cleaner than I do doing the school run twice a day, trying to run my own business, doing PTA and WI stuff, doing all the cooking and cleaning...

It also depends on how/where you work as well. I don't think working from home with my own business, though extremely flexible actually works for me as I need the externally imposed discpline of working for someone else. Plus having a regular monthly payment coming in makes it less stressful. Plus I like having a cleaner. Obviously the routine imposed by this could make it more stressful for some people.

4 days a week at work is the worst deal I think. I've done that before and was like full time in terms of hours but part time money and all the stress of trying to fit the work into 4 days, and people questioning your committment at work. I wanted to avoid that. Possibly 3 days would be the best option but FT was a better option than 4 days for me I think.

Well obviously it depends how part time and when the hours are.
DC15 and 17 now but I have never worked full time since they were born (I did work FT for 20 years before that though).
I work 12 to 15 hours a week and it has been a perfect arrangement for me.

I think the people who have it hardest are ones that dont use childcare and swap shifts with their dh, whether full or part time. If they are in childcare they gave nutritious meals, homework done, no ones in house so stays clean and you dont have anything hard to do really

I think whether part time or full time is easier depends very much on the job and also on how much support you have at home e.g. cleaner, partner who contributes to housework etc.

Very often, when people decrease their official hours at work (so their children don't have spend so much time in childcare) their work load does not decrease proportionally. I get really irritated by a full time colleague who is always going on about how hard she works and how hard her life is as she gets less done than me at work (per hour). She also doesn't have to do as much as me at home (her DH works part time).

I don't think you can generalise on p/t, f/t basis alone. When my children were younger I worked 3 evenings a week, when my DH got home from work - pretty much stress free tbh. Now my youngest has started school f/t I have increased my hours from 10 to 20 a week, but have been doing nearer 37 with overtime. It fits around the children most of the time, 9.15 -3 and then back in the evenings after I've done all the running round for clubs, made tea and got youngest to bed. Not so sure about stressful, but totally knackering. I haven't noticed any more help with housework either although DH was pretty good before anyway.
Other people may well have more inconvenient hours than I do, whether they work p/t or f/t and I think that's more of an issue.

Also I do think the mindset that everyone should work exactly 37.5 hours a week is clearly ridiculous, especially when people often have a complex set of other responsibilities.
(Not saying you think this OP. Just that there is something of an expectation that F/T hours are the normal thing to do)

Linroz - v true re the stress of reduction in pay. When I was a LP I worked part time (20 hrs a week) and was lucky that WTC made up a big chunk of my salary. I started work FT as a teacher and was making the same as my PT job&WTC! I am a few years along the pay scale now and now married, and we could afford for me to be PT but I was only made permanent this year. Feeling a bit low and desperate about it all TBH :(

4 days teaching was a brilliant solution for me, but it was a temporary contract. Decent pay, still worked very hard but it felt a million times more balanced

I found pt working very stressful! 3 days a week the absolutely worst. 4 days was doable but it is a lot less stressful for me to do FT. (I have a client facing senior role, so can never really "disappear" off the radar).

No, PT much less stressful for me, but then we share all household chores, and DP takes responsibility for his share of the childcare as well.

I agree. I was part-time for 6 years (as a GP) when children were smaller. Now I am full-time, and although working extremely hard, and with constantly rising demans professionally, I find life much easier to manage. DH is supportive, and helps with childcare and school runs. If I'd realised this sooner I would not have taken a PT role in the assumption that it would be easier.

I am now pregnant with DC3, and after maternity leave, this time I will be returning to F/T work, and not reducing to P/T again. It helps to live close to work, and to the children's schools/ nursery; I can dash out in an emergency to collect one of them for example, but also can pop home during the working day between visits to patients if I need to.

My work-life balance is as close to ideal as it has ever been. I no longer feel (as I did when P/T) that I am short-changing both work and my children. Now they both get my full attention, and I don't have the constant guilt that seemed to go with P/T work. Counter-intuitive, I know, but it works for us.

I think working shifts is more stressful whether pt or ft. I work pt 3 days a week. Zero stress.

Have also done both and I much prefer working PT. I feel I can just about keep on top of things working PT, but the year I worked FT I felt I was drowning. So for me YABU, but I think this will be one of those things that depends on the individual families and jobs.

I think it could be depending or circumstances and childcare arrangements. People just have to do what they can and what suits their family.

I'm pt, my shift change every week, i find the more stressful times are weekends and late finishes because by me no childcare facilities open wkends or past 6:30.

To be honest i found being a SAHM more stressful than any job i have had.

I work PT, DH works FT on a shift pattern so complicated you need Einstein to work it out for you. Although he is often around in the daytime it's completely unpredictable so we pay for childcare for my days regardless to save stress.

I work PT and absolutely love it. But (1) I have heaps of family help (2) my boss is an absolutely brilliant lady with a young child herself and she is very very supportive (3) dh is supportive too and doesn't expect a show home level of housework on the days I'm at home and (4) I do two days, which means my workload is actually tailored to the amount of time I'm contracted to work for. I think people who do 3 or 4 days tbh end up doing a full time role squeezed into whatever time is available and that is stressful.

If you make it work, pt work is the best cos you get the best of both worlds. I see heaps of my gorgeous boy and get to do mummy things eg playgroups, play dates, and I also get to do a job that I love (and appreciate all the more for doing it in short bursts - I just don't get long enough at work to get bored/annoyed/foster any office politics resentments!)

I do get a lot of guilt re leaving my boy on the days I'm not there (irrational, as he loves nursery and his grandparents, he's having a great time while I'm gone), and I do get that 'left out' feeling at work when I've missed a big meeting or not been there when something funny happened, but none of it is insurmountable and the joys of both working and mummying more than make up for it.

Being a parent and working is stressful, hell just being a parent is stressful.

I think everyone should give everyone else a break, we are all doing the best we can, with the cards we have been dealt.

I think it depends on the job. I'm a project manager and it's much more relaxing working 4 days rather than 3. Things can change in minutes (for the worse!) and if you're not there for 2 out of 5 days you spend the first day and a half sorting out the mess which built up in your absence.

If it was the kind of job you do and then leave with no hang over tasks and nothing happens when you're away, then part-time is fine.

I don't think you can generalise really, every house is different, but as a lp working FT I could only dream of PT....I think PT is the best of both worlds. a fantastic balance, & most people I know think that too.

It depends so much on so many things. I have worked various combinations of part time hours- 3days a week, weekends only, term time only... imo the easiest was working 3 days a week Mon-Weds. 3 days at work, 2 days pottering around going to toddler groups, 2 days family time.

From the thread so far it sounds like the things that can make part-time stressful include:

• shifts that are outside normal childcare hours
• constantly changing rotas/workload that make arranging regular childcare challenging/impossible
• lack of money
• housework/childcare not equitably shared, so part-timer does it ALL instead of a fair share of it

Though I guess all of these can apply to FT too.

I think that if wife is PT and husband FT, employers tend to assume the PT role is a "little job" even if more/equivalently senior, which can cause more stress if the man isn't willing to be assertive with his employers about family responsibilities.

I am PT and happy with it at the moment, but if I felt I was dropping behind career-wise would be more stressed. At the moment PT allows me enough energy left over to pursue career-enhancing stuff outside work - not quite as much as I'd like, but more than if I was FT - so it's actually currently a better choice for me as I want to keep my options open.

I have reluctantly just gone ft after having been pt sine dd was born. I would much rather be pt because I would like to spend more time with her but I can sort of see what the OP means: when you are ft it's fricking stressful but a certain momentum takes over and you have less to worry about in terms of day to day weekday childcare (what to feed them/ where to go) because that side of things is handled by the childminder.

I would still much prefer to be pt though...

Tailtwister yeah, can see how project management might be tricky with fewer days. Does it work to do more days but shorter - i.e. you're minimising the length of time for stuff to go pear-shaped in IYSWIM?

I do 3 days, but spread over 4 for that reason. (Different role, but still have ongoing work). I still get the same time away, but I am in frequently enough to keep the plates spinning...

Not IME.
How can working 60hrs a week, be less stressful than working only 36 hours a week ?