to want to accept amazing job opportunity without being judged for "deserting" my three children.

[Shreddiez]

I have three children aged 8, 5 and 1. I have always worked a 3 or 4 day week since having them. DH works full time and travels quite a bit. We have no family help but we do have a live-in nanny.

I have been offered an amazing job. An opportunity like this will never come-up again: fascinating work, good money, chance to make a real difference.

The new job would mean a lot of travel and when home I'd hardly see the kids Mon-Thurs, by hardly I mean maybe 20 mins in the morn. But I'd usually be home all day Fridays and I would get nine whole weeks leave a year that I could take over school holidays.

I intend to accept the job but am shocked by people's reactions. A friend referred to me deserting my kids, my MiL (who NEVER helps with the kids) keeps making veiled references to how sad it all is, even the nanny keeps joking how the one year old will think she is the mother.

Is it normal to suffer such passive aggression for wanting to work? Is it so bad to be out of the house 4 days out of 7 if you know you can be fully present and involved for the other three days? Doesn't nine weeks leave actual mean I will see the kids as much as someone who works three days if averaged over a year? And why do I have to justify this? Why can't people celebrate my efforts to do well at work and at motherhood? I feel so judged and its making me second guess myself and my choices.

I need to step away from this thread but first I just have to ask why people feel sorry for the nanny. Most live-in nannies work 60 hour weeks but ours will work an average of 45 hours a week. She will also get nine whole weeks of paid leave and rarely have to work school holidays. As she lives-in overnights are little extra work, the kids all sleep well so barring disaster she will just go to bed as normal. Believe me, compared to many full time nannies her hours are amazing. This is the career she wants, she loves the kids, she has a lovely central London home and is well paid. Do not feel sorry for the nanny.

I'm feeling at peace with my decision today. Now I need to put MN down and do some of that famous engaging with my kids that I keep swearing I'm so good at when at home!

Glad you're feeling good today.

To be offered this amazing opportunity.you are clearly exceptional and are already in a pretty high powered job, so it's not as though you're going from zero to 100, and suddenly leaving your children after being at home 24/7. Unfortunately, some people just like to plss on other people's chips. They see someone who is achieving something amazing and want to put a downer on it.

Other people may profess to be concerned about your children, but that's nonsense.... YOU And your husband are the people who love your children most and know them best, and if this new experience wasnt working well for them then I'm sure you would discuss the issue and make whatever adjustments necessary. It's just plain insulting and inaccurate when people assume that just because a parent works, they don't have their child's interests at heart.

Go for it. And please come back and post in a few months time when you're settled in to your new routine... It's always helpful to see how people can have all sorts of different lifestyles and have happy families.

Good luck! It sounds an amazing opportunity.

Good luck!

Lucky you and lucky nanny.

It sounds like a great way of life for you both.

In OPs place Id be very tempted to take this job. I wouldn't though, as it cuts into family time too much and that's too important, for me. All the DCs are young but thinking particularly about the 1 year old here!
This kind of position/working pattern would suit me if I wasn't a mother, but absolutely no way apart from that. Especially with a DH away a lot too.

Tbh it doesn't sound as if couple time and family time is a priority anyway so may as well go for it. Preferably with 2 nannies - this is just too much to put on 1 nanny there needs to be another in place so its 'seamless' especially in terms of fair holiday and leisure time and also possible illness cover

Holy cow, I'd love a bookie tubule that gave me 9 weeks holiday of sheer, unadulterated quality time with the kids when they're off school, as well as every single friday.... congrats, enjoy it.
(I'd probably get everyone up at 6.30 rather than 7 to have an extra half hour in the morning - can do reading / homework / music practice then, and have them in bed half an hour earlier when it's nanny in charge)
(would also make sure that I had a good housekeeper doing the laundry, cleaning and maybe food order online)

I'm a nanny - and I'd love those hours! :) It's laughable that anyone thinks they are long or unpleasant hours for a live in nanny. I used to work for a family and had the boys from 6am until 8pm 5 days a week minimum, sometimes weekends and often neither parent was there overnight as they both travelled a lot. Even when they were there I'd often do any night wakings as well because the boys were happy with me going in and I didn't have to deal with their high pressured jobs in the day - no bother to me as I was woken by them stirring anyway - so I might as well get up to them before they woke their Mum & Dad as well. We operated very much like a 3 parent family & all of us were happy with that.

It sadly ended when she took the most fabulous post overseas and I wasn't able to go with them.

Your nanny sounds lovely - it was an off the cuff comment to someone she has been living with for 4 years - it becomes much more than a nanny/employer relationship and so of course you are going to say things you wouldn't say in a different set up aren't you.

If she is happy, you are happy, DH is happy, the older kids are happy - the youngest will be happy... and frankly, everyone else bringing you down (not here as you asked for opinions, but IRL) can 'do one'

Take the job - it's a fantastic opportunity for ALL of you!

Good luck shreddiez!!

jaded I think where ever we send our DC to school, we should teach them that all families are unique and that no model of family life is perfect, especially our own.

We should teach them to always look for the positives and where there are negatives try to change them.

That they should try not to judge and always use their imagination.

Sorry haven't read the whole thread. Just want to say: DO IT DO IT DO IT!

I've just read a few more of the other posts... some people have no idea, none at all.

'Just the nanny in charge' & 'only 20 mins a day with someone who loves them' - jesus wept, you'd think we were robots . I love my little ones, I would do anything for them a parent would do - I'd die for them and I'd kill for them. They love me, they trust me - they see me as a part of their family and that's how I see them.

I don't live-in currently and it's certainly not the same - but the 3 children I look after are loved and cared for by all 3 of us. They know who their Mum is, they know who their Dad is and they know who BD is - family - as far as they're concerned.

The OP's nanny has been live in for 4 years - doesn't this mean anything to some of you? Really? They need the same back up plan a SAHM would have should anything happen to her.

I wouldn't do it for any money tbh.

It sounds great, in theory - nine weeks off, three whole days at home. But I've worked a shift like this and it was awful.

I used to work Mon-Thurs, 8am-8pm. So, see the kids for 20 minutes in the morning (which can never be quality time, not when everyone's getting ready/dressed etc) and miss bedtime.

After a few weeks, the dc were noticibly 'less engaged' with me. They would go to dh for everything because they weren't seeing me for the majority of the week. I lost touch with what was happening at school, reading progress, clubs, interests, friends. When it's reality, and you get to Friday morning and you've barely seen your kids since the Sunday night - it does feel like you've abandoned them.

The first day I was off, all the plans I had for quality time with the dc went out the window because I'd spend a day recuperating because I was so knackered from the week.
I lasted 3 months before quitting. It's not something I'd do again for any money tbh.

*bathroom, you are the parent in that case can't you see.
I imagine its a great job and nice that you feel so strongly about their care. I don't see as children who have somebody as good as you need parents tbh.

I am so pleased you've decided to go for it and accept the position. Cannot believe some of the posts on here, it's like going back in time to the 50's.

I'm a SAHM and would love to know what the job is and if they're hiring anyone else

Hmm. I realise there are a couple of posters who've said how they did something similar and it didn't work for them, and that's interesting.

However, I've also read more than one recent threads on MN with a lot of women of around my age talking about how they feel v directionless now that their children are older - and that their most fulfilled time was when their children were small and now they are a bit stuck and often despairing.

There's a lot of solemn pontificating on MN about Investing In Your Relationship Because The Children Grow Up So Fast...but a lot less about investing in the other bits of your life (fwiw I include friendships there, personally, along with career) that sustain us in all kind of ways.

motherinferior I agree with this completely, having watched a couple of my friends who did make a very sensible and rational choice at the time to stay home with their children (e.g. it cost money to work, child was disabled) who are now having this rather directionless time. The more proactive ones are starting to gear up to restarting things they used to do, but doing them for free or pin money which must be quite gutting when they used to be fairly high up and command decent money for their skills (especially as a family when they still need the money, bit different if this is not the case), one is quite depressed and while she may have been anyway, I think that lack of direction and purpose hasn't helped. I'm glad in a funny way I didn't have the choice, I had to return to work and now I much prefer being career-oriented because it gives me something purposive to do as well as interesting colleagues and friends.

I am not sure which my children prefer, there have been times when they've said 'all the other mums were at the mum's dinner at school' and guilted me, I think they are harder on me than they are on my equally hard working husband who works away because they don't have an expectation he'll be there for that type of stuff. I also found out only about 1 in 5 mums went to the dinner!

I think the only way to find out is probably to try it and see. I think people have made some good points about the Friday- you may be too knackered to do much on that day and to what extent a high-powered role will encroach on those three days- I am not that high-powered that I can command that package but I do work some time most weekends.

totally agree with motherinferior and thetallesttower. At a certain age you start to see people coming out the other side of the child-rearing years but also dealing with life events that they never anticipated (death, divorce, long term illness). These are not uncommon things to happen. My two friends in their fifties are now utterly buggered because they gave up work for all the right reasons, stayed at home and enjoyed it no doubt. And now the children are more or less grown and in one case divorce and in the other case redundancy/serious illness/separation triple whammy has meant the women are now in trouble. There is simply no longer a breadwinner in the equation and these women are utterly disempowered in their situations.

I don't for a minute take away from the fact that lots of women like/want/need to stay at home but I do hesitate if these downside risks have not been taken into the equation.

Good for you OP. Your DH never had to deal with such criticism when he decided to take a job that took him away so much, did he!

My own reservation in this would be the age of your youngest, who is going to need a rock solid attachment to someone in your absence. But you're already aware of that and happy with your nanny so even that has been taken into account.

It's 2014. We have skype and everything. Being 'away' isn't like it was 50 years ago.

Motherinferior and Quangle - you have taken a jump there though and are comparing the ops situation to a SAHM. There are lots of shades of grey inbetween.

Plenty of mums work full or part time, but without such a drastic shift pattern that you don't (or barely) see your kids for so long. It's all very well saying 'Oh it's only four days' - but the reality is not seeing your children from a Sunday night to a Friday morning. That is a huge amount of time to be away for.

I work 28 hours now, from 8am-4pm, four days a week. Quitting my job where I was working similar shifts to the op doesn't mean I went straight from that to being a SAHM and leaving me financially dependant/screwed in a few years.