To not be 100% sure I want to be a policemans wife?

[flux500]

My dh wants to join the police and I'm worried it will mess up mine and the childrens lives.

I know it's his life long dream and although I'm supportive, all I hear is the bad shifts, the constantly being late home, the cancelling of holidays, the high divorce rate....he currently has a not very fulfilling job but it is managerial and well paid.

Does anyone have experience of actually being a policemans wife? I need some actual views instead of what's in the media.

Am I just being really selfish?

Reading other people's responses has reminded me of a few more points!

YY to the days off. I didn't get a lay-in between Christmas and Easter - and both of them only came about because I was staying at my parents. It was simply just the way DP's shifts fell that it wasn't possible. Not the end of the world as DC sleeps very well, but still gets tiring after a while.

And yes, as your DC are older you might need to talk to them too. When DC are tiny they don't notice - DD finds it perfectly normal that DP walks out of the house at all sorts of random times to go to work, and pays no attention when he's not around. Older children might find that takes quite a bit of getting used to.

I thought they weren't recruiting atm?

My dh is a policeman. He is a frontline sgt now, but my life just getting promotions is so so difficult. We have a dd who is 14m.
He was a special before he joined too, when we were at uni, and joined up whem we left uni. He has been an officer for 7 years now.

it can be great, we have more time in the week together, I am so very proud of him, he is an amazing officer and has done some great work. I think it depends on the person too. My husband doesnt have a problem with our lo being noisy when he is asleep on nights, he adores her and goes out of his way to spend time with her. I am a sahm, so we get to spend time together when he is off. I am pretty comfortable on my own, and with my lo so its not too bad.

Dont get me wrong, this stuff is tough, his career does come first and getting a promotion within the police force can be almost impossible, depending on what force he joins. It really wears on your relationships as a whole family.

They arent constantly late home and if they are they get overtime, and leave is very rarely cancelled with no notice. Getting holiday can sometime be tough, but they dont tend to cancel them.

I'm so glad I posted on here thank you do much for the replies.

In answer to the police re recruitment police Scotland are recruiting right now and that's out local force as we live in Scotland :)

Reading everything I think if I was a sahm or planning another baby - which we are - it actually might be definitely more positive for that time. But I still see difficulties when I go back to work. My commute is cumulatively 3 hours a day so it seems like we would be ships in the night. But then if he is compelled to be a policeman, and he's happier because if it, i would hope we could survive that.

I think I might show him this thread and tell him my thoughts and so he can see other opinions too and not just think it's all in my head.

I have also had a friend suggest the prison service as a table career with good pay and shifts, but obviously working within a prison as opposed to being out on the beat. He dismisses this immediately though. I think he likes to be the hero!

I have also heard of good officers being accused of all sorts and having to ensure an investigation and also police court and Apparently this is extremely stressful - as it would be!

Flux, what is your career? The sahm's I know married to police do enjoy it much more especially before the children start school.

We purposefully only have one car so we HAVE to see each other at least twice a day for 5 mins to swap the car!!!

It's hell. It nearly destroyed DH. Tell him no.

In bath (!) so limited ability to offer detail but in brief: 12 h shifts with no opportunity to get food or drink, attempts on his life, protestors screaming in his face "I hope your wife gets cancer of the cunt ", no ability to sleep.during the day wrecking his physical health, abusive senior staff, going to dinner with friends to have fellow guests declare all police deserve to die, .... I could go on.

On the plus side, he has saved lives, returned lost children and vulnerable people to their loved ones and helped secure convictions for rape and DV, so...

Flux: I have a colleague who used to work in the prison service. She seems to have enjoyed it, but it sounds horrendous to me, and I think you have to be a lot more of a tough nut than you do to work in the police! Also, plenty of people a police officer deals with (obviously depending on the sector s/he works in) will be essentially ok people. I can't imagine the same being true of convicts. My dad always used to say that he got on with most of the people he arrested!

My Dad was in the police so from the point of view of a child I would say its a great job most of the time. My mum was also a shift worker so I guess it worked as they understood each other and one of them was around to help with school pick ups and other times such as school holidays so that was a plus.
On the negative side there were times when I worried about him being at work. I saw him battered and bruised on a few occasions. I hated growing up hearing such hatred some people have for police referring to police as 'scum' and realising not everyone thought they were heroes. I was proud of what he did, I saw him help people and give advice often in his own time.

DH is in the police
He is in a specialist unit
Shifts aren't bad at all - one week of lates/month, and one weekend a month. This is a pretty unusual shift pattern though. When he was in main office CID he worked every other weekend, and i think they're consulting on three in four at the moment.

I can't remember the last time he had a rest day cancelled, never mind leave. They ask if he can come in, but he says no, and they always find someone else who needs the overtime more than we do.

my own job is not entirely unimportant in terms of public safety, and he does his fair share of school runs and nursery pick-ups to allow me to work late when needed.

I hear policemen top the league when we look at the occupations of husbands involved in domestic violence.

Why do so many cops beat up their wives?

Because they can.

I mean, who are you going to report them to?

DH is in the police and it is tough. I've had to go on holiday with the DC on my own because they wouldn't give him time off, had to cope on my own with a newborn when they refused his paternity leave, and have spent countless evenings and weekends wishing he was home with me.
But we cope and we still have a really good relationship.

Sophie that's a horrible thing to say and really unhelpful. Of course a police officer would arrest a colleague who committed a violent offence, DH wouldn't think twice.

My husband has 4 years left to do. He is literally counting the days. It's not the job it was, plus the pay and benefits have been chipped away at. I know people talk about the pension, but he has paid 11% of salary to get that and even the scheme for new recruits is nowhere as good as the old scheme.

When we first married 17 years ago, the camaraderie was lovely and job itself were great- hard but great. We battled the hard times (baby, two full time careers with minimal family help) but we are past that and still the slog to 'r day' seems indeterminable!!!

Maybe he is just old and tired- and you need to ask one of the newer recruits.

There is certainly must more pressure these days , of that I am sure. But isn't that all jobs these days.

Good luck whatever you decide to do.

My dh is a policeman, he joined five years ago leaving a very well paid bank job behind. He always wanted to join so I supported him 100 percent.
I work from home so I do see him during the week but usually am busy so can't really do much together.
We have two young children, I was pg when he went away to police college for 15 weeks. Although I don't think they go as long as that now and in two stages.
Pros
Pension, job security hopefully, doing a job he likes, I'm very proud of him and have met some lovely people.
Mostly his bosses have been good and both times he has had nearly a month paternity leave.
He works nearby and often pops in or can get here quickly if there is an emergency, like when dd had to be taken to hospital.

Cons
If I worked out of the home I would hardly see him.
The sleep thing is such a bug bear, he is always tired, I am always fed up of never getting a lie in and dealing with the kids all day and night sometimes. They always get ill when he is on night shift and unable to help.
Having to be quiet in the house when he is sleeping, although he does wear ear plugs.
He is never on a weekend off/ rest day when something comes up, ie Xmas, birthday, night out.
The job comes first. Always. You will think it won't and I was the first to say it wouldn't, but it does. And there is nothing you can do about that - he can't leave the scene of an accident because you have to get to work. He can't say no when asked to work on and you have dinner plans. If he has court on your birthday/ holiday, well tough!

I am proud of dh, really proud, but I will be glad when he specialises and goes into firearms or traffic or something as at least then there will be no night shift. (Did I mention I hate night shift???!!!!)

Good luck op, PM me if you want to ask anything as our circumstances sound very similar ;)

It's certainly not an easy choice. I'm sat on my own (again) as DH is working, he's been a police officer for 5yrs now.

I work full time and we've 2 kids so it can often feel like we hardly see each other at times.

Pro's are we have his shifts in advance so can try and plan some social things. He does his share of picking up and dropping off DS at nursery and has spent all day with him today. He likes some parts of the job and feels it is a worthwhile job. There is a feeling of job security and a pension plan. He is relatively happy just now as gets on with his neighbour.
He feels his gaffers are pretty good and understanding and were really good recently when we had a tough couple of weeks.

Con's are definitely the shit shifts. He's on night shift all weekend so trying to keep the noise down, get showered and ready to go out can be challenging. I'm pretty used to being on my own as his previous career involved him working away but I think if you're used to being together every evening and weekend it will be a tough transition. We try and make sure we have at least a 2 week holiday together and love our weekend off together.
Rest days can be cancelled a lot, he'll go in as he's been cited for court then last minute the person will plead guilty and it won't go ahead so he won't have had his day off, will be tired and grumpy and I'll be pissed off having organised childcare for no reason.

I do think there's people in far worse situations than ours though and most jobs ask a lot of their workers now.

I love him for who he is, not what he does.

I am currently sat in bed mums netting alone as dh is still at work.
He was meant to finish at 6 to start his rare weekend off with some wine a take away and a movie.
He will. Of be back for a while yet as he is dealing with a domestic and when he does he will disturb me coming to bed late and need to lie in on his (and my) day off.
It's not a great life no if I'm honest.
Luckily I'm fairly independent and used to work shifts myself as a nurse.
I now do a more 9-5 job but have to work part time as I'd never cope with his shifts and childcare.
On the plus side he is often here in the week which is nice for some things including school and nursery runs and time together without the kids (we do daytime cinema trips and lunch)
The weekends are a killer for me. I have the kids alone all weekend which is often lonely and then go back to work Monday without having had any break at all.

It could be hard for you to work and commute unless you have very flexible childcare or family help. You will have to pay for childcare whether or not he's working those days. Things like him having to work much later than scheduled. It's not family friendly employment at all!

Oh Ledkr. I know exactly how that feels!

I've thought of a few more things:
Friends and relatives don't understand that he can't 'just take a day off' for their wedding/birthday party/BBQ. Getting weekend leave is such a rarity, we want to spend time as a family and need to do things round the house sometimes. So people can get huffy about that.

I find I try and plan to be out on nights so that DH can sleep more easily (he is not at all precious about this and says make as much noise as we want - but I know he's got to be alert later to drive a car very fast and point tasers at people. No way am I going to contribute to him being more tired - it's not safe). But then I do want to be home when he wakes up or we never get to see each other. So in theory I could use the weekends that he's on nights to go away and visit friends etc but in reality wouldn't do that because we would miss that couple of hours. Plus still need to get school uniforms and homework done! So it makes your own day disjointed.

On the plus side I was shocked at how many of my friends husbands don't cook, take children to clubs, sort out laundry, etc. DH and I share all that between us because at any time of day or night it could be either one of us in charge of things at home.

I have been stuck in same job since having DC as they agreed to be flexible so I work full time around shifts and children. Some days doing 5 hours some days doing 13. I can't see anywhere else offering me something like that! I am utterly bored after over a decade of same role, but it pays ok and I have to stick with it due to DH job.

Oh and you are advised to get yourself on the shortened electoral register.

Oh and you are advised to get yourself on the shortened electoral register.

No. It's the opposite. You don't want to be on the shortened register. The edited register is the one made available for general sale, so anyone can see that very easily. The full register is only available to someone who goes to their local electoral registration office to look at it. So if you want to make your details less easily available, you should opt not to be put on the edited register. See link below for a better explanation:

www.aboutmyvote.co.uk/faq/registering_to_vote/ni_what_is_the_difference_betw.aspx

This is a bit counterintuitive, and seems to cause a lot of confusion in my experience, so thought it worth pointing out. There is also an option for anonymous registration, where you would appear on the full register only as a number, but that is rare an only applies in some very specific circumstances.

Another policemans daughter checking in.

My overriding memory as a child is my mum skwarking at us to shut up because dad was in bed before grumpy dad came stomping downstairs telling mum to shut up

Other than that we had a great childhood, my parents still worked as a team despite dads horrendous shift pattern and being late off he always tried to rearrange his shifts to attend important events

He worked every Christmas - on purpose because it was too good money not too - partly for finances and partly for continuity. Our Christmas Day was always, wake up and have breakfast, wait for dad to turn up in his police car and fully kitted out before we opened our presents with him and off he went back to work before finishing his shift in time for dinner.

My parents have been married for 40 years and I am so extremely proud of my dad for what he did in his career. Our childhood wasn't 'normal' but it was good and it was fun.

I would say if you are prepared to be selfless and also both work hard at the marriage you'll work and the kids really will not care

Oops. Thanks Cindertoffee!!

the money is good and can retire early on a good pension

My DH joined the police just before we got married so we never really knew any other way of life - agree with the child care issues - he minded the kids on his days off so minimal costs for child care - we never had to cancel a holiday - sometimes (eg the g8) we couldn't have holidays between certain dates but we knew well in advance - the shift systems have improved so much in Scotland too since my children were small. He's retired four years now (at age 49) on a great pension - kinda wish I'd joined up when he did ...

I'd say you can still have a great family life - you just need to plan things around his shift system and make your own plans for he is working.

Also one more thing - because of the nature of the job most of our friends are also police (retired police) and as far as I know none of them are wife/ husband batterers ....

The good pension is only happening for a little while longer, massive changes are afoot and they still need to pay 14% into it and yet are being expected to work til 68 under new proposals