AIBU to think that both husband and wife can make good money, do fulfilling work and take part in family life

[CalpolOnToast]

We are both self-employed.

My husband thinks that to bring in very good money as a family you need one partner working all the time and the other to be a SAHP or very flexible. He is willing to be the SAHP.

I think that it ought to be possible for us both to work part time, probably in our own business, and earn the same as one of us would but still have a decent amount of time with DS.

DH says he's never heard of anyone doing it and that I'm dreaming.

Has anyone reading this run a family business, earnt lots of money (Xenia type money ) and had time to spend with their children?

Of course it is possible. Single parents manage fine so I don't see why 2 FT working parents would not be able to do this.
We have a fair whack of help admittedly and chuck money at the small stuff.

dh and I are both professionals. I work ft but my job is pretty flexible. dh now works pt and is self-employed the rest of the time.

We earn a very good (SE) wage between us. We use a live-in aupair as childcare which gives us great coverage and back-up. Both of us can travel or work late at will without bargaining with each other or employers. As we have cultivated our skills and work portfolio over the years, we have some bargaining power with our employers. I have just negotiated a fantastic pay rise and title with my new employer which I will start in March.

Whilst one, if not both, of us will attend the children's plays, sports days, parent teacher meetings etc, it will be difficult for us to 'helicopter parent' our children, not that we would want to anyway. We have to do it remotely through using our aupair as a cheerleader and using excellent private schools.

That is what our money buys. It is not for everyone but I think works for us. The children's lives are comfortable and they have friends and are doing well at school. We see the children in the mornings and most evenings and every weekend. I guess we could not ask for more.

In our case my dh has a degree and many other industry relevant qualifications.
I don't.
I could never earn what he does, even if I worked 24/7.
I would love to go back to work.
But until my children are older it's simply not an option.

Lego: "I don't think you can have a job which is flexible/part time enough to allow you to be hands on and pays extremely well (you seem to want wages above £100K)."

It is not particularly difficult to achieve this pay in the south-east if you are professionals or senior management in a large company at a certain level of seniority.

Depends on hours and flexibility.

Both DH and I work in jobs we love and earn a lot of money. But we both have a reasonable amount of flexibility ( move inherent in the job, him by virtue of being very senior so no one can tell him where to be or when ).

We have a lot of family time.

Kennington - I think single parents do cope remarkably well - but realistically in a partnership there is more wiggle room for one parent to be at home/more hands one. If a single parent is working for a high wage, it is more likely that there will be demands placed on them meaning that they can't do all the parenting and will need extra support like childcare.

The OP seems to want to find the holy grail of a large paying salary job, which allows her and her husband to work flexibly and be very hands on. Single parents do probably fit in more parenting than the working parent in a couple because they have to, which must be incredibly hard.

blueshoes sounds like a wonderful set up. DH & I are self employed but it's always DH who picks up my work (so works longer hours) if the children are ill - so that I can be at home. It's hard as I'm now at the stage of progressing my career and don't always want to be the default carer for the children - having an aupair would be an ideal solution! Might have to see how our work is going in the new year.

There are so many variables.

Money pays for a lot of outsourcing of things like cleaning, diy and gardening and it certainly pays nursery fees.

On the other hand once children get past the childcare stage it can be tricky if both parents work long hours - 14 year olds may not want after school care, but most people would rather they had an adult around in the house after school and in the holidays.

On the other hand many well paid people send their children to schools (possibly private) that provide lots of after school activities - but that may not be your style or your children's.

It's certainly true that a full time SAHP can do a lot to make life comfortable - but that will only work if you are both happy with the arrangement.

Haven't read full thread, so sure somebody has mentioned this, but tax wise you lose out if one parent is an unpaid SAHP (although if you own a business you have more flexibility to mitigate this loss)

blue - but surely a level of seniority does provide for flexibility but also places responsibility on the worker, which may result in longer hours sometimes?

My experience is seniority does create a level of flexibility that at more junior level isn't there. But there are some completely immovable things that either happen and you need to respond or have to be there for.

Both Dh and I work FT, earn very similar and due to shift work share the childcare and chores 50/50! Some weeks it works very well other weeks its very hard- mainly when DD or we are ill.

We don't have any domestic help and I think that if we had any additional draws on our time like Badders - ill parent or properly ill child it would start to fall apart!

We are never bored haha!

There is no "ought" about it. There are so many variables in every family's circumstances that one model cannot work for all.

Having said that, I have a strong personal aversion to those families where children's well being and education is sacrifices at the altar of two very time consuming corporate careers.

Thank you everyone, there have been some brilliant replies.

We are both at a bit of a crossroads in our careers, DH is stopping doing one thing as its not going anywhere and is going to spend a few years doing relatively well paid full-time freelance work, I'm going to continue doing relatively well paid part-time freelance work, and we're going to save money to put into a startup. Then the decision will be whether this startup will be in my field or DH's field and therefore who will be in charge!

Calpol

Sounds very exciting! Hope it all goes well for you

Thank you, I hope so

OP, sounds good. I think it is preferable for both keep their hand in than to have strict division of labour.

Lego: "blue - but surely a level of seniority does provide for flexibility but also places responsibility on the worker, which may result in longer hours sometimes?"

Responsibility comes with the territory with well remunerated positions. In my team, I am the highest paid and to a certain extent, the buck stops with me. In other words, it does not matter how I get the job done so long as it is done, even if a team member is off sick for a month, as one was recently. However, I work with the team and can delegate aspects of my job. I can largely do and monitor my job over email or the phone, which means I can work from home. I will be there for important meetings but other times, I manage my own workload and plan my schedule. I am also experienced and faster and can advise off the cuff.

It is possible for me to work from home easily when I want (manager is based in the US). However, I choose not to except when I need to because I feel I am more efficient and closer to the team in the office. I do however work from home when I need to, such as to send the children to the dentist or a school activity. Similarly, I might do a little work over the weekend and send the occasional email on the blackberry in the evenings or on holiday, if I think it will help things ticking over different time zones and allow others to get on with their jobs.

I think with a lot of modern jobs and technology, the trade-off for flexibility is that the boundary between work and home becomes blurred. But that suits me fine because I can be available on the domestic front when I need/want to.

I think if you are self employed it is easier in some ways.
I agree wrt the tax situation. Pension!? What pension!?
And of course a higher salary means you can outsource the really mundane Boring stuff
My situation is what it is.
Not what I would like ideally but I am very glad I had the choice to be a sahp....many don't.

I think it is possible. I work 28 hours over three days and my Dh does fulltime hours over four days. So one of us is at home doing childcare three days a week and two days they are in childcare. I works well for us

I am SE with my own very successful business and DP is. SAHD. We have 2 DCs under 2 and I've never had an official day off since they were born, but I do work from home so its a happy compromise and the hours can be very part time.

I do earn Xenia type money (I think!) but I put in crazy hours (14 hour days 7 days a week) before our first DC was born so that I could build the business up enough that I could employ staff to take care of the day to day running of the business.

I have to pinch myself constantly as we are in a very fortunate position but honestly you need to put the hours in in the early stages.

I don't think 2 x PT would work as well as 1 x FT from a business point of view but it's possible if you use your hours wisely.

I agree that 2 x PT probably doesn't work as well as 1 x FT and 1 x SAHP.

I've worked PT in a corporate type job and I felt shafted - I did all the hours for 7/10 of the pay and felt I did everything badly.

Working FT has worked much better for me and the extra 3/10 salary has meant I could hire really good childcare.

Xenia is very much real - I came across her briefly in a professional capacity once. I actually think she talks a LOT of sense around women's independence and the importance of making informed choices regarding your capacity to earn.

DH and I both work part time in our own businesses (2 businesses entirely separate, one each)

Both of us earn about £100k a year so household income £200k. No idea if that's Xenia type money but I think it's bloody good!

We share childcare equally over a 7 day week. We work evenings when children are in bed, Friday night we aren't out on the town we are answering emails etc. We spend masses of time with our pre school children and it works very well.

YANBU. We both work part-time and it works well despite being told by many friends and family that 'nobody manages to do that'. Takes focus, belief, action, flexibility and communication.

The other thing that people haven't mentioned is tax. The difference between marginal tax rates for different salaries and take home pay. Earning 100- 120k for one person is pretty much the worst. No personal allowance, cb, tax free childcare (in the future although would only affect lp), 80k ish of higher rate tax. If you earn 85k jointly it is about the same take home pay as 100k for one earner (using google tax calculators for 35k and 50k and factoring in child benefit for 2 children). Once you have paid into pensions the 85k joint will pay practically no hr tax at all so will probably end up more.

Both dh and I work flexibly. People are obsessed with headline figures but what matters is how much money you actually take home in comparison to your outgoings.

Yes it's possible.

Dh and I were both employed in well paid jobs.

I worked 10am-8pm 4 days a week and did the morning school run. He worked 7am-3pm and did afternoon pick up.

I had 3 days off, so plenty of time together.

We now run a business together from home, earn good money and have flexibility. If kids are sick, it depends On what work is scheduled as too who looks after them.

If there is an emergency (forgot lunch, need bringing home because sick etc) again is whoever is free does it.

We schedule work around the kids. So, over Christmas, we arranged the schedule so only one of us needed to be working up until the 23rd. But we made sure we spent evenings all together. On the 23rd we closed and will open again on Monday.

We have done buys of work I between, website updates etc. Thins that take an hour here or there while the kids are busy.

We find that both of us need to be flexible though. You can't have one partner who drags out work so they don't have to mop up vomit or take the kids to their hobby for example.

There is a huge difference between "well paid" / "good salaries" and "Xenia type money".

I'm sure earning circa 100k and keeping a work life balance is easy enough (esp if in SE) but earning multiples of that with PT hours are, Is I think, rarer than this thread suggests.