To work full time to fund DHs preferred lifestyle?

[Smoothsailing9]

Bit of background first. My DH has a professional job which he trained for at university and has done ever since (20 years). He earns approx £50,000 a year. I went to university but did an arts degree, then trained as a teacher but didn’t enjoy it. Worked in various fairly low paid arts related jobs until I had DCs and took several years out. Returned to work part time when youngest was 3. My mum has always willingly provided free childcare/ after school supervision. I now have a 20 hours per week job I really enjoy but is very low paid compared to DH, I bring home around £8,000 a year.

A few days ago eldest DS was talking about a new phone he wants for Xmas. We discussed it and told him it was way too expensive. Obviously he moaned and sulked - he is 14. But DH used the opportunity to go on a massive rant about how little money he has, how he can’t afford a new car and foreign holiday every year etc and eventually, as I knew it would, it ended up being my fault for not bringing enough money in. This was in front of DCs. I was upset but left it.

Then about 3am that night DH wakes me up to say he’s really stressed about money. I said, I’m not discussing this in the middle of the night and went downstairs to make a cup of tea (I don’t sleep very well). He followed me and started a huge row about how “someone of your intelligence should be earning more” and “ if I’d married someone in my industry, I’d be fine”. Went on about how much more his friends earn, how I’ve got no savings or pension (although I actually have), how he wants me to get a full time job.

He brings all this up regularly but it’s really upset me this time. Although he’s a good dad, I do all the housework, paperwork, shopping and cooking and the ‘mental load’ stuff. I spend all my time not at work doing stuff for the house and family, whereas he just works, comes home and relaxes. If I worked full time his life would change massively. He might be able to buy a nicer car, but he’d need to take on half of the running of the house and I know he wouldn’t. I would certainly go back full time when the DCs can look after themselves more, but I just can’t see how I’d manage it now. Also, I am really low maintenance and really don’t cost him a lot. Don’t drink, no expensive hobbies, buy all my clothes off eBay. So AIBU not to look for a full time job?

Nothing worse than having DC taught by a teacher who hates the job, teaching is like nursing, you have to want to do it.

There's no tax or NI on 8k but you could earn more than that and end up with 8k net iyswim, especially as OP says she pays into a pension. Income tax doesn't kick in until nearly 12k so I suspect OP isn't paying that.

Iirc the OP qualified as a teacher but didn't actually go into teaching. I don't think she eould be as employable as an NQT who has had recent experirnce and whose training covers current methods/assessment criteria etc

I honestly cannot believe the direction this thread has gone.

If you broke down all the roles op plays in family life, of which her dh does not contribute to, therefore allowing him the luxury of focussing on his career while having a home and children well looked after, and paid her a rate for it, she would be earning way beyond 8k.

Telling her - just get a better job- earn more - what kind of nonsense is this? You can't magic a higher salary if you're effectively stuck in admin / minimum wage roles with child rearing and home responsibilities.

All of a sudden he is stressed about money and blames her? Why doesn't he get a better paid job then??

Just thought you all might like to know I’m off to work now. This morning I’ll be running a craft session for all your little darlings doing the Summer Reading Challenge at the local library. Nice to know so many people value what we low paid library assistants do. Toodle pip.

The Op used to be in a decent career which pays alright - teaching - she has the capability to earn more

If i've understood the OP correctly, she has a teaching qualification but has never used it. She has no actual teaching experience.

He's not working to fund her lifestyle, he's the one moaning about not having new cars and holidays, she says she's low maintenance.

If ever there was a reminder never to start a thread on AIBU this is it.

The vitriol against not only sahps (never far from the surface on Mn) but now low paid p/t parents too is horrible. Many pt jobs are low paid. It’s not right, but there it is. (Btw I’ve been ft, pt and a sahp all at various stages myself so I know the pros and cons of all three.)

My job now is low paid and pt. God knows why I bother reading this. I never had the opportunity to get a degree or retrain so another black mark. There are loads of us out there not hitting the Mn pay/qualification/acceptable hours worked specifications.

Much of this thread has been about people projecting their own problems and frustrations onto the ops circumstances and she has been savaged because of it. I doubt she’ll ever ask another thing again on Mn. Nice

I hardly know anyone where both parents work full time in full on jobs.

Really???

she says she's low maintenance.

I don't think anyone's low maintenance enough to feed, cloth and shelter themselves plus cover half the costs of 5 (is that right?) DC for 8k.

Much of this thread has been about people projecting their own problems and frustrations onto the ops circumstances and she has been savaged because of it. I doubt she’ll ever ask another thing again on Mn. Nice hmm

Agree. Also, a good insight into how unaware many people are of what a decent amount of money £58k is to live on.

Yes, I don't think this thread has been MN's finest hour, some of the replies against low paid PT parents have been awful.

MN is such a bizarre place sometimes.

There was an AIBU thread recently where hundreds of posters leapt in to passionately defend the rights of people who don't work (and have no intention of working) to choose to have 4, 5, 6+ children that they cannot support and any posters who were critical of this were met with cries of "eugenics", "facism" etc. But the OP on this thread is being called "lazy", "a freeloader" and told she has no right to expect her DH to treat her with respect (even in front of their DC's) because she has the audacity to work part time .

I just don't get it.

Low maintenance in this instance means not having an expensive, time consuming hobby or wanting foreign holidays every year and new cars.

Agree with Excited, that to a very large extent, tasks around the home can expand or contract to fit the time available. A lot of it is about an attitude of mind. I’ve known people with school age kids who don’t work full time, or even at all in some cases, and they manage to turn running the home into a full time job. It doesn’t have to be like that. People run a home while working regular full time hours; it’s not rocket science.

I also agree with the PP who said this is more about him working full time to fund her lifestyle

Bottom line is: she’s happy to continue pottering along as they are now; he’s not. If you ignore those signs in a relationship then it’s only going to get worse.

Of course nothing is going to change overnight. The OP can’t Waltz straight into a high paid job overnight because she was out of the workplace completely for several years and is now working part time

But what they can realistically do is sit down and draw up a plan - how do they both want things to be in one years time? 5 years? What about the university years should their children choose to go? (That’s actually not far off and is perhaps a worry for the dh. Because of his income their kids would get minimal maintenance loan and they could end up needing to fork out several hundred every month to help them out with rent. That was our experience with kids at uni. It’s not easy.)

Then they need to work out how to get to those goals. And yes it will mean pushing out of their current comfort zones; OP stepping up and working more, her DH stepping up and doing more round the house.

The one thing that’s guaranteed not to work is to remain in entrenched positions, so that nothing changes and resentment grows

It should all be agreed before marriage surely. We agreed we would both work full time - me lawyer, him teacher and we always did even with babies of only weeks old and it was fine - we had that agreement and shared aim. He should ahve said i am not prepared to marry you unless you pursue the teaching, get promotions, go back to work when the babies are 3 months old full time and we will both always work full time. Had that happened you might even earn more than his fairly paltry £50k a year which would hardly pay some families' school fees.

Momo, that's all reasonable, but this is a man who wasn't prepared to support her while she did something to generate more money. The signs are that he wants her to magic up a higher income out of nowhere, whole doing nothing to assist.

This thread is unbelievable! Get a better job, earn more money, get a cleaner??? DH and I earn far less than £50 k a year, have DC and manage just fine! 🤨

She will probably have more time to work if they split up though as there probably won't be so much to do around the house with him not in it. Plus her children will be a bit older.

Her kids are a “bit older” now on most people’s reckoning!

Having some kind of savings in advance of a possible split would be sensible, imo.

I too , can see both sides but if DH woke me up at 3am to discuss ANYTHING he would be looking at his bollocks from a different angle
To be honest I think this is unfair.
I would take this as a warning that he is about to burn out if he us not sleeping and worrying about it.
My advice would be talk at a time when you are more relaxed and can come to a suitable compromise.

It's not fair of Dh to announce suddenly he wants a major change to the OP's life. It's not simple to change jobs and get a massive pay increase even if she was 100% on board.

Imo it's reasonable of him to want her to earn more money for the security and not to have the pressure of being such a main breadwinner. But it's a long term plan and he should be respectful of her role in the household all these years.

Xenia- I don’t agree that it can all be agreed before marriage! Ok the big issues... do you both want children, what your main priorities in life are. But relationships are organic. You cannot set things absolutely in stone. It sounds so clinical and calculated to try to cross all the Ts and dot all the Is before saying ‘I do.’

And of course life has a habit of throwing curve balls, so one partner gets sick, or made redundant, or you discover you can’t have kids....

Surely marriage is about starting off in agreement about the big things, but then being flexible and continually negotiating precisely because life isn’t static. A marriage where one partner can’t cope because the other one loses their job or gets some god awful thing like cancer is hardly a strong marriage.

And actually in this situation it’s none of those really awful curve balls. But it’s still a change in the dynamic. The dh is stressed and no longer happy to be carrying the major financial load. The OP is no longer caring for tiny children. It’s different from a few years ago.

And the more I think about it the more I suspect the dh is anxious about the higher education years. With their earnings of 58k their children would probably only get minimum maintenance loan. In realty that’s likely to mean the parents topping up several hundred pounds a month. We found it not dissimilar to going back to the nursery days financially... you have all those school years of only having to pay wraparound childcare, then they get to teenagers and don’t need childcare and then wham! They go to university and suddenly you’re forking out shedloads.
We found it quite a financial stretch and that was with us both working and bringing in decent amounts.

Talk to your dh, OP. Make a plan to put things on a more equal footing.

Low maintenance in this instance means not having an expensive, time consuming hobby or wanting foreign holidays every year and new cars

Given that the OPs contribution to household finances doesn't keep a roof over their heads, she can't claim she being asked to 'fund' her husbands lifestyle. It is clearly the other way around.

Working part time doing jobs you enjoy is also a lifestyle choice. One that has a profound effect on the rest of the family.

OP, I think most people do appreciate low paid workers and the jobs they do, MN is a funny place. Hopefully all the people telling you to work full time and get a cleaner and gardner are paying them a good wage that their respective spouses are happy with! Or that the women looking after their children and elderly parents are also paid more than minimum wage, though I guess wiping bottoms is not worth as much as pushing paper around in an office.

Xmasbaby11

It's not fair of Dh to announce suddenly he wants a major change to the OP's life. It's not simple to change jobs and get a massive pay increase even if she was 100% on board.

This is not an out of the blue conversation for the Op her husband has mentioned it before.