Only read up to page 7 but OP, I think your DH has a point.
There is absolutely no reason at all why at this stage of your children’s life why you shouldn’t up your hours or switch to full time. Your kids are the same age as mine and mine take themselves off to school every day on the bus and come home and let themselves in, get themselves snacks etc till I Or DH get in from work.
I don’t work most of the school holidays but If I do have to, they either stay at home (I leave them a packed lunch), or they come with me to work and help out, or they go to my mum’s or my sisters. There are no holiday childcare schemes for year 9s and above and there is a reason for that!!
I understand the worry about not being there for an anxious child. My youngest also had anxiety this year settling into secondary school but he was on the end of the phone and when I was at home in the evenings I spent lots of time talking to him. If I’d been at home during the day I think this would have made him less likely to just “get on with it” and I think he would have pushed to stay at home, which would have been a bad move.
Re: housework. You need to sit down with your DH with a list of chores. Show him the ones you do and explain that when you go back full time he will have to do half, which ones does he want to do? Also explain the realities of HIM having to take a day off if one of the kids is ill or something and ask if that will fit in with his employment as it won’t necessaeiky fit in with yours.
It’s not to point out the negatives of you working, but the realities. He may not even have considered them. It’s all very well saying “he won’t do anything in the house” while you are in the situation you’re in now, because this is the status quo and why the hell should he at the moment?
When you are working FT then he will have no choice but to do stuff, like many many other working families. If he doesn’t cook, he doesn’t eat, If he doesn’t shop, there will be no food to cook, if he doesn’t do washing he’ll soon realise when he has run out of clean undies and shirts!
He has effectively been spoilt in that way all these years and will need a period of readjustment back to reality. As will you - you have been cosseted at home all these years without the reality of having to provide anything financially.
I speak from experience. Didn’t work at all for 3 years, then worked one day a week at the weekend when youngest was one (that was DH’s biggest eye opener!), then 10 hours then 25 and now full time.
Each time I went up a bit DH pulled a face when he realised it would have some (even minor) impact on his previous state of being. But he got used to it. Although I do get an occasional grumble when he is stressed and say, school rings him saying DS is ill and needs collecting. I am so much nearer school and it’s much easier for me to get away but Achool doesn’t always ring my land line and if I don’t near my mobile then they automatically phone him. Rather than ring my landline and speak to me he’ll then huff and puff about how he’ll have to leave work and interrupt what he was doing in work etc etc. I just laugh at him and tell him he could have rung and asked me to do it.
You just ignore the silly grumbles. You need to give him a CHANCE to change/increase his housework jobs and you can only do that by actually not being there yourself to do them, by being at work instead!