To tell DH to spend more time at work at the expense of me and DS?

[Sunrise888]

DH is wonderful, especially since 1yo DS was born. He's made a huge effort to look after us and make sure we are comfortable and happy. I've been able to focus on caring for DS while I've been on maternity leave without worrying too much about the household and most of the meals. DH is also a great dad and spends as much time looking after DS as possible.

This has come at the expense of his work. The culture of his job is to work long hours and get paid sh*t, but the work, when it's going well, is worthwhile. Unfortunately the spouse often ends up picking up the slack at home, but I haven't had to do that with us because DH does more or less 9-5 with the odd weekend or late evening thrown in. As he's not putting the extra hours in, he's not achieving his goals. He's been on a rolling contract that's been extended several times at the last minute, as he's not had time to explore any other opportunities. We're a few months away from the same scenario again where his contract is going to finish but he's not had time to look for another job (and is worrying he hasn't achieved enough to get one), and I have no idea if he might get another extension. He is very stressed out from trying to juggle work with home duties.

In the meantime I am back at work part-time, feeling able to manage my mum and home responsibilities and feel relatively stress free. I was hoping to use what little free time there is to exercise, self improve and work on my career progression. But I feel like I should put all that on hold for a bit because my main worry is that DH won't get another job, he'll become an unhappy sahd wishing he had his career back and all the financial burden will fall to me.

AIBU to tell DH to go and work as many late nights as he needs to for the next few months until he finds another job while I look after things at home? I thought I could use a reality check here as it's a common complaint that the DW has to sacrifice their whole life and career for the sake of DH's career, I wasn't sure if this was a dangerous road to go down on. I can take it if it's just for a few months but if DH does want success in his chosen career, the late nights may never really stop.

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I've facilitated my DH's life all our time together, team effort, resulting in both of us getting to retire early. Not every team effort results in the woman being screwed.

He needs to have his work sorted for the greater good.

Sounds sensible to me too.

I disagree. If the job entails him working long hours for shit pay on a series of rolling contracts he should spending his time applying for lots of other jobs.

Perhaps DH needs to look for a job where long hours are not an expected part of the culture?

Another who thinks you need to support him to look for another job.
I don't think encouraging someone in a poorly paid job, with poor T&Cs needs to be encouraged to do more than the contract asks for.

Agree encourage him in another job.

You sound like you’ve thought this through and you work well together though, so long as you communicate well and he gets what you’re saying I can’t see this winding up in a cocklodgeresque situation.

I have tried to suggest DH looks at other jobs too, but he's already feeling like a failure, he doesn't want to give up on his field yet, and to be fair he is very early in his career. I want him to be happy and have a proper go at it somewhere else, but it means putting up with long hours and crap pay. At some point we would reprioritise my career, but it's hard to make a long-term plan when anything could happen including more children.

Thanks, feel reassured that this is the right thing to do, at least for the short term.

A few months is balance - the overall direction of support within a marriage shifts with events. If however long term you think it’s a bad career choice you should also be supporting him with weighing up his options.

After you later posts, I've re-read your OP, and decided that it is more likely your dh is doing a post doc or something, rather than my first thought which was he was in some NMW job. Which sort of puts things into a different perspective for me, because, longer term, there are 'prospects'. In which case, yes, it is completely rubbish for the first 15 years or so, but there is a path that leads to much better long term.