Does everyone on MN - except me - have a high flying highly paid highly stressful job

[IamtheMistressofmyFate]

Is anyone a hairdresser married to a mechanic? Nursery nurse married to a delivery driver?

I keep reading about women having to go back to work or they'll fall off the career ladder and never recover. Everyone seems so BUSY and STRESSED and high flying. Or they've burnt out and have downsized so they can bake bread.

Is anyone else just pootling along like me - not setting the world alight with their brilliance and ambition?

I am a project manager & team leader for local govt but work part time and its very flexible . I've been able to work at home this week when DD has been ill and off school as we have no back up childcare. DH is a plasterer. He can be stressed esp at this time of year with volume of work and people looking to get jobs finished for Christmas but then January will be quiet. Definetly not high flying but we both work hard and its the right balance for us as DP is in house for 4pm and me 5pm the 3 days I am in the office so still time for dinner and ferry kids to various clubs. We also help look after my elderly parents and can only do that by being local and have time available at night so would struggle with long commutes etc x

thecatsthecats - I think £52k is a very good wage (more than I'll ever earn) but it's not a high wage in MNLand.

What happened after your "initiatives" were implemented? Did you get a massive promotion? Where you headhunted for more senior roles? If you're not earning over £75k (minimum) I would guess not.

And a career rather than a job doesn't make someone a high flyer. Lots of professionals are in quite lowly positions and poorly paid.

And this thread wasn't about high fliers really -they're all over MN - I prefer hearing about library assistants and plasterers and florists.

I was a nanny, then a childminder, had a two year stint as a teaching assistant (most stressful job so far!)and now work 19hrs as a cleaner/house keeper. No paperwork and very little stress

I have a normal ish part time job ( but a professional) DW works full time in a high paid 6 figure job though. Sorry!

There is a reverse snobbery here which is a little horrid. DH is a doctor and a consultant. He works crazy hours and earns a decent chunk of money. I am a senior academic. My work is v stressful and not v well paid but the hours are flexible. Our combined household income is quite good and our kids do go to private school. But my son was in intensive care for two months. So stress comes in many many forms to many different people? I would not wish a sick child, watching your son covered in wires on anyone no matter what your income is.

And my DH despite his crazy job is a very hands on equal parent. I breastfed the kids but he does a ton of chores, cooking, looks after them when I am away at conferences. So he makes breakfast and packed lunch for the kids, does the laundry, hoovers and all the DIY and pretty much all the family admin. My main jobs are kid related admin and all the cooking (cooking is my hobby). So not all husbands earning a good salary with stressful jobs are useless.
So yeah on the face of it I have a decent flexible job, a good DH earning a good salary and a comfortable life in London. Still wouldn’t wish the stress of a sick child on anyone.

would not wish a sick child, watching your son covered in wires on anyone no matter what your income is

I don't think anyone on here is wishing a sick child on anyone. It's not relevant to this discussion but I hope you're boy made a full recovery.

So not all husbands earning a good salary with stressful jobs are useless

Glad to hear that. MN is full of women with men doing jobs that make them Too Important to do housework, cooking or childcare.

What happened after your "initiatives" were implemented? Did you get a massive promotion? Where you headhunted for more senior roles? If you're not earning over £75k (minimum) I would guess not.

Well, I am now a company director at the firm, so yes, a significant promotion. In fact, I'm second in command, having leapfrogged both the men who were above me in the hierarchy when I joined. I wasn't actually arguing with you - I stand by my original point that whether or not I'm a high flier is very much subjective.

But you seem to have decidedly pigeon holed me out of the "MN high fliers" (who after 12 pages you have yet to provide a definition for), but consider my earnings/seniority TOO high for inclusion in this thread.

Yes he’s fine now but the point I was making more broadly is that financial stability or a ‘high flying job’ may be a veneer for a lot of other stresses in life. So the woman with the cappuccino in heels may have a mother who is suffering from dementia, a husband who is cheating and a child with a chronic illness. I would never presume to judge another person because of their income, accent, size of house. It’s best to afford others the same courtesy. This thread is quite catty and judgemental.

Having said that, yes DH is fab. Not just because he does cooking/childcare but because he does two other things. One, although I earn a 1/5 of what he does, he has always considered my career equally important and has gone to great lengths to ensure that I can progress and second, because he is one of the very few men I know who turned down multiple opportunities because they were incompatible with family life and with my career. Clearly MIL (who is lovely but totally nuts) did an excellent job of parenting him.

I notice that’s a lot of people post ‘we’ are in the top 5% of earners. That would be over £140,000 as a couple as I think it is £70,000 for an individual but often I think they mean they have a household income of £70k which really isn’t the same.

My DH definitely doesn't conform to the useless stereotype either. Yesterday he did the cooking and the while evening routine because I'm pregnant and feeling sick. He's great.

Kosha I think what most people object to is people who judge other people's worth or how hard working they are by their salary or household income. It's particularly peculiar when people think their spouse's income makes them personally superior to someone earning less or a single parent on benefits looking after a disabled child.

Plenty of people with average household incomes are far more useful members of society that some people with high household income, who are sometimes doing all they can to avoid tax (when paying tax is the only socially positive thing they do) and doing socially worthless or damaging corporate jobs. Of course the reverse can also be true, some high earners are saving lives etc, but high salary - or being the spouse of someone with a high salary - does not correlate in either direction with worth as a human being, or being interesting. Some people seem to think it does.

All the life challenges, tragedies, struggles and pain that can happen in the private lives of people with money are equally likely to happen to people without. Money doesn't make them go away, but being able to afford unlimited fancy coffee in the coffee shop near the hospital, not needing to think about the price of parking, being able to pay for the best care home and lots of little extras, or to buy all your child's favourite treats to tempt them to eat/ drink, and to buy equipment if they need it without worrying makes it a tiny bit less awful than for the person who has to borrow bus fares or get into debt if they take more time off a zero hours contract job.

I know because when my DD was in hospital I stayed with her and bought new clothes and food and all kinds of little things to tempt her to start eating and drinking, and to bring a smile to her face, in the nearest shops because we were 2 hours from home and DH had her siblings. As well as not worrying til she was getting better about the price of the car park. That would have been so much more stressful than it already was if there'd been no money in the bank.

@blueskiesandforests Completely agree with all of that, especially the "hard working = high earning" assumption. DH and I both work hard. In fact, I worry about work a lot more than he does and am more likely to take it home with me.

Of course, this means his career takes priority. That's just realistic. And I'm less likely to progress.

Sorry for derailing the thread, OP.

I'm a SAHM and likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future, as DD1 (9) has SN and is awaiting intensive therapy for her adoption related issues. One of us does need to stay at home.

I never did have a high flying career, though, despite having 2 degrees; I used to work as a legal secretary, then stopped and have worked for a Christian charity helping Central Asian women since then (on and off since we adopted our DDs).

My DH has a successful career as a Principal Engineer working in the Bridges Section for our LA, though he's definitely not on a six figure salary.

Having said that, he's very capable around the house and a great dad, I prefer that to a DH with a six figure salary who doesn't lift a finger at Home.

Another midwife ticking the stressful box but definitely not the highly paid one!

I’m a farmer married to a farmer 😁

What @blueskiesandforests said with bells on. What an individual earns has no bearing whatsoever on their contribution to society or their worth as a human being and is rarely a reflection of how hard they work. Some of the most selfless, kindest, nicest people I've ever known barely had a pot to piss in but they'd give someone in need the shirt off their own back in a heartbeat.

We’re both high earners but don’t get out of bed every morning going “better get off to my high-flying, highly-paid job”.

DH’s job is stressful. He does long hours, burnsout, travels etc. He specifically pursued his career.

Mine is highly-pressured, but I think I manage the stress well. I fell in to my job. 6 years ago, I was earning a perfectly respectable £45k, but I got really lucky as the 8th employee in a start-up that now employs 1,000, with a plan to grow that to 4,000 by 2025. I’m on a salary of around £100k (can vary due to bonuses), and I think I’m likely to move up another level within the next 3 years so should increase salary by about £25k.

(I’m not in UK so have converted to sterling for consistency)

I utterly love my job. It can be manic. Some weeks I work 35 hours, some weeks 70. I have flexibility so can work from home, or grab a long lunch to get my nails or hair done. I love it. Fantastic team, interesting work, it’s a dream. Can’t believe I got so lucky.

Apart from me, though, most women I went to school with or who are now in my social circle are in professional careers. Doing a quick count and there’s one doctor (a specialised consultant), a dentist, four pharmacists, four in senior finance/banking positions, and more in senior business roles. Plenty of SAHMs from my school days too, but not especially close with most of them so wouldn’t know what their husbands do.
Can think of one who’s a teacher and her husband is a mechanic.

We have free third-level education in my country, and a high take-up so most people have degrees as a minimum and tend to pursue further education well in to their 30s and 40s.

I think it's absolutely mad reading some threads on here, especially the 'how much do you have in savings' or 'how much do you spend a year on holidays' threads. When I see people spending more than I earn (£14k, PT) on one holiday or having more savings than our household will earn in 10 years, I just cringe. My partner is a civil servant and I'm in sales/tutoring/studying. Hopefully a combined income of £50k in the next 5 years but nothing fancy and no real 'ladder' of promotion in our chosen careers so I think that'll be it for a long time. Perfectly comfortable and very content with that though.

Some people are born rich, some are lucky, some people have good connections, and some people work really hard to get where they are. That's life I guess.

@blueskiesandforests I agree with you re: money helping tough situations. My husband became seriously ill two years ago and was in hospital for 2 months, and off work for 7. He was fully paid for all that time, and the private health insurance provided by his company (for our entire family) covered his care in private hospitals and clinics so he started treatment the day he was diagnosed.

I didn’t have to worry about paying for car parking, taxis, or buying coffees/magazines/treats etc.

Shitty things happen to everyone, but not having the extra pressure is priceless. Money can make things easier.

No I work in a nursery, not massively well paid but I do get a certain amount of flexibility as they open 7am - 7pm so if daughter has dentist etc at 4 I can just leave early without taking holiday as it's a 0 hours contract.
I can also go in at 11am etc they are fine as long as I tell them the week previous

We have successful and professional careers but neither of us are anywhere near the 6 figure bracket and probably never will be!
The enormous amount of money people save an spend on Mumsnet blows my mind! I think we do pretty well- no debt other than mortgage, 1 foreign holiday a year and plenty of days out but it's modest compared to many on here