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?

notthis

I breastfed, but dh got up, got the baby, brought it to me and took it away after

Bless him, he also got me a glass of water which i was afraid to drink in case i dropped it on the babys head

I teach in a college, not particularly high paid, and my dp is a chef.

I think that things that are an issue for you stand out, though. So you notice all the 'high flying' people because that stands out from your experience. As someone returning to full-time work pretty soon (after a fairly short mat leave) what I notice is all the people who work part-time - to me it feels like hardly anyone on MN works full-time. But that's because it triggers something in me, not because it's really true!

@IamtheMistressofmyFate

I find your comment about clattering about in high heels clutching a flat white really quite offensive. I have a well paid very stressful job. Juggling it all is stressful but imo worth it.

FWIW dh is a teacher. I earn more than him.

I've been a childminder/sahm for 20yrs now. For the past 5 have had no children at home between 9-3. Love it. DH works for local government but is retiring in dec.

No stress here particularly, pootling about is rather lovely

There are definitely a few fantasists on here - a proportion of people who post mainly about income and huge expensive houses in great detail, and can't help mentioning even when nit really relevant that they pay private school fees are almost certainly fantastists living out their daydream life and makung it a bit real for themselves by posting about it.

Some of the people posting about their top 1% incomes and high flying jobs will be genuine, but most people who have an exceptionally high incone consider it vulgar to talk about money...

The competitive overwork always seems a bit tragic. Some essential services do work far too many hours with far too much stress and thats wrong - it's awful that people are put under such pressure and there should be twice as many professionals in those fields to allow people to work more humane hozrs with less stress.

People who work 70 hours a week in an essentially pointless job creating wealth for a corporation are mugs though imo and only working for money above and beyond what you actually need to house, feed and clothe yourself and your dependants at the expense of time with your kids/ partner/ friends/ wider family/ cat or whoever is important in your life is a soulless thing.

We live in a very affluent town and I was quite shocked to find out that we were the first people our childminder's had who were entitled to the 30 hours rather than just 15 for our DC. I hadn't realised that the other families each had a six figure earner!

I would describe us as reasonably comfortable if stretched but a lot of that is about where we live (Home Counties commuter belt) and the cost of commuting. This makes things quite tight in terms of stuff like holidays but we could cut back a bit if we had to. If we lived where I grew up (north), we would be very comfortable on the same income - potentially even mortgage-free.

We're both public sector (I'm part time) but work in London on non-City salaries. Household income below 6 figures!

Cheer up OP. Most people are not what they say on the internet.

I see so many people claiming to be in a hugely successful, professional, high-end career, on the low to mid six figures, but they're always on here. Like 6 to 8 hours a day some of them.

I'll just leave that there.

I think that's a good point Lisa. Speaking as one of those part timers!

Another thing I notice is that lots of threads about how much time, money etc do you spend on X is that they tend to draw not just outliers, but people who feel their bare circumstances don't tell the whole story, iyswim. So there will be people who earn NMW but get away for two holidays abroad each year because they literally live on lentils the rest of the time, there will also be high earners who have a weekend away camping because they don't see the point in anything else. There will be 100k earning households who've got a fiver left after paying rent, childcare and commutes because they're in London and have two under two. That type of thing.

Oh, and we often work quite long hours but we're lucky that we have flexi time so it's a choice rather than a compulsion - we juggle longer and shorter days to fit in pick-ups and so on. Especially valuable with DP away overnight usually at least a couple of nights per week.

@blackchina 

Sorry, @blackchina - the  didn't go through!

Part-time bookkeeper (currently reducing hours), DP is a delivery driver.

I think I've used DD as my reason for part-time but to be honest I'm just lazy and would rather work less and have less money. DP has a lot of potential but enjoys plodding about in a lorry so why bother. We do alright financially, never struggle and own a flat (buying a house next year) and DP can shut off mentally from work when he gets home so it suits us.

Ok, no emojis - but excellent point - I struggle to fit lunch in on most working days, never mind several hours of MN-ing in the margins!

Yeah I’ve got a job in one of “the professions” very stressful not particularly high flying although I suppose the job title itself has some kudos and not massively well paid though

I do have a stressful highly paid job. But I'd hardly call it high flying, it's just being a hospital consultant..

In return I have a husband most of Mumsnet would call a cocklodger. He's an unemployed academic who I suspect will never work again.

However our situation works for us. Everyone else can go whistle.

Im a student vet nurse. Dp is a carpenter.

My job is stressfull and low paid. This will not change on completion of qualification but i wouldnt want to do anything else.

Had aspirations of high flying city job. Have PhD that i never used.

Was SAHM for 10 years.

My husband is a fire fighter, I work 3 days a week doing admin/product management/social media/retail etc for a local business 2 mins from home. We manage but we aren’t well off.

Must be very disappointing to our dad’s who were both very successful (solicitor company director)! Ah well, at least we aren’t depressed like they were & DH sees the kids loads!

A nobody in a middle class lifestyle pottering along hoping nothing changes it. Feel extremely lucky - no real education or no real driving self worth. So just pottering along.

Hospital consultant isn't high flying?? Ahh c'mon! Give yerself some credit woman. And like you say , it works for you and you DP.

I've posted this before, but I think what you notice is so shaped by circumstances. When I was struggling to get/stay pregnant it felt like every other post in AIBU was about how infertile women are jealous bitches. When I was pregnant every other post seemed to be about how amazing C-sections are and how it was near certain that vaginal birth would end in horrific injuries for the mother. Now I have a breastfed baby and am intending to return to work it feels like they vary between posts about how pointless breastfeeding/amazing formula feeding is and posts about how incredibly damaging it is for a baby to be away from its mother. I'm sure once I'm back and DS seems ok (I hope) something new that bothers me will seem to dominate MN - but the actual content isn't changing, just me!

it's the SAHMs with the high earning husbands that get me. Easy to be a SAHM when DH is bringing in over 6 figures!

My DH and I definitely aren't high flyers. I did start my career in a top 5 law firm so could have ended up earning 7 figures or very decent 6 figures, but I am not clever enough (and much too lazy, too).

We have considerably less than six figures coming in but we don't have a mortgage and have always lived well within our means so have decent savings. So for our income level we are comparatively well off despite living in an affluent area where I imagine a majority of households do have 6 figure incomes or close to it.

I earn higher than the average wage (but not 100k!) but have no partner so have to pay all outgoings myself. Which then pushes me into a lower overall household income. Although my kids are grown up so no child related costs. In the grocery cost thread the other day there was a big range, from people paying £50 a week for a family of four to people paying £250 a week for two or three people! You will always get braggy people on threads about money. Are they always telling the truth? Who knows! I personally don’t see the point in pretending on the internet, because who are you actually impressing? But I know people do it.

it's the SAHMs with the high earning husbands that get me. Easy to be a SAHM when DH is bringing in over 6 figures!

In what way does it ‘get you’? Just different circumstances to yours.