To wish my in laws had a bit of empathy?

[Justanotherusernamer]

I'm sick of the veiled comments like "won't you miss DC going back full-time? Wouldn't it be better to go part time like I did" (or whatever variant it is today)

Problem is that I'd desperately love to go part time because I'll be out of the house way, way longer than doing a 9-5 job , it's going to be exhausting and upsetting that I'll barely see DC 5 out of 7 days!! (combination of presenteeism and genuinely heavy workload in the sector where you don't just "clock off" on a shift like my FIL did as a Postal worker 10min away at the local sorting office)

I just wish there was a bit of empathy, we're working to pay basic living costs (mortgage on a bog standard not London 200k house needs us both to work FT)... Not pin money! In laws have a massive 4 bed family home with a garden that we could never earn enough in a working lifetime to buy... It doesn't matter how hard we work, we can't ever earn enough to get a 600k asset that they've benefitted from inflation on, buying it late 60s.

I wish they understood it's not anything to do with how thick or smart or hard working or lazy we are, it just isn't possible for me to "choose" to stop working like she did for a bit,or go part time.

I feel judged but what other options?? And pointing it out feels like rubbing salt into an already sore wound.

But it is so often generational.

How many times do people on here talk about having three jobs while at school/college and "paying their own way". Widespread zero hour contracts are a relatively recent phenomenon that means employers can have flexible staff with no need to plug gaps with Saturday/evenings only shift workers.

When I started work in the seventies, I was paid time +quarter for working after 6pm, time + half for Saturdays and double time for Sundays. Everything over 45 hours was at least time + half. It made sense for the employer to bring in school kids for evening and weekend shifts. Now shift premiums are rare along with guaranteed hours.

That's just one example of why the environment now is so different to what it was back in "Boomer" times. It is much harder for the next generations to achieve nearly what we have.

Only you know your MIL and whether saying you have to work to pay bills will be enough. Some people think they know everything and if you explain the situation to them they just start arguing with you so that you agree with them since they know it all.

It absolutely is a generational thing in socio-economic terms, not necessarily in terms of each individual in every specific case.

YANBU. Even if I didn’t need the second FT wage to pay our mortgage, I would want to keep going in my career and build up my pension.

In my experience you can tell them as many times as you like but they won't believe you, particularly if they read the Daily Mail and/or have ever used the term 'snowflake' to describe a younger person.

I've had this along with "do you struggle to feel part of the community" and "do you feel like your job gives you a certain status in society".

Funnily enough my husband never got asked these things after we had our baby. Just me that got criticised for returning to work. It confused me that people even needed to ask why I was going back to work.

My husband's grandparents brought their first house for £1000, a three bed family home with front and back garden, with 100% mortgage. They were able to pay off their morgage quickly with gm a house wife and gf working part time hours. They didn't need to move until their oldest left home and they wanted to downsize to a two bedroom house which they we able to buy outright due to the value of their house increasing. When gm came to sell the house after gf died she again made a lot of money off it. She brought a lovely flat for herself outright and has a lot of money in the bank.

Gm just cannot get her head around the fact that houses cost more now than her first house. Despite knowing how much she paid for her own flat and how much her house sold for. We would need to move into a property a similar size to her old house. She is always telling us just to buy a place and to stop wasting money on renting. No matter who explains it to her she just can't understand we can't afford to buy and that her other younger grandchildren are very unlikely to be in the positionvto buy until much later in adulthood if at all in the local area without a lot of parental help. She just sees that dh has a full time job at the living wage and that it should be more than enough to support us and quickly buy a property...

I went back to work full time after both mine and this was 20 years ago, we probably could have made cut backs and Just about survived on DH salary, part time wasn’t an option for my job. My mum who hadn’t worked since I was born was supportive and understood plus stepped up to cover childcare issues and never once said anything to suggest I was doing the wrong thing.

MIL on the other hand was working full time, however when her D.C. were small she had not worked and then did some part time before going back to full time teaching once they were old enough to be left at home after school. She didn’t get it at all, however as the only teacher I know who left as the bell went and who took her full holidays without doing planning or marking I shouldn’t be surprised.

It wasn’t just asking about part time, or never offering to help whilst telling me if her DD ever had kids she was giving up work to help her look after them, it was also the holidays. The how can you not take time off when they are, would you like to come to our seaside house for August and all that crap.

Plus what really pushed me over the edge as I struggled to keep some sort of order in my house was her planning how she was going to completely reorganise her cupboards, spring clean etc when she was off next week and when was I going to do that.

I agree with the PPs saying you should be upfront. "I don't really want to go back to work yet, I'll miss DC terribly, but if I stay off work any longer we'll lose the house". I don't think they could be smug once you've said that.

So TELL them! I don’t understand all this pussyfooting round when people are deliberately needling you, which of course she is. Bloody well get her told.