“He wouldn’t be where he is if I hadn’t sacrificed my career”

[BooFuckingHoo2]

I am expecting a flaming for this .

AIBU to think this is often untrue? I know many men with stay at home wives and kids who, in all honesty, whilst happy to have kids (because the wife does all the wifework) would probably have been equally happy with either no kids or extensive wraparound childcare and an equally high earning wife.

I often see it trotted out on here “I sacrificed my career to look after our children” - but the for the majority of women (aside from some exceptions e.g. husband working abroad) I’m sure it was a welcome choice and not something they were strong armed into. In my experience (unless childcare costs eclipse the wife’s salary) the husband is usually indifferent (aside from the wankers who want a trophy wife) as to whether the wife works or not.

Equally “he wouldn’t be where he is in his career if it wasn’t for me”. I’m sure there’s a small minority of women who’ve accelerated their husbands career but I think for most, they’d have been the same with or without their wife, although granted possibly with no children or higher childcare costs.

AIBU?

I just can't understand why so many women on MN think it would be appalling or mean they had no relationship with their children if they themselves worked long hours, but think that their DH doing the same is fine and great

Personally I don’t think h doing that is fine. But I think it’s his choice what relationship he wants with his children and if he’s not willing to make sacrifices then he has to deal with the consequences. Just as I will deal with the consequences of being out of work for years.

My DH is able to work late every night, pick up work stuff when he needs to, travel whenever, wherever, any weekend or evening. Since having children his committment to work has not changed one bit. His career has gone stratospheric through his own incredible skill and hard work, but it's at the same pace as it would have had he not had children.

My career (as a lawyer) has progressed far more slowly as a result of my 2 years of maternity leave out of the scene, plus returning to work part-time. I am entirely responsible for childcare stuff which I fit in around my paid work. I've missed out on work opportunities, travel etc as a result of working part time.

This was a decision we made as a couple and it is how we decided to manage our family life. It doesn't make it right or wrong, or anyone else's decisions right or wrong, but it is a model I've seen replicated in most of my friends and family. And in all of those cases, mine included, the one doing the childcare stuff is sacrificing the progression of their own career in the process, and the other partner is not. I'm not sure why you would deny what to me seems quite obvious?

@RUOKHon Lol you do get that there are women in theatre,in hospital and we get job done and can dress ourselves. Without the need for anyone to give up work

By the gift of internet and days off professional adults can and do chose & buy their own clothes

@scepticalface82 no I am Not rude. But do reflect what in my post touched a nerve for you. Where did that ouch factor come from

[quote Hardbackwriter]@heseesyouwhenyouaresleeping I chose the do something else option, and both DH and I choose to work four days a week. Of course there's a lot of privilege to being able to make that choice, and obviously it has financial implications, but then there is in one partner being able to give up work entirely. I just can't understand why so many women on MN think it would be appalling or mean they had no relationship with their children if they themselves worked long hours, but think that their DH doing the same is fine and great.[/quote]
but isn't choosing to do something else literally "sacrificing your career"?

I can see why people would believe that 2 parents missing everything and working long hours is too much.

I've heard parents refusing to pick up a sick child because they were too busy and couldn't drop everything and run to the school a good hour away. I don't think it's fair on the child. I had the luxury that someone could always pick up mine within 10 minutes.

I don't think I would have sacrificed my children for my own career. I am not sure I would have kept my current job if I had been more junior during the lockdown either. Having flexible hours and no one to really report to as long as the results are good made a huge difference when they were out of school for months.

I gave up my career for health reasons before I became pregnant but I wouldn’t pass this off as sacrificing it for DH’s. He wasn’t bothered - just wanted what was best for my health.

Hoping to stay at home while our child is younger and we pay off our mortgage like mad with DH’s salary. We don’t have any family to provide child care so my full time wage would’ve gone pretty much on that anyway.

Feels like things are resolving m with my health, so I’m aiming to retrain and then give DH a turn at being SAHP once the mortgage is paid off. Child will still be young and I will have 20 years working life remaining the way things are looking with pension age moving upwards.

I would say we’ve both ‘sacrificed’ on location in terms of living close to family for work purposes though.

Can I just add that before I had children I can totally imagine I would have had a similar opinion as the OP.

I thought it was going to be so simple - just hire a nanny and DH and I can crack on up the career ladder.

There are so many different dynamics and variables at play once you have children, it’s impossible to understand unless you’re in it and dealing with it in real time.

I know two women who have managed to have children and keep their high flying careers - one was wealthy enough to afford a full time nanny who was able to stay well into the evening and often put the kids to bed. Some weeks she (and her husband) could go a few days only seeing the children for an hour in the morning. Personally, I would hate that.

The other woman had her mum living with her and she did all the childcare.

DH and I had no family to rely on. At one point we were paying £2,000 a month in double bubble nursery fees (London). Me being a SAHM meant we were able to save half that.

@Hardbackwriter 4 day week option isn't available for most though which is a shame as I know my dh would of loved to of done a 4 day week and have one day at home doing childcare etc and would of been a perfect set up
For us
InsteAd he worked full time whilst O stayed home whilst both little , then I went part time evenings , the part time days when at school
When I was a sahm though not working at all I would say I did 90% off housework etc so that my dh could come home from
Work and spend time with kids and not have to worry about dinner etc
Once i started work we shared a lot more
But reality is of people want to stay home thats there business , same as if someone trAvels and loves there job
As long as it works for your family just do whats best , too many judgemental people like the Op who do not know everything about other peoples circumstances

Bringing up children is work. It is not either bring up children or work.

Women are very privileged now to have choices and choosing to be at home looking after the family is an entirely valid choice; as indeed it is for some men - e.g. my DD works and her OH looks after the children.

I chose to have a 5 year career break when my children were small - then picked up my career again. It worked for me. I was glad to have the choice.

Totally agree with @drivingmisspotty. I didn’t want to dump my kids at childcare and collect them 10 hours later to put them to bed, get up and do it all over again, I wanted to be a mum and watch my kids grow up. I’m lucky I was in a position to do that, has my career suffered? Hugely. But it was the choice I made and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

If you have a mortgage nowadays, high chance is both parents need to work.

As the generations move on men will and do more of a 50/50 split as both parents are needed to work to keep the roof over their heads.

A decade ago, so many mums at the school gate- 10 years later a HUGE increase in grandparents and dads!

RUOKHon Lol you do get that there are women in theatre,in hospital and we get job done and can dress ourselves. Without the need for anyone to give up work. By the gift of internet and days off professional adults can and do chose & buy their own clothes

Why are you so focussed on clothes? It’s weird.

There are loads of women on this thread literally saying that they wouldn’t be able to be working in court or operating theatre unless there was a spouse or a nanny at home picking up the slack with childcare. Which disproves the entire premise of the OP.

I do believe that many women who say they can't work in actuality simply don't want to work, so they come up with the rationalizations the OP refers to.

Also think many men are indifferent to having children.

I worked and would be working except we are stuck somewhere I haven’t been able to find work. And when you h fucks off to another country for a couple of years and you have no help, well it’s not easy. He’s told me that as long as he is happy in his work that is all that matters. With a straight face too. Impossible situation to change actually. And no he wouldn’t be in his job without my support, he was in a dead end job with a small company and only made the leap and the next two with my encouragement and support. What a monster I’ve created. And it doesn’t even enable us the life you’d think it should

I do believe that many women who say they can't work in actuality simply don't want to work

yes, the lockdown has clearly proven that. Oh, wait...

I don't really see the point of your OP. You don't have children so it's not relevant to your own life and other people's lives are none of your business.

I've no idea how things would have panned out if we didn't have children. I've no idea if deep down DH doesn't care either way if we had them or not.
What I do know is that the decision to have children was a joint one,
the decision for me to stay at home with them was a joint one,
the decision for him to work away was a joint one, we discussed all the positives and negatives together,
I know that all of us are happier in our current set up than we have been in a long time.

Our second baby was prem, born poorly and didn’t sleep overnight properly for the first 3 years. No amount of “wrap around childcare” accounts for that. When he finally went to nursery he was off at least a week a month with coughs colds etc. Who deals with that in this mythical two high earning perfect couple you are describing? Who’s not going to meet the client that day then? What you describe happens rarely. Something has to give

@RUOKHon I am directly quoting your example, were you cited busy working adults who are too busy to leave work to shop. I’m simply saying that your example is utter tosh

@lovelemoncurd

I agree op. I've always been the primary breadwinner and taken a lead on childcare. I could never understand why some women make such a big deal of running the home. That's something I have always done on top of work.

I've always wanted my own independence though. I couldn't bear the thought of being left financially insecure.

Agree wholeheartedly with this.

but isn't choosing to do something else literally "sacrificing your career"?

I think it was compromising - I still do an interesting, professional, reasonably well-paid job and I very much still consider myself to have a career - rather than sacrificing. DH has also compromised, he was encouraged recently to go for a promotion but didn't because of the impact it would have on family life as it couldn't have been done without going back to full-time. Of course there will always be trade-offs but I think there's a big difference between both compromising and one sacrificing everything and the other nothing and I just find it really hard to see why people actively choose the latter.

High earning DH would never ever ever ever ever ever have taken a day off sick with the kids. Hence why his career ended up being amazing and mine was shit. He wanted a little wife and family to stay home and to have the freedom to swan off on business trips and meals and training courses without having to worry about the children I couldn't stay with someone like this! He sounds like a bad father who isn't interested in his children. Before DP and I had our daughter I made it clear I expected 50/50 for things like being off with the baby etc. We also shared parental leave. He knew I was prepared to leave if he was anything less than a fully involved parent. I'd been a single parent before and built my career during that time so he knew I wasn't bluffing. I'd hate to feel dependent on someone and always liked to know I'd be ok financially alone.

Not possible to say whether or not YABU. My DH and I have the same professional qualification .in our case I worked part time and DH worked 70-80 hours a week for

Slightly off-topic but in terms of ‘wrap around care’ etc. I used to teach at a fairly affluent school with lots of high earning parents. I always felt very sorry for the children (as young as 4) who were at school from 7am-6pm every day and at school every Easter and summer in the holiday clubs. I’m sure their parents work provided them a nice life but 11 hours a day at school, every meal eaten at school, holidays at school... must have been a bit shit no matter how much fun we tried to make it.

I don’t know how some of you can tolerate such cave men partners absent dads
Cavemen.Albeit they reek of expensive cologne, have handmade shirts they are wealthy and absent.

With the lack of sleep issue, our daughter has never slept through and she's 15 months. Guess how I, the mother, manages? DP does half the wake ups. We alternate each night.

So many more women would feel nore able to work if men did their fair share. I think many women are glad to have an "excuse" for want of a better word, to give up work.

@JayDot500

Neither of us would be where we are without my MIL . Savings, wrap around care, happy sons... we have both been able to breathe/progress because of that level of support to fall back on for DC. I've been able to progress to a point where my job is more flexible, so I can now take back some share of tasks (DH is able to take time off/do childcare/work flexibly without needing to beg managers the way I had to).

Shout out to all the grandparents or family members helping to relieve any strain for parents (especially mothers) everywhere

So true