Husband keeps pushing for me to go back to work full time.

[PaddlingLikeADuck]

As our family situation currently stands my husband works full time and I work 25 hours over 3 days. I dropped to 25 hours after our second son was born but I always worked full time before that.

Our two children are now aged 8 and 4. The 4 year old is due to start school this year.

Our current take home pay per month (jointly) is just under £4k which I consider to be a comfortable amount and and one we can have a nice lifestyle with.

In August I am getting a promotion and increasing my hours up to 30 hours a week and so our monthly bring home pay will increase further so up to just under £5k a month.

As it stands, my plan is for me to work 4 days a week (8 hour days) and have one day off in the middle of the week. My husband however is being really pushy about me working full time as opposed to “just working 30 hours.”

I said it will really help us with me having one day off a week because if anything untoward comes up, one of the children takes ill, appointments come up, school assemblies etc I have the option to change my days to accommodate this. I’m very lucky to have a job where I can be very flexible with my days.

I said I will still be doing 30 hours a week so it’s hardly like I will be a lady of leisure at home whilst the children are at school and whilst he works.

As it stands, he is home by 4pm most days whereas my work days means I’m not home until 6.30pm, if not a little later. This would mean that me working 5 days a week will result in me hardly getting any time in the evening with the children whereas my husband would spend every evening with them from 4pm onwards.

He also works in a school so he gets all the holidays off which again means he gets lots of quality time with them that I don’t. And one day a weekend they go out together for about 6 hours for a sport related event, so that’s more time that I’m not with them.

I said that I just want to be able to spend at least one day in the week to see my children, and to be able to collect them from school and have some quality time with them, as opposed to not getting home until an hour before their bedtime every night.

He’s just keeps pushing it though.

I said I don’t understand why, for the sake of me working 7.5 hours less than full time, he would begrudge me wanting to spend more time with the children.

I get it that if I financially hard to work full time for our family situation to be manageable then I would, but I don’t and we manage perfectly fine already, never mind after my upcoming promotion and increase in hours.

My husband is very money focused though and instead of thinking about how comfortable we already are, and will be even more come August, he just keeps saying “but think how much more money we would have if you went full time.”

His priority is money whereas mine just isn’t, especially when the children are so young.

He brings it up all the time and it usually ends up in a mini argument where we just go round in circles.

AIBU about this?

You need to be clear and say I don’t need the extra money, but he could give up his weekends and find another job if it is bugging him so bad.

i wouldn’t get into that level of tit for tat or suggesting he gets a holiday job. You have enough money to live comfortably and your respective jobs work very well in fitting round the children. However, while he has a lot of holiday, it isn’t flexible whereas you are. So you will be the one who has to take random days off if anything goes wrong in term time. This could easily eat into your less generous holiday entitlement. You might have more money but limited time to spend it.

Suggest it is a good thing you pick up the kids one afternoon a week (he is used to you doing 2 at the moment) it could give him a chance to do something else during that time. It might also be nice to have a weekday together during school holidays. Such a shame he couldn’t be pleased for your promotion rather than £ signs flashing before his eyes!

I am struggling a bit with the maths here

You say you currently earn about half what he earns, even though you work more than half the hours he does (ie he is effectively paid more than you per hour).

But then you said if you work an extra 5 hours a week your joint net income increases by 25% from 4k to 5k?

For all that to be true your promotion would need to come with a 45-50% pay rise...as well as no change in your tax bracket either. Is that really the case?

FWIW though, let’s say the maths are right... I would stick with 30 hours and tell him that if he wants more money he can go and earn some...

If you are both working full time, 5 days a week, who is raising your children and doing the house work?

Then he better be equal domestically. And I don't think he is

Your decision is valid

Friend chose money over time with her children. As a non parent myself I couldn't reconcile with that myself

Sounds perfect to me. However, I don't know what you need to pay out of the 4-5k pee month. I have teen DC and work part time and DH works full-time. I do all evening lifts to clubs and we split weekends - I do long distance lifts and he does local ones. On my days off, I do housework, general house admin, shopping, exercise and some time to myself. I think it works quite well. We have similar income to you.

Are you joking?
who would want to work full time while raising 2 relatively young children and also running a house if they financially don’t need to?
children grow so quick, money doesn’t buy happiness or memories. Stay at home with your children OP, they will remember their quality time with you rather than having money to do things with.
your husband is ok in his ivory tower with shorter working days and school holidays off. Tell him to get stuffed and that you will be working 4 days, end of.

Are you joking?
who would want to work full time while raising 2 relatively young children and also running a house if they financially don’t need to?
children grow so quick, money doesn’t buy happiness or memories. Stay at home with your children OP, they will remember their quality time with you rather than having money to do things with.
your husband is ok in his ivory tower with shorter working days and school holidays off. Tell him to get stuffed and that you will be working 4 days, end of.

Are you joking?
who would want to work full time while raising 2 relatively young children and also running a house if they financially don’t need to?
children grow so quick, money doesn’t buy happiness or memories. Stay at home with your children OP, they will remember their quality time with you rather than having money to do things with.
your husband is ok in his ivory tower with shorter working days and school holidays off. Tell him to get stuffed and that you will be working 4 days, end of.

Thanks everyone for your continued comments.

In terms of sharing workload, we do have it split equally and DH is pretty good really. He has his jobs and I have mine and we just crack on with it. Housework jobs are definitely 50/50, we’ve never really had a problem with that.

When it comes to the children though, that’s definitely more my area and I do the vast majority of the arranging of their lives, I do the day to day acts that come with having young children and I take on the full ‘mental load’ roles too.

I do wonder if it’s because he doesn’t ‘see’ the time and effort it requires to meet the holistic needs of children that he doesn’t understand why it’s something I value doing.

This. Looking at the increase, would I be right in thinking you earn significantly more than DH? (If so, maybe he could do some bar work in the evenings as well as working through his crazy long school holidays).

Why can't you do the Saturday sport with your children if you want more time with them?

I do think both people need to be in agreement if one person is working full time and one part time or not at all.

Oh fuck sake.

OP, I agree with you. You would probably be spending your day off your paid employment doing unpaid work around the house anyway.

Ah, no edit button. But even though he does earn more, my comments still stand as he gets a lot more leisure time than you and has decided it’s all about the money.

@dammit88 but the OP’s husband IS effectively working part time! Finishing at 3.30 and having all school holidays off is effectively part time. (I am a teacher so I wouldn’t normally say it’s part time but OP has said he doesn’t have to work after school or any work in the holidays). So, he’s working part time, yet is making a fuss about her suggesting it? That should mean he takes on extra work in the holidays to equate to full time surely…

He’s being an arse, you’re contributing and still deserve time with your children.

So the figures….

(Maths isn’t my strong point so would love help with breaking it all down) and how things would be different if I went full time.

My current salary at full time would be £32’000 but I only work 25 hours.

My monthly take home pay is £1’400 on average.

My husband’s salary is £51’000 and his monthly take home pay is £2’800

When I get my promotion, the full time salary would be £40’000 but obviously it will be less for me as I will only be doing 30 hours.

My DH is also getting a small pay rise and as of September his monthly take home pay will increase slightly to £2,950.

How do things work in the household? E.g who does the food shop, washing, ironing, etc? I can imagine that the vast majority of your day off is spent doing housework. I know mine usually is!

Truthfully, I'd rather be a single parent (I was once, so I know how hard it can sometimes be) than live with such a controlling, money-grubbing bully who thinks his desire to be better off financially should trump your wishes. F*ck that.

Always find these threads interesting because it's clear that all relationships differ hugely. Early on in the thread one poster suggested a higher earning DP "subsidises" a low earning part time DP. My DP earns way more than me, but I remain part time despite teenage DCs. He's not subsiding me, I'm allowing him to focus on his stressful job while I take care of the home. It's quite insulting to suggest we should work equal hours, clearly some relationships are not so much 'partnerships' as dictatorships!

I hope you got through to him.

When the review comes up in a year, bring the bank statements from the savings accounts and ask him ‘how much is enough?’

No money is worth your peace. Good luck.

Sounds crazy that he’s pushing for this when your life sounds quiet comfortable financially and selfish of him. I think there may be another reason he'd like alone time at home

OK, just for your information.

He's only employed for 1275 hours (if all allocated by his head at his pru/special school).

That's for only 39 weeks of the year. He then has his statutory 4 weeks holiday pay. So doesn't work the other 9 weeks of the year. So really he's part-time at 32 hours a week for only 39 weeks!

Compared to your 1440 hours a year!

I was coming on to say this. You're actually working more hours than him.

Hopefully if you show him that he'll realise he's being unreasonable.

He's clearly not a maths teacher.

Set him this problem.

36 hours/Full time in Freddie's current job is £32k.

Freddie has been offered a new job, where he will work 30 hours, have a day off, have greater opportunities for progression and will not lose money for emergency childcare, for £40k minus 20%.

Calculate what the salary would be in the new job.

Which job should Freddie take?