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?

I would make a spreadsheet showing how many hours each of you get to spend with your DC (since this seems to be your focus) and show him how it compares over a day, week, month & year.

And if you go full time, how are you going to arrange time off for sick children? and who will do the admin? it will be split 50/50, right? and if he can't commit to that, then he's going to have to suck up your 30 hour job.

As i always say on the SAHM/PT workers: how is your pension provision and access to money.

Stick to your 30 hours.

So you actually are employed for a similar number of days over a year aren't you though because gets so many weeks annual leave?

This!

Most teachers work in the evenings though, well the ones I know do and if he is SLT he probably has stuff to do in the holidays particularly if it is a senior school as I know lots are in during exam results in August.

Is he doing childcare in the holidays?

I vote for telling him you’ll go full time if he gets a summer holidays job.

I’m a nurse and didn’t go to full time work until ds2 was in year 8! We simply couldn’t make it work with childcare and I really think our dses benefitted from me being present. I did 30 hours over 3 nights, moving to full time days and have since had several promotions.
Thankfully DH and I had the same outlook and priorities so it worked fine. Now the tables are turned as dh is retiring and I will be the main breadwinner. It works because we support each other.

Sorry to say but I think you have a problem with your dh rather than anything else.

Tell him your sticking to your hours and will reassess when they are in secondary school.
Your not on the breadline he is being a tosspot!
Next time just say I have made my position clear it's not happening get over it and walk away. He can't argue with a empty room.

So he's a teacher and home by 4pm most days? I thought that kind of teaching job just simply doesn't exist? It doesn't in Mumsnetland anyway.

I think continue arguing your case for 30 hours. Why does your husband want to stress you like this? You obviously earn decent money and the flexibility you get from your job (being able to swap days within the week when needed) is like gold dust.

Stand firm op!

By the way, for all the smart arses I would say EXACTLY the same to a man in this situation. If you are comfortably off then don't spend every available minute at work when your children want to be with you. They won't forever.

YANBU OP

Assuming you get five weeks holiday, your 30 hours a week is the equivalent of him working 36 contracted hours a week term time.

If this was me I would shut him down and say I’m not going to discuss it any more and I’ll review at the end of little one’s first year. By that time I’m sure you’ll have plenty of examples of times you’ve had to move your days because of sickness or other events

I went part time when I had my children
But my DH was fully supportive
I think both parties have to be agreeable to one going part time

So he works 195 days a year and is begrudging you working a mere 7 days fewer days than him? And I'm guessing all the sick days fall to you as he can't get time off as easily?

He sounds like a knob

As well as all the chores that need doing at the weekend if both partners are working full time, you mean? Weekends aren't elastic.

OP if your 30-hour week is working out for you and your family, I don't think you should let yourself be pressured. On MN there seems to be a lot of judgement about anyone working less than full time, but people need to do what's best for them imo. Nobody ever lay on their deathbed and wished they'd spent more time at work.

Does he understand the jobs you will complete in those 6 hours?
how else does he expect the dental visits etc. plus housework to get done?
My DH objected about me being part time initially, now he complains that I am full time and it is him who needs to work around tradesmen.

There's more to life than work when you don't actually need the money.

And in term time he will not be able to take any time off for issues - sickness appts etc so it will impact on the OP's job

My husband said the exact same as you 18 months ago when our eldest started school. I did go back to FT. He then dropped the bombshell this week that he thinks I should back to 4 days. He has not been happy about having to do his share of the emergency childcare at all. I am extremely frustrated by it all.

YANBU. But is it REALLY money he’s upset about?
He gets 13 weeks holiday - isn’t this spent looking after the children?
who does more of the household chores etc? If you get home close to bed time presumably he’s the one who makes their meals and gets them ready for bed?

If it’s not him he’s being anyway. But need more info

He's senior management and he's home by 4pm most days? None of our management leave before 5, often nearer 6.It sounds like he's got a very cushty job there. He does say 7.45-3.45 five days a week, that's 30 hours a week, same as you, but he's term time only! (and I'm a teacher myself, so most certainly not a teacher basher. But he's being a dick here)

Wonder how the housework/garden/diy/home admin chores are divided.

The brass neck of someone who works term time only and is home by 4 complaining about someone who works all year round is astounding to me.

Sorry, I'm an idiot-that would be 35-40 hrs, depending on lunch breaks. Good thing I'm not a maths teacher 🤣🤣

He gets home at 4.00pm X 5
You get home at 6.30pm X 4

He has 2 & half hours longer than you at home x 4 = 10. On that basis you continue x 4

Your husband is being ridiculous .
I think that you both have the ideal set up. He works full time , you practically work full time but have a ‘day off ‘ which you will most probably use to do the cleaning, administration, pick up the kids from school.
By the time you do all that the ‘day off’ will no longer be a day off
You have also said that when you get this promotion you will be earning only about £850 less than him which in the grand scheme of things is not much different from what he earns
if you work ‘ full time’ would he prepared to share the chores equally or would he expect you to do all the mental load, cleaning and cooking which you have done since the kids were younger?
I bet he doesn’t expect to do any extra chores if you go ‘ full time’. The cleaning fairy, the admin fairy will just sprinkle their magic dust and everything will be done. Your dh is a joker.
You have a healthy household income.

Is it possible for you to do three long days ( 12 hour shifts) . Then your dh would have to sort out childcare for those three days.

How on earth does he get home so easy if he is SMT that’s the real question. I would stay exactly how you are - no one should want to see their partner get less time unless there is a needed. The material difference between 4/5 days is small.

Most teachers work in the evenings though, well the ones I know do and if he is SLT he probably has stuff to do in the holidays particularly if it is a senior school as I know lots are in during exam results in August.

His marking is minimal as his teaching role is a very small percentage of what he does overall. He probably brings work home to mark about once every 6-8 weeks.

Due to the nature of the school he works at (which I won’t say as it’s very outing) he doesn’t have to do anything during the holidays. He knows he’s got an easy life with his job - I doubt many SLT staff leave work at 3.30pm every day.

So yes, he does the childcare during the holidays. The half term/full term break up dates differ from the County he works in to the County we live in and so sometimes there is an overlap where we have to use Summer Clubs four our children but only about four times a year.