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?

If he does 50% or more of the domestics and parenting I think YABU. If he doesn’t, and / or you have any reason to fear him using his vs your work finish time seeking majority time with the DC in the event of divorce, YANBU.

Have you looked into the impact of your PT work to date and implications of remaining PT (increasing to 80%) vs going FT on your pension?

Most teachers finish work later than 4pm: presumably your H parents and making the evening meal. then working later in the evening?

You come across as competitive about time with the DC.

Work out the tax if you work full time, you might not be left with much more than if you work 30 hours.

I would not let him bully you into working full time. That is disgraceful carry on.

Agree with a PP, do an annualised hours comparison.

I would stick with the 4 days plus payrise. When DC are in primary school I think as a family some flexibility for appointments, plays, sports day etc is useful.

If you choose to go F/T it would need to go hand in hand with a straight talk about a fair balance of who does what else for the family

I think it sucks a lot

He is being VVV unreasonable

How many hours does your DH actually do a week if he's home by 4? Plus he'll get at least 6 weeks more holiday than you per year I'm guessing?

also, is your £850 net pay less than his per month or year? If it’s per month then that’s a v large difference.

With regards to your thoughts and feelings about your past work pattern with smaller DC, that’s water under the bridge and not relevant now, unless you felt coerced into working fewer hours than you wanted to.

I’m a teacher and I don’t think you’re unreasonable. Perhaps point out to him that he works the equivalent of 4 days a week given all his holidays and that he should consider switching to a job that was 5 days a week all year round. I’m not knocking teachers, but our pay is related to the almost 3 months of the year that we don’t work (or at least don’t work on paper since we’re not in the building).

I dont like the sound of this. I would go full time, pay my half of everything and squirrel money away.

Stick with 30 hours OP, it will make such a difference for you. You can always increase your hours in the future if you want.

Stick to your guns OP.

I'm with you OP, we're in exactly the same boat, I've told DH not only am I not going back full time now, I don't plan to at any point in the future, working 4 days a week has been a godsend to me. While my DH is good at doing 50/50 physically looking after the kids he does no life admin or cleaning so I work less hours to make up for this. He hasn't dared challenge me on this yet so I'm not really sure what he thinks.

At the risk of sounding somewhat aggressive - your 'D'H is a greedy arsehole. £4k a month!! That's plenty to live on - FGS.

I'd tell him to fuck right off. Life isn't all about money - maybe he needs to start showing some appreciation for his wife and family.

Whenever I read threads like this I realise how lucky I am that my DH doesn’t think this way at all. I wfh part time, and he values the other work I do in the house, cooking, cleaning and admin that makes all our lives run more easily so that we can enjoy the time we have together at weekends without having to worry about chores.

If you do go full time, I would say you need to get a cleaner and outsource other things like ironing etc. All achildcare, cooking and cleaning would need to be equally shared going forward too.

He starts work at 7.30am and leaves at 3.30pm.

In terms of him having to cook meals and do homework and reading and bath times 5 evenings a week on his own if I go full time - well I’m pretty sure the novelty of that will wear off very quickly for him. He doesn’t seem to have thought about that though…..

also, is your £850 net pay less than his per month or year? If it’s per month then that’s a v large difference

So what !! Of course it's per month. But the OP has said they're getting £4k a month all ready - you don't need to have a nag at the OP for only working 30 hours a week. She has an arsehole money-grabbing husband doing that already.

over a year you probably work more hours than him anyway as you will get 6 weeks leave. I’m sure he does work during the school holidays but ultimately he has at least 10 weeks away from work premises.

The big thing he will have to commit to for you to consider full time is at least half the illness days etc that the kids have - which no doubt will be high for a reception kid....

I know there are lots of debates as to how many hours over the school day teachers work (alot depends on age group / subject - but if you take into account the extra holidays over your leave time how many hours on an average week does he actually work? That would be a starting point for me...

Or shift your hours so you work 5 days but finish and home by 430... what does that stack up like? Who does the admin/ housework then?

Tbh I expect 30hrs 48 weeks a year vs a full time teacher probably balances quite well.... he's just not prepared to admit that!

So, if you do 30 hours a week and have, say, 5 weeks' holiday a year, that's around 1400 hours of work a year.
A teacher's Directed Time is 1265 hours a year and if he's SLT and getting home at 4pm every day (and, as a teacher myself, I'd like to know how the fuck he manages that!!), then it doesn't sound as if he's over-exerting himself on that front.
So, I reckon you're actually working MORE than him.
Also, have you sat down and compared your leisure time? Who gets more, across an average week?

What’s your tax position like if you went to full time? Would this push you over the 40% threshold? If so it’s really not worth it! It also means that your likely need to employer a cleaner/more help and do things such as hair dressers at peak time so you pay more. My cleaner is now £16 an hour! Painters/DIY people also silly prices. I’ll be having my first child in a few months and I’ve already said to my husband I am only going back 4 days a week. The nursery has a discount for full time so I’m also going to put baby in nursery for the day I am off (obviously not a long day like on work days) to allow me to get life admin done. His sister is a SAHM and his mum (a career women) also asked if I’d be going back to work at all, so I guess he does feel lucky he won’t be the only earner so is less pushy but really I don’t think you can have a job where you work long full time hours and not hire help. Even if your husbands a teacher with his limited hours (sorry but it is true, most of them don’t work the type of fixed hours the rest of us do which is clear head if he gets home for 4pm! If he worked at a private day boarding school that focused on support and he wasn’t home until 8pm like the kids).

Also, if you do stay part time make sure you top up your pension.

Have you calculated how many hours each of you actually work a year based on his long hols then? Why doesn't he work more rather than you? The way you're describing his job sounds PT to me.

How are your finances set up? I guess an alternative might be to change how you do that as he doesn't sound like he really wants to share his extra money.

If you do that though, please make sure you are not doing more then 50% of child tasks, mental work or housework.

Yep, so what? My take home pay is £1500 a month more than my OH. Some married couples see themselves as a partnership and are happy to share. OH gives to the relationship in other ways.

OP, have you told him to get a job during the school holidays? He could fit one in on the 3 days you're not working, or in the evenings.

You did the majority of the tough early years and now he wants to make sure you don't get 5 minutes.

He does not sound nice at all.

If you go back full time, start putting money away.

He's a dud.

I agree with the suggestion of laying out exact hours and free time.

A good husband would see that your set up is working.