To ask working parents how much do you see your kids each day?

[Kikimush]

Just curious. DH goes off to work at 830am every morning, then I drop the kids to school at 9. Childminder collects them and looks after them til 6pm and then once dh is home at 630pm it's time for dinner, quick bit of reading and bed at 8/830pm. Sometimes I'll also have something urgent hanging over from work that will need to be dealt with in this time.

I know lots of people are in the same/worse boat and I'm not looking for sympathy but just wondering how common this is? We do tend to make the most of family time at the weekend but it still never seems like enough. There are so many things I want to do with the kids that I never get around to :(

I take child to school. I work roughly 9:30 to 3pm and then work laptop is shut and I don't open it. Family time is so important, you just have to have clear boundaries and don't let work override that.

Between about 6.30am to 8.30am and 5-7pm (when they go to bed). So about four hours a day. But then my ex left me and wanted 50/50 custody, so I don’t even see them at all half the week :(

At the early ages we did it differently.

We hired one of the staff in school to take the children from the end of her shift. They played in the park and then home for 4pm, bedtime routine started and when husband got home at 6pm they had been through dinner, bath and brush teeth. My husband kept them alive until 7 when I got home and I read to them, sang with them and did day recollections until they fell asleep.

Mainly I wasn’t home until 7. Jan/Feb I was home 3am or so and I made a point to have breakfast with them at 6am. Yes it sucked but my children needed me and I needed my career. I made it and I’m in a much better spot with my career. If you don’t want to progress don’t make the sacrifice. For most it’s not worth it. Our elder two have special needs and I always need to be able to cover their expenses. Had they not have needed this help I would have taken my foot off the pedal earlier in my career and not worked like a dog.

Mine are 12 and 14 so tend to do homework then their own thing in the evening, but we talk in the car on the school run, DS is at school 45 mins away so we have that time then in the evening I have 45 mins in the car just with DD on the way to get DS as i pick her up first then both of them for 45 mins getting home! so around 2 to 3 hours maybe?

We try to go out for food or a film one night in the week and we spend at least one day as a family at a theme park at the weekend so usually a good 12 hours. Sometimes we make a weekend of it and I don’t work school holidays and usually make lots of plans with them.

So I don’t see them much in a normal school week but i don’t feel bad about it!!

I see them from when they wake up until they leave for school at 9am and then I see them when they get home at 3:30 onwards. My "career" isn't glamorous but I make an ok salary and WFH around my kids schedules. My DH commutes & travels a lot so this works for us. I might try to ramp up my career once the kids are older and don't need/want to be around me as much.

DH works a 70hr week over 6 days and then has 4 days off. He sees the DC as much as possible in those 4 days. Those 6 days are a range of shifts, including nights so he does lots of school runs and has mornings and evenings with the DC regularly as well.

Recently, I deliberately switched to a job where I'm off weekends and school holidays so I'm with the DC before school until 8am and home by 4pm. I'm poorer but much, much happier this way.

Its hard, DH worked nights Thurs-Sunday most weeks. I worked FT during the week, and taking into account the commute I left at 8:30 and was home sometime between 530--6. The benefit was is that DD was only in childcare two days per week so it was pratically easier for her to be ferried to activities, friends houses and lower childcare bills.

The downside was we barely got any family time. It was about three evenings a week, sometimes he would drop a weekend shift if we had a special event, however it wasnt very often.

When we had one it was drop off 7/8am depending on the day and collect at 5/6pm Quick dinner bath and into bed by 7pm.

Now we have two I do get a bit more time with them as don't work Fridays but Monday - Thursday is still very similar. Drop off at 7.30am at childminder and breakfast club. Collect at 5.30/6pm. Bed for around 7pm. My husband isn't back until 8pm so he only gets the morning chaos.

Definitely not ideal but not sure how the bills would get paid if we didn't both work...

About 4 hours a day - 6-8am and then 5:30-7:30pm. I find the mornings are food quality time.

I do have one day off a week as well.

Not sure if I am just a dreadful parent but I don't especially want more!

I now work full time from home so I see them off and then I'm here when they're home though I'm working I like that I'm there. When I was working out of the home I only took local jobs witj short commute so I'd leave 10 mins before work and be home 10 min after. Still doesn't leave a lot of time to actually do anything. Husbands hours are a bit longer but he works from home 3 days a week now too.

I see my kids until they leave for school at 8.30 and I am back home by the time they get home from school at 3.30. But during the school holidays I don’t see them between 8.30 and 3.00 as I am out at work.

my husband works from home and does the school runs.

Drop them at 8 then go off to my school. Twice a week I pick them up at 4.30 but then I usually have to take one or other of them to an activity. The rest of the week I pick them up around 5.30. They go to bed at 8.30/9. I don spend that much time with them but I am a teacher so I console myself that we have the holidays together.

I leave at 7, husband does drop off, then I pick up from after school club at 4 and I have them all afternoon. BUT, mine are possibly younger, and the 3 and 4 year olds are in bed before 7. So even though it sounds like I have "all afternoon" with them, in reality it's home for 4.15, make the tea, eat the tea at 5, then (once I've wrestled the ipads off them 🙄) we do have a nice half an hour of play from 5.30-6, and then we're straight into bathtime/bedtime.

Also, I'm a teacher (only part time) so I do sometimes have to do my marking after they're all in bed. I'm going full time next year, so I'll be marking every night, so I'm keeping the kids in after school club til 5.30 a couple of times a week, because the "option" of staying up marking til 10pm every evening isn't actually a viable option for me.

Most days I drop her at school at 8 and then my DM picks her up. I see her after work around 5.30. Once I week I am off work so I drop off at 8.45 and collect at 3.15. I then work one day at the weekend so I see her either before I go at 8 or 10 and then after work at either 5.30 or 4ish and all day the other weekend day.

She's 10 so she goes to bed at 8.30 on a school night and 10 ish at the weekend so we have a decent time to catch up in the evening.

During the holidays I always take an extra day off as a minimum each week, so I have three full days with her, DM has 3 and DH has 1.

In the week, I see the smaller one 6 to 7 in the morning, but the bigger one is still asleep at that time. I leave at 7 and get home at 6 so I see them both between 6 and 7.30 and the older one until about 9. Then there's all weekend and the school holidays (which I have off). My husband seems them a bit more in the week but a bit less at the weekend as he is more likely to go out and do other things and he doesn't get the long holidays. I don't especially feel like we're missing anything, we all seem to be OK.

I am a single parent. I work 2 full days on Mondays and Tuesdays then school hours only on the other 3 days. DS goes to wraparound club on Mondays so that's a long day and we get home about 6.30pm. On Tuesdays I'm lucky that a family member takes DS to school and brings him home, I finish at 4.30 and only work a 10 minute walk away from my house so I'm home by 4.40.

I see them plenty!!😂

Before we had our youngest and therefore needed a nanny, i would drop them off at school/nursery around 830/9. They would be picked up from after-school/nursery at 6pm by DH. Then bedtime would be around 8pm ish depending on the ages.

More recently I'd negotiated with work to take an hour break and pick them up from school one day a week but then I'd work again after they were home (home working - i did home working at my place before 2020 as standard for a couple of days a week) and then decided it was better to just finish work at 3pm on those days and work the other hours on other days. That was quite nice having them once a week after school.

My husband is in a company that finishes early (for all office staff) on Fridays so he would pick them up from school/nursery at 3pm on Fridays.

Currently we have a nanny. I work from home 2 to 3 days a week and DH works from home 3 to 4 days a week. Our nanny looks after our youngest and picks up the others from school etc. I still drop them off at school, i like doing that.
This set up means I do see them quite a bit even though I'm working for some of it. My youngest is getting used to seeing me around during the day without any drama and she adores the nanny so i can sometimes be with them for lunch etc.

Definitely works for us but it hasnt always been that easy. There was a time when I'd drop the kids off at nursery/breakfast club at 730am and only came home around 630pm/7pm, later sometimes, 5 days a week. Didn't see much of them then.

It’s a bit different for us because DS is still in nursery, we both work full time.

We have 2 hours in the morning and 1.5 hours in the evening.

bit different for us as DS has SEN and autism so doesn’t sleep, but usually one of us is with him from when he wakes up around 5am until he goes to school at 8:30 then from 3:30 until he goes to bed at 7, and then for the 3-4 hours he’s awake in the night.

I drop them off at nursery at 7am and get home at 6.15pm.

It's tough, but not so tough that I want the baby waking me at 1am like she's taken to doing

Should add - neither of us feel guilty about this. We’re in our lates 20s and are still establishing ourselves in our careers. I really don’t see now as a time we should step back from work.

When I was working full time with one DC I worked out I was spending 50 hours a week 1:1 waking time with him.

I wasn't going to be made to feel guilty about working.

Little one more so.
Approx 6.30-7.45 in the morning depending on when he wakes.
Then from 5.20-8.00pm Mon-Fri
Although I've just negotiated an early finish so as of September I can collect him from school at 3.15pm.
This also works better as on same night oldest plays football so I'm around for that too.
Oldest one I see about 5 min in the morning as he gets up just before I leave. Then usually approx an hour or two in evenings (he's 13)

With the caveat that I live in the US. See from 7-8:45ish when they get dropped off to school or daycare. Then our nanny picks them up between 3-3:15 and brings them home. I am a tenured academic so when I don’t have teaching 3 times a week I am home by 4:30. So then spend time with them till they are in bed and then straight back to work for 2-3 hours. I work one long day till 6:30 and DH is back by 4:30 on that day. The other day we both work till 5:30/6 so we get home in time for dinner/bath/bed. DH does a mix of clinical work and academic work so he sometimes has clinic on weekends (not that enough). Both of us do work weekend nights though. So yes I see my kids in the week but I have to make up the hours.

Between 7 and 8 in the morning for breakfast and then as I wfh I am there when she gets in at 15:30 for a chat and a cuddle. I finish work at 5 and do tea and she goes to bed at 8.