AIBU to ask how do you manage it all if you work full time and have kids?

[dillydally24]

I have two DC (both under three), work full time in a 50-60 hour a week senior role and have no time for anything. I have a lot of help - a full time nanny and a cleaner who comes twice a week - but our house is often a bit of a tip and I never do anything for myself. My DH helps out, but his work is more demanding than mine, so he doesn't make a huge impact. We also have a dog and a house renovation in the go. If you work full time and have young kids, how on earth do you manage it?! Any tips are gladly received. It is this just the way it is for the next few years while the kids are young...?

Your DH is the main problem. Not only is he not helping but by virtue of him living there he's adding to your load. His 'more demanding' job is facilitated by you. If he was single he would be the one with the headache of outsourcing and feeding himself etc. but you doing everything for him to allow him to work. Gets defensive does he? Only trying to justify his laziness and disrespect for his partner. Sorry, but this is so annoying to read.

‘@Ahgoonyegirlye Piling shame on women who are trying their very best to juggle careers and children is pretty’

thats not what’s happening here. BOTH parents are responsible - BOTH. Not just the one who gave birth to them. OP has had many responses. Some along the lines of - just pay someone to spend more time with your kids.

my response is - if you have a nanny and a cleaner and a gardener and are STILL exhausted and have a DH who does f- all and puts his career first over his family then something needs to change.
OP and her DH can go down the route of - our careers have precedent over our children if they want to, and use the large sums of money they earn working like this to pay others to take charge of their family life if they want.
Will that make their children happier? I seriously doubt it.
Should they sit down together and look at their priorities- definitely.
Theres no shaming here, just a suggestion that 2 parents working full time in demanding careers while outsourcing their children may not be what leads to long-term happiness and fulfilment for their family.

You have DH problem, OP. Is he even thinking or worrying about this? I bet it wouldn’t occur to him to come in MN to ask how it’s all manageable for other people.

Worked full time 37 hours with 2 children as a single parent with no cleaner or nanny. You maybe need to be more organised.

would you like some ketchup for those chips on your shoulder..?

I’m sorry that your children had such poor quality childcare and education that the idea of an extra few hours of it each month could be considered so damaging

my children are lucky that they have a wonderful nanny who is basically our extended family

no one would blink twice at the suggestion of a grandparent looking after the children but not all of us have this luxury and therefore have to buy in help
it doesn’t mean the children enjoy time in her company any less than if they have a blood connection

Nice sneery comment but OP is working nearly twice as many hours as you so it doesn’t make you look organised, it makes you look like you can’t read a thread…

@SW1amp I wouldn't bother engaging. There's always one on every thread!🙄I'm here for the helpful and constructive feedback - including yours, which I've found very helpful. x

I couldn't cope..wasn't sleeping at night due to stress and was constantly on edge and snappy at DC.. In the end I changed jobs. Took a paycut and started in public sector role where I have work life balance and don't need to work over 37hr weeks. Can WFH if I want. Once kids are older I will be able to go back to the stressful, high level job if I want to.

I can't relate, but I beg you, to not put more stress to your body by running or cycling to work. You are already exhausted, your cortisol levels are probably high to keep up with life demands.

‘I’m sorry that your children had such poor quality childcare and education that the idea of an extra few hours of it each month could be considered so damaging

my children are lucky that they have a wonderful nanny who is basically our extended family’

what are you banging on about?? I think nannies and childcare are fabulous. But OP appears to be cracking up despite having a nanny working 10 hrs a day and having a cleaner and help and the solution to having your kids cared for 8-6pm a day when they have 2 parents and STILL not coping probably isn’t - pay someone to look after them more.
in fact the solution may well be as simple as for OP to get her DH to give his head a wobble and actually opt in to taking part in family life occasionally

@orangeisthenewpuce Yes, lack of organisation is my issue. Lolz.

@SW1amp I meant that if her house is a tip maybe she needs to be organised about tidying up as soon as she sees them, puts things away straight away etc. I found the one touch method very useful. If I see something and touch it it has to be put away in the correct place immediately, not just moved to another place, bottom of the stairs for instance.

She needs to do that on top of working 60 hours a week?

Righty-o

clearly read the thread and grasped the issue then

OP I am full of admiration for women who can work at this level and have a family. Hang in there. Choose a school with lots of professional working parents where they don't assume that you can pop in during the day at random short notice. Try to avoid bringing workplace stress into your family interactions where possible especially as the DC get older. Take a moment to breathe and be fully present when you are with the DC. There is no point being with them and being stressed and distracted. They will pick up on that. Keep an eye on your mental health. If you get frequently snappy or teary it can be a sign that it is all getting too much.
What set both my and DH's careers back was years of health issues with our parents adding elder care on top of work and DC . Hope you are spared this.

Choose a school with lots of professional working parents where they don't assume that you can pop in during the day at random short notice

this is excellent advice…
partly for what the school can do to make life easier (no expectations for reading sessions and nit check rota)
and partly for the other parents - you won’t constantly feel left out by not going to mid week mid morning coffees etc

In terms of your DH, asking for wholesale change is unlikely to have any positive impact (much though it galls me to say that). But small changes are possible. Perhaps frame it as you get that his job is hectic, but so is yours and you simply can't be responsible for all the adulting - that's not fair and is completely unreasonable. So he has to step up on at least some things. Then decide what those things will be:

A previous suggestion that he HAS to do mornings a few days a week is a good one.

Another would be items that can be done at his convenience eg laundry - if he wants to put a load on to be done by 6am so he hangs it up before getting ready to work, that's up to him, as long as it gets done.

And if, as I suspect, you routinely get up earlier than him then that needs to stop right now. DH and I slipped into this - I got up earlier so I had time to do all the chores AND get myself ready until one day I realised that I could get up 15 minutes later, he could get up 15 minutes earlier and we could <Gasp> SHARE the chores.

I'm not sure there is a magic solution other than what everybody else has said about outsourcing more. You can't fit more hours into a day. Does your husband feel the same way? I'd guess a combination of paying for more help and getting your husband to consider it as much his problem as yours. Do you think he's considering ways of making things run more efficiently or researching it as you are now?

I only work 40 hours a week with a fifteen minute commute and my husband is part time around the children and my job, to a large extent. He does all of the cleaning/shopping/school runs. We share bigger jobs, I cook when he's at work or taking the kids to an after school club and we both do stuff at the weekend. We regularly spend ten minutes or so discussing what's coming up the next day/week, what we need to do and who is going to do it. We have a joint calendar which keeps us both updated. I do whatever organisation and admin I can while I'm at work. The real difference there is that we work far fewer hours between us so it's much easier to keep on top of, but the idea of it being a team effort is useful no matter how many hours you work.

Are you new to MN OP? What exactly is it that you are asking? You've already had good advice, but what exactly is it you are looking for here?
You work 50 hours minimum. Are you a lawyer? You then do 1.5 hours every night. Hardly going to have time to fit in much then are you?

Ijustthink this is no way to live. Is this what you want your life to look like?

It may be expected in your industry... but there's a massive staff shortage, seemingly across all sectors right now, for various reasons. I think employers are having to reconsider various things, if they want to hold on to good staff. Work life balance. Compromises. Well-being. Morale.

There's a huge trial of a 4 day working week at no loss of pay.

I think there couldn't be a better time to take a long hard look at your role and see if your hours could be cut.

I worked like this for a year. My health, my marriage, my kids suffered. I don't do it any more. No regrets here

OP, what would happen in your household if you absolutely had to prioritise work next week? Maybe if you had an upcoming deadline and couldn’t get home in time for the nanny? Or if you needed to travel for work? Would your husband step up? Or would he expect the nanny too?

OP I am full of admiration for women who can work at this level and have a family.

I’m not sure I am, but replace ‘women’ with ‘people’. It’s an uncomfortable truth that this kind of hectic, super stressed family life that results from both parents working 60+ hours each week may just be a bit shit for the kids involved. And I don’t admire that I’m afraid.

I want women to have opportunities to have the career they want, same as men. But time is limited, and at some point something simply has to give. We (male or female) cannot ‘have it all’ without someone suffering because there are simply not enough hours in the week to have an incredibly demanding career, keep on top of all the things involved in family life and actually parenting our children with the time and attention that they need and deserve.

A certain amount can be outsourced, yes, but can we stop shouting down anyone who dares to suggest that we should also be thinking about what’s best for the kids who didn’t ask to be born into this lifestyle?

OP you sound incredibly stressed and I’m not at all surprised, honestly your life sounds hellish to me. You love your career and are protective of it of course but no one can give you a magic wand and create more hours in the day.

The tone of many posters seems to be ‘chuck money at it, wing it while you have to and it won’t last forever’. No it won’t. Your children will be grown, their childhood will be over and there won’t be an opportunity to do it any other way. It’s a bit sad that ‘counting down to this being over’ is the way people advise approaching your kids’ childhood.

I’m very aware that I’m probably coming across as a judgey working mum basher who thinks everything should be sacrificed for them the day you give birth. Far from it - I work four days a week in a relatively senior role and being a SAHM is my idea of hell. But I also know that where I am is the limit of where I could be work-wise without my kids suffering. Same for DH who is also at a reasonable level working four days a week and not earning as much as he could have if he’d have pushed his career more, but enough.

OP is clearly not open to any changes that involve changes to her working life and presumably her husband isn’t either so it probably is just a case of throw money at it. I just find the whole thread a bit depressing because it’s so incredibly adult centric with barely a reference to how the kids are and what would be good for them. And the snidey poster sneering that it’s a shame if someone’s kids school/childcare isn’t good enough to want to spend all their time there, well that’s just embarrassing to read.

I made a choice to work 4 days a week. It transformed our home lives.Pre-pandemic, there were plenty of people who judged me for that and thought it would massively affect my career. It didn’t. In fact I smashed every deadline and target I was given. I was incredibly productive, because I had a better work-life balance and prioritised what I would and wouldn’t, couldn’t and couldn’t do in the time I had.
Those same people now have hybrid working and are evangelical about work life balance and how they work ‘smarter not harder’.
My DW moved to a job ( very well paid, very demanding) which allowed her to WFH 2x a week to allow her back commuting time. She suddenly had time for hobbies, was around to do stuff like the laundry in between meetings and calls, could pick up the kids a day a week from nursery, take them out early.
she was happier. She was more productive. She has a BIG job, but has set boundaries in her weekend time. Sometimes there’s an unavoidable deadline but usually it’s okay.
You’ll never get this time back, it might seem exhausting now but your children are little for such a short, short time.

But OP is not saying anything about her DC's quality of life or that they're unhappy. Presumably, they are perfectly happy. She's the one who isn't because she's doing it all and doesn't have enough help (from her DH, nanny, cleaner etc) and never gets any time to herself. The children are fine.

I got a cleaner because I was so tired of the house being constantly dirty. DH didn't clean, the DC didn't care. I cared, and it being dirty made me stressed ALL THE TIME, but I didn't have time or energy to clean because I work full time, running my own business, and the last thing I wanted to do was add hours of cleaning time on top of all the other things I did. Should I have reduced my stress by reducing my hours so that I had more time to clean? Of course not.

OP is clearly not open to any changes that involve changes to her working life and presumably her husband isn’t either so it probably is just a case of throw money at it. I just find the whole thread a bit depressing because it’s so incredibly adult centric with barely a reference to how the kids are and what would be good for them.

I’m not sure that is fair. The children have a nanny, who presumably they are close to, for 8-6 Mon-Fri. That’s hardly excessive. They don’t care how often the cleaner comes, or if they have a housekeeper and gardener. If anything extra helps frees up time to spend with the kids.

We stopped.
dh and I were both on 60+ hour weeks in London. It wasn’t sustainable with a family. We moved 2000miles to another country, dh works 4 days from home (40hrs), I work 20hrs spread over the week when dh is free.

In your scenario I would drop a few hours to 9am - 4pm, and try and work from home 2 days at least so you save 2hrs a day commute.
You dh needs to really consider hours especially though, even with super high roles, you do not have to get work at 11pm on a Friday and have it done before Monday morning.