That two parents working doesn’t work

[Itsmyshadow]

We have 3 DCs aged 8, 4 and 1. DH works full time. I have recently returned from mat leave doing 4 days per week. On my day off I have DC4 and DC1 at home and a large part of that is taken up with swimming lessons.

I feel like I’m failing at everything to be honest. House is a state, am not on top of my work, kids in nursery and after school club for long hours, and don’t even get me started on the amount of after school sporting activities DC1 does which don’t really fit with going to work.

DH is a great dad, does his fair share with the kids, does 50% of the school / nursery runs, and most of DC1’s after school sporting stuff (whilst I have the younger two). He could pull his weight a bit more with the housework but gets off his bottom when I huff and puff / nag, and does all of the DIY and garden. Like most women I carry the mental load, doing all the school, nursery, medical admin etc.

I feel like I need to do a real half arsed job of my work on my wfh days to keep on top of the washing / house / kid admin / kid homework (saw a thread on here the other day about that), but workload / conscience won’t let me do that, and that doesn’t solve for the fact that DC1 has football at 5:30 on a Tuesday or hockey at 6pm on a Wednesday and if I finish at 5pm and I’m in the office, those timings don’t work.

We have a cleaner and a robot vacuum, but I still can’t keep on top of all the crap all around the house (paintings from nursery, party bag loot, paper admin that needs addressing, magazines etc), and feel like the kids get given toys / grow out of clothes much faster than I can get sort through the old ones. Result is a massive mess of a playroom that I keep getting half through sorting before the kids mess it up again and there’s nowhere for everything to go.

Don’t talk to me about TOMM or similar. I’m not lacking motivation or direction. I spend hours per week washing and putting away clothes, batch cooking, sorting through piles of stuff, firefighting cleaning tasks (usually when something mouldy is discovered or someone has spilt something somewhere), but no sooner is something done it’s a complete mess again.

So those of you who work a lot of hours and have young kids. How are you managing? Do you spend hours every evening cooking and cleaning (how do you find the energy if so?), and how to you manage the demands of kids after school activities / social lives?

Hi @Itsmyshadow ,

I've two children 8 and 5, and I only just figured this out.

I've been wondering for the past year or so why everything seems so ridiculously difficult. I worked out about a month ago that we've been doing it all wrong. My husband and I have been trying to hold down full-time jobs. We've no friends or family support, no disposable income for cleaners or babysitters, au pairs etc.

We can function, i.e. we can all get to where we need to be each day, all be dressed, mostly clean! and mostly fed. But none of us are happy, it's all such a drag. We don't have the time/energy inclination to be as loving, giving, thoughtful, or invested in anyone else, not even ourselves - everything is non-stop. I feel like a zombie most days.

In an ideal world, I would recommend that in a 2x parent household, one parent needs to have a minimum of 2x full days completely free and the other parent, possibly 1x full day completely free. I don't think trying to split part-time hours over 5 days is any good either, as it's not possible to just be in house/family/personal mode, as part of the day is still dedicated to one's employer.

During this non-employed time, batch cooking, cleaning, tidying, shopping, DIY, personal self-care and personal development can take place.

Evenings and weekends can be dedicated to supporting, encouraging and appreciating the other members of your family. There will always be obligations, which may have to encroach on family time, but in the current set-up that we have a family, I don't believe that we have time to do anything well at all.

Once you're earning the kind of money which affords private schools, after-school nannies, baby-sitters, cleaners, evenings out, regular holidays etc etc, perhaps the need to have dedicated days for the house/personal time is less necessary - I'm not sure on that one 😕

It’s only a fact if you have a very short sighted view of what raising a child actually is.

@SouthLondonMum22 - I don't really care if it's biology or what it is. It's how I am.

The only way I can think to explain this to you is - if I told you I was heterosexual. And then you came back insisting that I'm only heterosexual because of socialisation, nothing more.

I would say to you, that yes, we are socialised in a hetero-normative world, but it's more than that - it's innate and instinctive.

Or - if (as often happens) a woman feels a strong instinct to have a child at a certain point in her life, but then other women who don't feel that are telling her in MN it's just 'socialisation' and biology has nothing to do with it. That's the only way I can describe it. It's very frustrating.

Get more help. Cleaner. Nanny/au-pair. Laundry service. Nutritious ready meals.

It's also frustrating to be told or it implied that you aren't raising your child, you're never there for them and clearly something must be wrong with you biologically because you don't want to be with your child 24/7.

Agreed, and it also assumes there is only one correct way of raising a child. Which is frankly bullshit.

See it as an investment in your career and firefight for now.

Does batch cooking save much time if you still have to cook vegetables? Our meals were simple at that age - pork chops, chicken thighs, veg into microwave stem bags, pasta cooked with frozen veg in same pot.

I have not said you are not raising your child or that there's something wrong with anyone?

I'm telling you that, as a SAHM, I 100% understood what I was doing and why I was doing it and for me, I couldn't have imagined doing anything else once kids came along. It's really irritating being told "oh it's just socialisation" - as if I need to wake-up and see the light or something. I'm fully aware of the impact of socialisation - it's unavoidable - but I KNOW in myself that it wasn't just that.

I feel like I’m failing at everything to be honest. House is a state, am not on top of my work, kids in nursery and after school club for long hours, and don’t even get me started on the amount of after school sporting activities DC1 does which don’t really fit with going to work.

This bit in your OP struck me @Itsmyshadow - does your DH have the same sense of failing out of curiosity, or is it just you that feels like that? If its just you, why do you feel the responsibility (and therefore the failure) rests on your shoulders alone?

You believe it is largely biological. If it is, what does that mean for the women who don't feel the same as you do? Surely it implies that something is wrong with them?

You also said wanting to be there for your child, like it means working parents aren't there for their child.

Several have commented about not raising the child. In fact, I've now lost count how many.

@SouthLondonMum22

It's also frustrating to be told or it implied that you aren't raising your child, you're never there for them and clearly something must be wrong with you biologically because you don't want to be with your child 24/7.

Quite. Frustrating, stupid and pretty offensive actually.

I’m a single parent who has almost no input (financial or otherwise) from my daughter’s biological parent so if I didn’t work my daughter would live a much diminished life with a fair amount of hardship. Should a “strong biological urge” to be with my child all the time have overridden the need to put a roof over her head and food in her stomach? No, didn’t think so.

Even if I didn’t have to work the measure of my being a good parent isn’t purely the amount of time in the day spent with your child. Earning money to support your family is a pretty fundamental part of being a parent.

Anyone telling me I’m not a proper parent or am biologically lacking because I work can jog on.

SouthLondonMum22 - Some women don't want children at all. There's not something wrong with them. But, others (most) do, and there is nothing wrong with them either is there? It's the same with wanting to be with your children. Just because some women don't feel like that so much, it has no bearing on those who do.

Of course he bloody doesn't! It's an interesting question isn't it.

“So those of you who work a lot of hours and have young kids. How are you managing?”

I’m not managing.

But I do want to be with my child, just not 24/7.

I want to be with my child
I want to be there for my child
I want to raise my child

I just don't want to be a SAHM.

Earning money to support your family is a pretty fundamental part of being a parent.

Exactly.

Maybe I need to tell nursery to buy him nappies, formula and clothes since they are the ones who raise him.

But women who work don’t “not want to be with their children”. That’s a huge and fairly insulting mischaracterisation.

Many of us have no choice and have to work. Plenty of women feel that the time they spend with their children is enhanced by the fact that have interests outside of family life and they aren’t exclusively focused on being a parent. A large number of us feel that we want to be economically productive, both for ourselves and our children. No woman‘a value as a mother is diminished by feeling any of these things.

And finally children go to school at four or five anyway. No mother could be with their children all the time beyond that point anyway. Why should it be normal for a child to be parted from its mother at six but damaging at three and a half? It doesn’t really stand up does it?

3 kids is a lot, especially with the large age gap between your eldest and youngest. - they're all at different stages now, it's bound to be difficult.

We only have 1 DC, reception age, so it's a lot easier than your set-up, but I've found that tidying as you go is much easier than letting it get really messy and then trying to clean and tidy - it's soul-sapping and difficult to muster the energy to sort it out once it gets into a state. Also, limit the after-school activities. DS does 2 - climbing and swimming (which is obviously essential). Any more would be tricky (although he might start Cubs next year, as long as I can catch up on work whilst he's there).

Re: exercise/downtime for me/DH, whilst DS is at climbing, I go for a run, and whilst he's in his swimming lesson I also swim, or go to the gym. Then we do Park Run together at the weekend, and I run at lunchtimes. DH does the same. That leaves other evenings free for cooking, games, family stuff, and a bit of tidying. Then DH and I have time together once DS is asleep. Sometimes we'll cook together (or DH will cook and I'll sit at the table and chop/peel and chat to him), which gets another chore out of the way and helps us relax together at the same time.

I am very organised with stuff like meal planning, shopping, exercise time, life admin - otherwise things end up taking twice as long. It takes some spontaneity out, but makes up for it with time saved and stress avoided.

I finished my FT job, it paid well and we have REALLY had to adjust to a much lower wage, I don’t mind saying goodbye to my career for now as my kids are WAY more important - and my sanity also!
have a look at casual zero hours jobs so you pick and choose as much as they do, not work at all if an option or local school jobs so you finish earlier and get the holidays off.

good luck.

@SouthLondonMum22 and @Thepeopleversuswork - when I say, 'be with your children,' of course women and men who work are with their children, just to a lesser degree. It depends how much they work and where! Aside from that, it came down to one question for me - "Who is the best person to be around for my kids the majority of their (awake) day?" The answer is "me" - because I am their mum, I know them best and I love them ." So that's the end of it. There are many things I will compromise on in life. That was not one of them. I did not want to have to pay someone else to be with my kids. Zero interest and totally unnecessary in my case. It's also about headspace. 4 kids take up a lot of headspace. My DH is fantastic with the kids and has done loads over the years, including many things I have not, but he gets it. He is not me and not dies he need to be - he is a man and he is proud to provide for his family so his children can have their mum around and all the opportunities they have had as a result of him providing and me having the time, headspace and enjoyment of actually doing it with them. And there is nothing wrong with that. I respect him the more for this privilege because it really has been a privilege.

They are only little a short time. As they grow up, life changes. They need their dads in ways they do not need mums and vice versa. Kids are all different - you grow and adapt with them. Actually, looking back, the early years are the easy phase. It's gets far more complex when you have multiple children with multiple issues at multiple schools - the emotional dramas, friends, education, hobbies - the whole thing. I can look back now over 20 years of 4 kids and we did it our way. That's all you can do really.

he is a man and he is proud to provide for his family so his children can have their mum around and all the opportunities they have had as a result of him providing and me having the time, headspace and enjoyment of actually doing it with them. And there is nothing wrong with that. I respect him the more for this privilege because it really has been a privilege.

I’m a mum and I’m proud to provide for my family too. And I manage to find time, headspace and enjoyment for my DD too. Which is just as well really because there’s no-one else who can do it.

I know my child well too and I love her as do most other women who choose to work.

I find your perspective narrow minded and judgmental. You can choose to organise your family as you see fit with no judgment from me but you have no right to say you are a better parent because you don’t work.

Doing it your own way is something we can agree on.

I'm incredibly proud to have a successful career and to be able to provide for my child. I had a SAHM growing up and I knew that if I ever had a child, I'd do things differently.

3-4+ children can definitely make things more complex/complicated, especially when both parents working are involved which is why I wouldn't have more than 2 children.

Lucky your second wasn’t twins then! Some of us didn’t have a choice!!

In your position @Thepeopleversuswork I sound feel the same as you. But I'm not in your position. I am parenting my way in my circumstances. That's it.