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?

Absolutely a miserable sahm would be worse! An nct friend cut her mat leave short to return to her big job - fair enough. That’s why value judgements are so unhelpful this is a very personal decision. Op has said she’s miserable not a judgement on others who love working with 3 young kids.

Again you love to twist comments and rant before reading properly. I didn’t say a sahm was selfish, I said a sahm at the expense of the other parent seeing their children for the vast majority of the week is selfish.

Rant all you want but I think it is. I’ve no idea why some people place a the set up of one SAHP and one absent parent on a pedestal. I think it is much more beneficial to have to active parents.

I read the OP as being miserable because she wants to work and is finding that hard not because she actively wants to give up work.

@Grumpyfroghats Sadly I can’t ask my mum but I know she was home some of the time as unemployed after a house move for my dad’s job, and she studied for an MA when we were quite small so put us in nursery for that; but really I have no solid day to day memories before school, does anyone? The memories are for parents but my dad says, “We had three under five, I wasn’t forming memories, it’s a blur”. I mostly remember nursery and home, all mixed up together, always home for tea after nursery, both parents always seemed around though I know they weren’t! Our neglected latchkey years came later

My old Mum (RIP), used to say that women got totally fucked over by women's lib. All of a sudden, women were expected to bring in a wage and look after the family, whereas before, it was fine and acceptable for women to look after the children and the home, and the men provided the money. Not a popular opinion these days, but I can totally see where she was coming from.

Women were told ....."You can have it all".... whereas, the reality is women feeling less than if they don't juggle a high flying career and the home and the children. Women everywhere are fucking burnt out, because it's not realistic to keep a thousand plates spinning 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Where is the joy? When are you meant to relax?

On a practical note, I would suggest cutting your hours at work. Buy in help, if you can (gardener, cleaner etc). Reduce the after school activities. Buy large shelves, with baskets for categories of toys. I got 2 units from Ikea that were lovely, with 10 huge baskets. Each basket had a category, such as, barbie dolls, cars, board games etc. Now my children are grown we still use them for hats and scarves and books - they look lovely.

Sissynova - why would having a SAHP necessarily mean the other parent is not 'an active parent' though? There are different ways to be 'an active parent'.

I think there are a lot of mums here with just one child, or possibly two children (but neither them or the DH have massively high-impact jobs) and they just don't get it.

Try having 3 or 4 kids, Try having one doing 11 plus, one doing GCSEs, one doing A-levels amid all the other teen dramas and god knows what else. It only gets more complicated as they get older! And that's without health issues, MH issues, SEN, disabilities, social media, exams, bullying, identity issues - life is hard for teens today, it really is. It's one thing when you have one child and a job. Doable for sure. But when you have to split yourself between several or more kids and a job, it's exhausting. Exhausting for mums and for dads, but usually more for mums because, like it or not, women tend to be more attuned and to 'carry' it all and they feel the guilt more. Guilt in itself is exhausting. Just give these mums a break. Come back when you've had three kids and they're all adults and and you've gone through it all and then proclaim how easy it all was.

@BeachBlondey My old Mum (RIP), used to say that women got totally fucked over by women's lib. All of a sudden, women were expected to bring in a wage and look after the family, whereas before, it was fine and acceptable for women to look after the children and the home, and the men provided the money. Not a popular opinion these days, but I can totally see where she was coming from.

They really really aren’t though. No one else has anything to do with the dynamic inside your home. If your husband expects you to bring in a wage and look after the family on your own that’s because he’s a lazy, sexist and let’s face it, asshole.

You are literally inserting yourself into posts to a woman who’s husband literally isn’t an active parent, largely because he doesn’t have to be because she is a sahm. Stop butting in and then being like ‘wahhhhh why would that be the case’. 🙄

We get it, you chose to have 4 kids and you don’t seem to be happy about it so you’ve got a massive chip on your shoulder about how no one understands and no one could possibly comment. Cool. Enjoy that.

No - you are making sweeping statements that when there is a SAHM, it's an unfair imbalance in a relationship. I'm telling you this is bollocks.

Where did I say I'm not happy about my 4 kids? They're the best thing in my life.

Im just saying, life is more complex than ever for teens these days. It really is a minefield. And if a parent feels they need to SAH to avoid a family reaching breaking point, or to feel like you are thriving rather than just surviving, so be it.

Outsource and lower expectations.

You 3 are very young. These years will pass.

Could you get an au pair?

When we went 2-3 we conceded that we would t be able to do as much for dc 1&2 eg swimming lessons. 4yo & 1yo do not need lessons!

1 activity pwk per child.

We eat out more with 3dcs. It's so much easier than the chaos of home meals!

No ironing. Everyone with different coloured socks.

A 5 person house is always going to be messy/cluttered.

@Citrines you can't generalise like that. I had 3 teens (I chose to foster one) and no husband. Always one of them on an exam year at least. Dramas, relationships, the whole bag, not to mention the fostering situation with a hostile dysfunctional bio parent. And it was fine. We had a calm, happy, functional household. And I was bloody great at my job too. Some people can do it and do it every day. One way isn't better than another, it's about what works in each individual situation.

@Citrines And if a parent feels they need to SAH to avoid a family reaching breaking point, or to feel like you are thriving rather than just surviving, so be it.

Sure but not working because it’s the only way you can function isn’t really the same as what you and other posters are trying to ram down people’s throats, which is that it is the best way and the only way.

Many many families do not find working with children or teens an impossible task.

You did and that’s fine for you, but that’s not the same as you banging on about how awful it is for kids when parents work (“what kind of life is that?”) when what it really comes down to is you personally couldn’t work and manage your children at the same time.

pointythings - when I look at the class my 15 year-old is in (a class of about 22) there are children with -

eating disorders, body
dysmorphia, ADHD, anxiety, self-harming, depression, OCD, perfectionism, identity issues (gay / bi / non-binary / trans), changing names / pronouns..,, it goes on.

This is an independent school with (mainly) high-powered, very wealthy parents living in Kensington, Chelsea, Notting Hill etc. Nobody is immune to these kind of teen issues and it can be very hard to navigate. I'm not saying every family needs a SAHP, but let's not pretend it's easy. Even when you can throw money at the best nannies, tutors, chauffeurs, schools, therapists, healthcare, opportunities, it can be very hard to navigate when your teen is struggling, let alone multiple teens.

Well it wasn’t fine because you had all the dramas, you manage you coped you got through it. Different from fine.

Having a SAHP doesn’t necessarily make it drama free. I had a SAHM growing up, still had some teen dramas and difficulties.

But it would not have been any different if I had been a SAHM....

A close relative of ours sailed through the first 12 or so years with her DD and DS. She had a job (probably on about 40k) and the DH WFH earning maybe £300k, do a lot more and that pays the mortgage. Out of the blue, the DD became seriously anorexic. Within about 2 weeks of it being noticed, she was on a drip in hospital being force fed. It was life-threatening. SIL has had to give up work to support her DD's rehabilitation which has been a long road. She didn't go to school hardly for a year. She needed close observation, medical appts, and I can only imagine what they've gone through. These things can take us unexpectedly. You never know. Now the DS is playing up because he's obviously been exposed to a lot and is craving attention. It's very hard and there's no way she could hardly go out to work every day with her daughter at home for months when she's that ill.

I don’t really understand your posts, are you suggesting occurred because the mother worked?
Are you saying working mothers don’t take time out because their children are ill?
If their child was in hospital I’m sure pretty much all parents would do whatever they could to be with their child through their recovery, working or not working.

I personally took 2 months off work last year when my DD was hospitalised as a young child.

I don’t get the point. We shouldn’t work on the off chance that a child might become sick in the future?

@Citrines any family can be hit by adversity and need a parent at home as a result. That's just life. But unless you can prove a causal link between both parents working and an eating disorder striking a family, your anecdote is meaningless. Not every family has such devastating life events and that is irrespective of whether they have a parent at home or not.

That’s what I’m struggling to understand too.

Of course something out of the ordinary may happen such as illness, mental health issues etc which would mean one of us wouldn’t be able to work.

It wouldn’t necessarily automatically be me though simply because I’m a woman and it also doesn’t mean someone should be a SAHP from the beginning ‘just in case’.

Fgs, of course I'm not saying she became ill because her mum worked. I'm saying all this ranting about "oooh why didn't the father give up work then eh eh - why did the father not do it - and why can't the mother work full-time in 2023 because I do, look at me with my 1 child and DH - we are so very eeeequal you see because there only one way to be equal and that's to BOTH WORK, come what may, and make sure you are exactly 50/5O with housework and also be such very active parents between the hours of 5 and 8 and, did I mention, make sure you are very equal in every aspect at all times because that's all that matters and is such a great model for all." This kind of nonsense. Because obviously life doesn't fit to a pattern and all families have different struggles, different incomes and different options.

Why does it make you so angry that some people parent equally?

Of course life doesn't always go to plan but that's true of any plan. You can plan to be a SAHM and then find your DH is made redundant and you have to go back to work. So what? Doesn't make your plan a terrible one. I plan to continue to work, something may happen to change that but that doesn't make it a terrible plan either

Some families only have 1-2 children precisely because they know it can become more difficult with 3, 4 or more children and both parents working full time. Equality is important to them and if it means stopping at 1-2 children then that’s what they do.

Life doesn’t fit to a pattern. Yet several SAHM’s seem to think it does and that women belong at home once they have children.

I'm just saying there are many ways to equal and personally, I couldn't be doing with petty drama about who does what in a marriage. It would if my head in. You are a team. Equality is a state of mind, not a list of housework tasks or a salary competition. You are who you are and couples will naturally gravitate to certain roles anyway.