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?

I’m not sure what world YOU are living in?
In my world, many of the people I know who work don’t come home at 5 or 6pm. They wish! Their job finishes at 6 and then they commute and then sometimes are back on the laptop later in the evening. Many of them are working professionals - are you saying that a woman can only work a basic 9-5 job as they must be home to put the kids to bed? Are you saying that a man must only work 9-5 to be home also? What about their careers? 9-5 doesn’t get you very far in most professional fields I’m afraid!
You think that parents should both be home by 5/6 and I’M the one who is bizzare - ok then 🤣
You are completely deluded.
Back in the real world for many jobs you won’t be getting home until late- after kids bed time. So yes it makes sense for one parent to be at home. Sense for the child that is anyway.
And no, you can’t be a hands on mum to young pre school kids if you have a career full time. Because you are not there!! Someone else is! I’m sorry if that touches a nerve or offends but it’s the plain truth.
Of course there are many parents who want to stay with their kids and can’t and single parents who are struggling.
But Anyone who thinks a mum, looking after her babies (not getting someone else to for half their waking life) is ‘out of touch’ or ‘back to 1954’ needs to take a long hard look at themselves. It’s Quite honestly a sad state of affairs that anyone would even think that.

Why would there be any petty drama? We both share responsibility for everything and no, we don’t have certain roles at all.

If you are referring to me my DH is an active parent?
Would you call a working woman who gets home at 7pm - 8pm 5 days a week not at ‘active’ parent? Whatever that even means?
No he was not there during the days and when they were little they were asleep some nights be the time he was at home but he was always there for weekends.
The kids had their mother full time, all the time. Primary carer. Not me and DH at 6pm for 1 hour before bed and nursery / childminder staff during the day.
If that’s how you run your lives then that’s up to you but I don’t have to agree it’s best for the child and that’s my right.

@Citrines there are indeed many ways to equal. Thank you for acknowledging that at last. Can we now stop slating working women as worse mothers and worse employees? I am aware that was OP, not you, but it was offensive and unhelpful.

Could you drop the swimming lessons for a few months? Your days off would be less busy.

Could your DH drop to a 4 day week?

I was never happier than the day I quit my career and looked forward to taking care of my husband and child. Life is bliss. No lingering doubts here. But you do you ;-)

SouthLondonMum22 - I think it's very sad on here when women come in and are at such great pains to equate "having a job" with "being equal to my husband." All this, 'why can't he do it...' does my head in. Fair enough if you want to work - absolutely - but if you have a husband who would make you feel 'lesser' for not working, then good luck and that's not the type of man I'd be interested in.

He believes that both parents should work and I agree with him. I would’ve never married a man who believe women shouldn’t work after children.

It's very hard when they are small. I don't know anyone with both parents working full time after having three children and most were able to have one SAHP until the kids were all in school then the SAHP went to work part time.

I worked part time (though sometimes in pretty full on professional roles nonetheless) three or four days a week after having two DDs and always thought if I had three it would mean my giving up work for a while - so we didn't have a third child as we couldn't afford it. Also we had both parents living with us at one point and my dad became quite ill so I'm glad I was only working three days a week as I could help them out quite a lot.

I went full time only in 2019 when DDs were 14 and 10, and also only on the proviso that I did a maximum of three days in the office as commuting every day would make it unworkable.

@SouthLondonMum22 So what if you had a baby and realised, despite your plan to return to work at 6 months or a year or whenever it was, you couldn't bear to be separated and decided to be a SAHM until school age. What would he have done about that?

He wouldn’t have agreed and it never would’ve happened anyway because I earn more than him.

But then I also wouldn’t have agreed if he wanted to be a SAHP either.

@Citrines - what would have happened if you had changed your mind and wanted to go back to work? Would your DH have made any compromises to help support you?

How does anyone in a marriage “just decide” not to be employed? It’s a partnership, very few people I know would make such a unilateral decision about their employment and parenting and present it as a “just decide”. And how does this imaginary fait accompli help the OP determine whether she should quit work or curtail swimming for a bit or if a big declutter would help?

What does that have to do with parents working? Why would there be petty dramas over who does what? Why would equality be a list of housework tasks?

Do you think all couples argue about housework just because they work? Do you think couples when one stays at home never have issues with who does what?

If couples don’t have respect for each-other and argue because one doesn’t do enough or one feels taken advantage of that only gives an insight into their relationship, it has nothing to do with working or not working.

I don’t know what field you or your friends work in where everyone is working till 6pm+ then logging back on in the evenings, but me and my husband earn 100k between us and work 9-5 only. My manager (next band of seniority) clocks off at 4:50pm most days and doesn’t log in outside of that. I work 35h a week and husband works 36.5. Sometimes one of us will work “late” until 6 but that is a choice/exception. Maybe your husband needs to change fields into one with better work life balance…..

The common story with SAHPs is that the working parent usually has to work stupid hours in a high-stress job to make up the cash shortfall. Why are people sneering that some of us value equality? I think it is much fairer that both partners work in normal jobs with normal work-life balance, rather than one stay at home and one work themselves into a heart attack.

I mean arguing on here Sissynova. Why can't your DH do pick ups? Why can't he clean the loo on Wednesdays? Why can't he batch cook? What is the point of those questions?

"The common story with SAHPs is that the working parent usually has to work stupid hours in a high-stress job to make up the cash shortfall. Why are people sneering that some of us value equality? I think it is much fairer that both partners work in normal jobs with normal work-life balance, rather than one stay at home and one work themselves into a heart attack."

So if someone makes millions they should just jack it in and get a £50K job in the name of equality because SAHPs are not allowed? Yes that would encourage business and enterprise and really propel the U.K. economy.

When my husband was alive we both had standard 9 - 5 jobs. I had the longer commute. We earned enough for us to be comfortable but not extravagant. A lot of it is about the choices you make. @PurpleWisteria1 clearly lives in an environment with lots of very wealthy people working in high pressure jobs. That is a choice, it has consequences. We chose not to live like that.

And no, we didn't argue over housework. We were equals. It didn't go wrong until depression and alcohol use got to my husband and that was nothing to do with both of us working.

@Citrines is anyone saying SAHMs shouldn't be allowed?

Those of us who work are not saying that; we are saying there are other models and the SAHM model is not innately superior or inferior. We're tired of being called bad mums and bad employees. We point out that not all households have or need a financial high flyer to work. Not rocket science, surely?

Omg, this view is so outdated and wrong is even hard to even start.
women were in the house completely dependent from their father first and husband later. They could not express an opinion, travel or have any choice even on their own kids as they had no financial power. If they had no husband they had no voice and if they were poor they had to prostitute or beg. They were abused and completely unheard. Do we really want to go back there and think they had it better??! Do you want to go to countries where women even fight to go to school and see how it is like? How great life is without personal freedom and independence? Maybe you work less or you do nothing at all, but is this life? Poor women had it especially hard as they had to work and they were practically slaves.
Thanks to the women lib movement, women can study travel decide vote and be part of the social scene as majors, ministers. Have a say in laws and their own rights. And they can choose to work and strive for all the professions they want to do. They don’t have to stay at home and do kids if they do not want. Of course doing it all is hard and some women have it easier than others as they can afford to pay for help or to choose to stay at home. Others have less choice , they either have to stay at home (lack of work, health etc) or they have to work as they can’t afford otherwise. Luckily we have a society that even not perfectly allows to do it, although without a choice is way harder and many women are exhausted. This does not mean we need to take the rights of the women away, and write the women lib movement has made it worst, it means things can be improved and of course they can, from ensuring a better load share with partners, more PT opportunities or even make it easier for workers to take time off when they need it (ie the 5/8 years kids are small) and then go back to the workforce.
but please be careful when we write things that can become really dangerous. I do not wish the taliban regime to any woman.

People are trying to help the OP unpick changes that could be made that would allow her to keep her career without feeling like she’s juggling plates. She hasn’t expressed a desire to quit, and her OP suggests her DH doesn’t quite take on a full fair share: he has to be pressed to do housework (adding to her mental load), and doesn’t do the mental load. The mental load is by far the biggest part of it all, imo. If half the planning and thinking and systems and lists are taken over by her DH, she might find it easier to breathe and work and ferry the kids to activities, or she might have time for her brain to actually slow down and think about the swimming and whether it’s worth it, or even for her brain to slow down and concentrate on a book or hobby or life passion instead of “have I got £1 for ice cream day tomorrow and sun cream for the nursery bag and the new password for the parent portal”.

pointythings - loads of people in MN stste it strongly imply SAHMs shouldn't be allowed. They are apparently pointless, but also simultaneously facilitate unfair advantage. Not in those words, but that is the very thinly disguised subtext.

So funny that a poster above is talking about her old mum and toy baskets from IKEA and the response to it is a warning about the Taliban! Brilliant

Well, those people are wrong.

However, they are not more wrong or less wrong than the many posters implying that working mothers are bad mothers whose kids are raised by others and who are still bad at their job.

It's about making a choice and living with the consequences. We all do it.

Was the poster not also commenting that her mother thought women’s liberation was a bad thing for women?
It’s very telling that all you got from that post then was ikea and kids toys…
Says a lot.