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?

That's interesting. I've always looked to N America as somewhere where it seems that parents are encouraged back to work far too early, while babies are very very young and developmentally still needing their mothers. If you can afford a "mother figure stand-in" type of childcare ie. nanny in the home, or even a grandparent, then great. Or part-time working hours. But how many very very young babies are being taken for 90% of their waking hours to what is basically institutional-style childcare, with baby rooms and multiple different care-givers who only form a basic professional "surface-level" bond, just to earn an average wage to cover basic bills? I don't agree with the "work is everything" mantra that many developed countries push. I think we've got it wrong. I think it's a government-pushed agenda to rake in the taxes, personally. Why reduce women to uteruses, only serving to produce the next generation of worker bees. What IS the point?

Many people talk on here about the Scandinavian style of child-rearing, where there is much more flexibility in the workplaces, for BOTH parents, and understanding is that sometimes family does come first. I don't know how this actually works out in real life, but if that does actually happen then surely that's what we should be aiming for? To acknowledge that work is actually NOT the be all and end all for most.

Many people talk on here about the Scandinavian style of child-rearing, where there is much more flexibility in the workplaces, for BOTH parents, and understanding is that sometimes family does come first. I don't know how this actually works out in real life

It works. And a father who works all hours and sees his kids only on occasional weekends would not be considered a great dad in Sweden, even if there was a SAHM at home.

Maternity leave of 12 months is a career killer. I think 6 months of leave is a good amount for the typical birth.
My career is just fine. It would be over if I’d returned at six months, when my daughter was waking 20 times a night and my brain was custard. A year was perfect because by the end I was desperate to get to work, and I fucking hate working.

You're living in cloud cuckoo-land if you think everyone can have both parents working "in normal jobs with normal work-life balance" for 100k between them. Seriously? 😂Do you WANT this country to be able to educate its children? To provide social workers for the vulnerable? Round the clock nursing care? Police? 24 ambulance staff?

24 hour

I agree that the balance is easier when one parent stays at home so that's what we chose to do.
DH has a great career and is a high earner whereas I've always worked in bars so it made sense for me to stay at home.
Youngest starts school in September so I'm starting to look at getting back into work. These past few years I don't think I personally would've coped with working and raising the kids/keeping the house.

Obviously not, but most of the high-earning DHs whose important long-hours job NEEDS a SAHP to “facilitate”, aren’t doing these kind of jobs. They’re doing finance-in-London kind of jobs. My point was more that 1 parent working 60-70 hours a week earning 200k while one stays at home isn’t a very fair division of labour - there are many professional jobs where both parents can work reasonable hours and where going 4 days a week doesn’t ruin your career. In my team someone senior works 4 days a week, just because she wants more time for travel and hobbies. In response to the “you can’t be taken seriously unless you work round the clock” statement. And I’m pretty sure that in healthcare/policing/ambulance, it is possible to work part-time, and standard work is around 37.5h a week but done in shifts.

kc431 - Surely you can imagine that some roles are largely international and unpredictable, requiring travel at short notice. Not everyone works fixed hours in a set place. Not everyone can say 'I work x hours' because it's not like that.

I honestly dont know how 2 parents working ft with young kids can cope, its just existing not living.

I can only surmise people working a lot of hours a week (55+) must desperately need the money, and must not be very high up in their workplace. The people in proper high end jobs on high salaries who I know, delegate a lot, spend half the week on the golf course or in the gym, or at their holiday villa, and have 2 hour long lunches. They are certainly not doing 55-60 hours a week work (or more!!!)

You are wrong on a lot of counts. Sounds you like you only know the type of people very high up in their field who expect their underlings to do all the hard work while they just crack the whip and make themselves sound important. Those people do exist. The people under them, if they've got anything about them KNOW they take the piss. But are they really going to criticise their boss? Granted, it's their boss's head on the block if the shit hits the fan, and many also do media appearances. Maybe those people are happy to take the risk of that responsibility in return for doing very few hours of real work each week?

I respect more the people I know whose head is on the block, who work 55+ hours a week who DON'T desperately need the money and who certainly don't take the piss with working few hours but who instead do it because they believe in what they're acutally doing (and have something actually tangible to offer) rather than aiming high because they can delegate and spend more time golfing.

I don't think you have much experience of real life.

All his claims that a few people on here have made, about people they know who do a hundred hours a week for their £200,000 a year salary because they're 'really committed to their career' and sooooo hard working la la la. 😆 PMSL!!

Even if that is half true I think I'd rather just work a few hours a week with a lot less money, and have a life where I have time with my friends, time with my family, time with my adult children, time with my husband, and time to myself.

Who the fuck wants to be a slave to work? Fuck that, That's no life at all! As has been said before - nobody says on their deathbed that they wish they'd worked a lot more hours. Nobody!

Me and DH work part time 22 hours and 28 hours a week, and we have loads of fun together, lots of spare time, lots of day trips, pub lunches, cinema and theatre trips, and days at the beach, and walks in the woodlands and by the river and canal... I also spend a day every fortnight with adult DC and go on trips/lunches out with them too. Also go out to meet friends a couple of times a month..... It's the best life. Like fuck would I ever trade this for more hours at work. LOL who DOES that? 😆As I said before, I have tried the work work work thing before. NO. My family comes first. Work is not important. The job I have now is really chill and I can work flexible hours. (Work from home...)

Vhildren need their parents at home more, (the mother morseo IMO,) They do NOT need to be farmed out to some faceless childminder or nanny 60-70 hours a week. WTF is the point of having children, if you're just going to palm them on on various 'caregivers?'

Yes, I can imagine. My post was to illustrate that that’s not the only option and there are much easier, nicer jobs out there.

So what have I been living for 30 years then, a simulation? Your experience isn’t the only experience. I know what high stress jobs are, I just don’t want one, and have to laugh when people make out like it’s the only option for them.

Haven’t RTFT and this is just my own, personal experience.

I think if you have kids, especially young ones, it’s virtually impossible to both work FT without feeling permanently stressed and exhausted, UNLESS you have vast amounts of money to throw at the situation, and even then it means you probably don’t see your kids much at all.

I think it’s become so normalised to feel dragged down by work pressure, home pressure, life admin, the mental load etc. We’ve forgotten what it’s like just to have a slower pace of life.

Definitely some of it IS just life with kids, and life is busy, but the pressure on the family, more often than not the mum in a M/F partnership when both work FT can be really, really hard.

Something does have to give, but often all the practical things that would help cost money, things are more expensive now and it’s just hard.

I have 3 and have stopped work for a while. The cost of childcare, the stress, the complete lack of work life balance, it was just too much. Appreciate not everyone can do this though!

I lived in denmark during covid. The Scandinavian countries have excellent marketing. It’s very important to them they are perceived a certain way globally and they will do what it takes to maintain that image. The reality is the childcare is substandard and women are doing the bulk of the work. We paid for 7Am-6pm and I was told off for not picking up before 4pm. The fact it was 10am EST and I was working didn’t matter to them.

They say there is childcare available 24/7 but that wasn’t true outside of Copenhagen. The quality of the childcare was also very substandard. The lovely Scottish lady who my child was looked after for one week was excellent but we weren’t allowed to switch to her class. Instead I would arrive to pick up my child at 5:30pm and they didn’t know where my child was. There were also times when the children jumped the fence and they would visit me because they knew I was home.

There are many many more women in senior roles in North America but the pipeline lost an awful lot of women during covid because childcare disappeared or became a lot more expensive. Childcare costs have more than doubled and it’s a major problem in terms of parents being able to afford to continue working. It’s about $60-70k for a nanny in Texas now and about $80-100k for a nanny in the nyc area. Previously it was half this amount and families paid cash. Now it’s all official.

I think it was 75% of women aged 35-50 left the workforce during covid. I know I was literally the last woman standing in that age group in multiple industry groups. It was also impossible to buy business suits last year. It’s just this year that I’m able to get proper wool suits again. The shoe situation has also improved.

Anyway, my point is that the best outcome for working parents is that they are able to use the childcare they are most comfortable with and work at their career if they so wish. For this reason I think being able to fully deduct childcare/elder care expenses from gross income, splitting income between a couple where one parent has stayed home and allowing a higher allowance for single parents should be part of the tax code. It would lift so many families out of poverty and make the system fairer.

Vhildren need their parents at home more, (the mother morseo IMO,) They do NOT need to be farmed out to some faceless childminder or nanny 60-70 hours a week. WTF is the point of having children, if you're just going to palm them on on various 'caregivers?'
Why the mother more so? My children have an equal bond with their dad, they’re delighted by him. In any case, ONS says the UK average working hours are around 37 per week – I don’t know anyone who works 60-70 except writers and we all put those hours in round the clock, at home, in the middle of the night when kids are oblivious.

Please stop saying using childcare is “farming out” or “palming off”. Most people don’t have the option to work as few hours as you and your husband – you have adult children, I’m going to assume you bought your home prior to the current house price shitshow and you’re clearly less affected by the cost of living crisis. Most people need to work full time or close to it, and our childcare isn’t faceless. Most caregivers form a bond with the children they look after: at our last nursery the workers would come out at pick-up time to chat to and play with the older siblings who’d arrived with their parents, who’d been at the nursery years before. Workers would wave and say hi in the street on the way in/going home. Our daughter’s key worker invited the whole preschool class to her wedding! I can’t use grandparents as childcare as my children don’t have any, I can’t not work because I have bills, I can’t not pursue my creative career and stay home instead because I’d go tonto. My children see me plenty, we have a lovely time together, and they have a lovely time at nursery and school, doing far more exciting and messier things than I could dream up at home.

The main reason why I don't want to be a SAHM is that kids are five times more difficult with their parents than they are with other people.

My DDs, in nursery, learned all sorts of skills prettily happily, they transitioned between a range of activities, they played in environments that are designed to be low-clutter and they helped to tidy up afterwards, they accepted the lack of screen time and junk food (my nursery banned both). My DDs even walked nicely along the street and learned pedestrian crossing rules (which they then lectured me about!)

At home (I had to become SAHM temporarily during COVID), they were in an environment full of child-unfriendly items and drawers and cupboards full of stuff that they were not supposed to touch (so I spent most of my time telling them not to touch things and clearing up piles of mess). They whined for screens and unhealthy food all the bloody time - they wouldn't have dreamed of doing that with the nursery staff.

I'd get them out of the house to try and get away from the endless mess-clearing insanity and demands for screens, and they'd be whinging for everything they saw - every ice cream, every rubbishly plastic toy, every balloon. I'd spend my days saying "No" 2,500 times and feel like a killjoy. Or I'd cave, and give in, and feel like a shitty parent and cringe about the amount of plastic crap coming into the house, adding to the clutter/mess issues in the house. They'd run off in the wrong direction, or flop down on the pavement and refuse to move. I'd be constantly on edge trying to stop them getting too near the traffic.

I'm exaggerating a bit, and I'm not saying there weren't wonderful golden moments as well, but my God it was hard work.

Kids are hard work with grandparents too, but of course GPs no longer have the energy or stamina to say "no" every time, so in a lot of cases, kids wind up doing a lot of screentime and food that is crap, and a nonstop dripfeed of shitty toys keeps making its way into the house. I've relied on GP daycare now and again as a filler, and I'm deeply appreciative and grateful, but in terms of quality of care, I'm baffled by the idea that GP care is always inherently better because it's provided by a GP. My MIL is lovely, but over 55s have lower energy levels and a child who demands and whines and misbehaves all day long (=the average toddler, when being cared for by a relative) is just so exhausting. I believe there is even evidence the child obesity rates rise when children are being given FT childcare by GPs.

Shift work is a completely separate issue. It can also be helpful in family life - nurses often work 3 12 hour shifts a week. This actually complements other jobs.

We also both have jobs which are manageable and only require normal hours for similar money.

Also you have to think of your future.
if you end up getting divorced in this world of 50:50 your not going to get any income support and you will be expected to work then and provide for yourself. Much easier if you already have an established career.

@PurpleButterflyWings assuming you have benefited from cheaper nursery costs and housing if your kids are now grown up. Your balance sounds lovely but you are at a different life stage. A simple 3 bedroom semi round here is £800-900k!

@PurpleButterflyWings

WTF is the point of having children, if you're just going to palm them on on various 'caregivers?'

Your post is breathtakingly ignorant.

You do realise a lot of people have absolutely no choice, right?

People said to me "Oh, you are going back to work," after I had DDs, as if it was some kind of silly whim.

"I think it's nice to be able to pay the mortgage and bills," was my reply.

Not even pointing out that I was the higher earner or that DH hadn't had a payrise in ten years as a civil servant.

Lol to all these humble braggers just seizing this as an opportunity to mention their household earns X. 😂😂😂