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?

Drop one activity.

Tell DH he needs to do his fair share of the work including mental load.

Blimey. I couldn't have coped.

In the short term, could you and DH take two days annual leave on days when all three are elsewhere and spend day one having a major clear out and then use day two to tidy through, catch up on laundry etc.

Going forward, you might need to either pay for more help or reduce your days. And definitely rethink all the extra activities. It's good the kids do things, but if it's too much then reduce them down for the younger two.

I love stackable storage boxes. Three next to my desk at home are labeled "Crap to sort", "shredding" "keep for a while". So I have plenty of stuff that needs sorting, but it's contained and tidy and less stressy.

My youngest did no activities for years, although we have deliberately increased the number after lockdown since he missed out so much for 2 years but by that point the elder two were at secondary and do a lot of activities at school that required no input from me. Our youngest (11) now does two after school clubs at school and two activities that are less than 5mins away from the house. But when the DDs were at primary it was 2 activities only and preferable ones your sister did at the same time.

We both worked full time when ours were little - approximately 9-5 but I had a long commute.

We dropped housecleaning standards and didn't iron anything. I didn't compromise on cooking from scratch, that was important. Any activites/sports were on a weekend, as were swimming lessons. Every few months we'd block out a weekedn for a cull/tidy of accumulated crap.

It worked.

I have 3 kids aged 7, 5 and 1. DH is head of something fancy in finance and can't drop an hour, never mind a day. I am a solicitor and work 3 days in a job share in the public sector. Ok maybe not quite as fancy and high powered as some but a decent and well paid career I think.

We manage by:

• having pretty low standards for housekeeping (we have a cleaner every week and do our best to be tidying once a week for her coming)

• carefully managing clubs - most are at the weekend when we can both be on hand. Evening clubs are carefully managed and not overwhelming. One year doesn't do any clubs! Her life at home is fun enough

• embracing really, really easy meals, the kids eat loads of pasta, toasties, fish fingers etc. Some cut up cucumber on the side and grapes and yoghurt for dessert and they're sorted. Batch cooking has never featured

• mother's help once a week. Not strictly necessary as I've jiggled my hours around but she's an extra pair of hands that means I get some time to myself each week while she's there

• WFH has changed our lives significantly. We both work a few days in the office per week but having those days without commutes is life changing

Honestly I absolutely love my life and don't find it that hard. Fewer working hours for me and low standards for everything else 😂

We only have 2; I absolutely could not cope with 3. We rarely get to bed before midnight any night. We work weekends and hardly ever take annual leave, or when we do we are still working bits anyway or we get too far behind. Also DC do one extracurricular activity a week, that’s it (and they didn’t start that until they were 5). We then make swimming a family activity every other week but we’re only out of the house for about 2 hours.

I don’t spend hours batch cooking, it just doesn’t work for me. Instead we just have a bank of meals that take under 30 mins that are low effort so one of us can cook that and just check on it occasionally while we do all the other chores in the kitchen.

We also have enough clothes and especially uniform that we can easily last 2 weeks without doing any washing so when we are really busy I just don’t bother.

But maybe most importantly for us, DH carries 50%ish of the mental load and does at least 50% of stuff around the house.

Thank you everyone for the support and advice. To answer a few questions.

I can’t drop the swimming for DC4. She is a very timid child and despite doing swimming classes since she was 6 months old has only got comfortable in the water in the last 9 months or so. I don’t think this has been helped by the on / off swimming during Covid where she was back at square one again. Once she is at school the lesson will move to a Saturday and I absolutely won’t be doing lessons for DC1 - I’ll take him occasionally myself. My plan was to use my day off to take DC1 on day trips etc instead of swimming, but perhaps I should spend at least half of it on sorting the house.

DC8’s thing is sport. She is a very talented footballer and one of the afterschool things is with a premier league academy (starts at 5pm an hour away 🤦‍♀️). We both have to be home for that as it finishes too late for the younger two, then she plays football for another club (training mid week and weekend) and from next year hockey moves to mid week as well as weekend too 😩. Have already told DH she might not be able to do that midweek as well. I feel guilty about that as she’ll want to and DH thinks she’ll fall off the pace if she doesn’t. But it’s just not doable is it?

I don’t think 4 days per week working is the solution. It’s a great deal for work. Work pays you 4 days and you have to try to fit your previously 5 day per week job (which doesn’t change) into those 4 days. It’s for this reason that I’m not dropping down to 3 days as work would be even harder. But I don’t want DC1 in nursery 5 long days so will carry on with my 4 days for now.

Yes we should’ve realised it would be harder with 3 kids. I think Covid made things much easier for people who could WFH. No commute makes such a difference, plus there just weren’t the demands with after school stuff that there are now as clubs weren’t running, plus I didn’t realise that after a certain age the expectation from sports clubs was that kids would train midweek as well as on the weekend 🤦‍♀️.

DC4 and DC1 are at nursery. I earn a good wage but a nanny would take a lot of my take home pay. Nursery for 2 is still much cheaper than a nanny and when it’s nursery for 1 the business case for a nanny doesn’t stack up at all. Plus DC4 has really loved nursery and it’s has been so good for her socially and developmentally. I’d like DC1 to benefit from the same.

Ha ha, standards are fairly low. Our kitchen bin is minging for example and didn’t get cleaned this weekend because the fridge was more disgusting. I have never cleaned the front door!

Are you sure that nursery for 2 is cheaper than a nanny and are you also factoring whatever breakfast club or after school care you have for your eldest into the equation?

Where we live in London a nanny costs the same as 2 x 4 day nursery places. You wouldn’t have to stop sending your kids to nursery as you could still send them but only for the free hours. The free hours kick in at the point where they start to benefit most socially and developmentally; before that they aren’t missing out provided the nanny is good and can take them to groups etc.

A nanny could also help with the club commutes for your other child. If you didn’t want to get a nanny full time you could get someone to do eg half days 2-3 days a week just to help out with the after school window either by looking after the younger 2 to enable you to facilitate the clubs for your eldest, or to take the eldest to the clubs. It sounds like you just need an extra pair of hands in limited time windows. Yes it is expensive but you’ve said uothread that you’re not struggling for money - it’s a short term thing so that you can keep all the balls in the air.

would take a lot of my take home pay

Why "my" ie only yours?
It comes from family income
From both incomes

Total income after tax
= xxx
Nanyny or nursery childcare = x

Xxx-x = family income net of childcare

What about your pension contribs your paid leaVe your future?

Are you saying you are doing five dsys compresssed into 4 on 100% salary
Or 80% days and 80% salary ?

I do hope you’re also keeping yourself trim, well groomed, in shape and ready for sex 2-3 times a week? It’s not all about you and the kids you know, DH has needs too…

Agreed no frazzled mother ever.

Totally agree about dropping days but still having to do the same amount of work - I work in a job share and it is absolutely blissful. Works so much better for us and for our clients, and our workplace.

Our mother's help is a local student we got through word of mouth. She mostly stays in with them or walks to the park but she has taken them to swimming lessons. She tidies round the playroom, feeds them, plays with them, picks up extra babysitting hours if we're both going out etc. Is there any prospect of someone like that being in your area? Maybe that could relieve some of the logistics involved with ferrying the eldest around to her sports.

I think realistically eldest will have to choose one sport at high level - hockey and football multiple nights isn’t realistic. Worth looking at sports scholarship to a private school where they would do sports as part of school day?
Look for help with after school. DD’s friend had a nanny who took her to activities.
eg paying a student/retired person to take eldest to football academy could be money well spent and free up 4 hours for you.

And yes. A nanny or au pair takes dc to activities so you do not have to
If dc us top foitballer you may need tgat extra pair hands
Maybe someone paid to take her specifically ?

The keys for us are 1) we both work from home which gives so much more time due to no commute and the ability to get house bits done during the day, 2) I only work three days and 3) both of us have flexibility and aren't micromanaged.

Oh and we only have two kids, 4yo and 1yo, and will stop there. An extra kid and spread of ages like that is tricky for sure because you are kind of dealing with three distinct child phases at once.

I think the issue is mainly your DH but also 3 children and multiple after school activities.

It can absolutely work with a DH who does his fair share, potentially 1 or 2 less children and less after school activities.

I don't find it particularly difficult but I only have a 7 month old. It's a reason why I wouldn't have more than 2 children though.

I did 80% time and salary fior a While to do after school club pick time
But soon realised i was still working 100% so went back to 100 % 5 days and 100 % pay

Yep me and my partner work opposite shifts. As in complete opposite shifts. We have had one day off together this year and have three children. It doesn’t work but there’s not much else we can do. We need both incomes. I enjoy my job and wouldn’t want to give it up and he enjoys his job and earns more than me! It does mean that we don’t rely on childcare though because one of us off whilst the other works. Not much time for a relationship though! We will re-evaluate when the youngest is of school age !
house work is the bane of my existence it’s never ending!

Drop some of the eldest’s activities. Save the swimming lessons as they’re important. Dedicate a day for laundry. Don’t bother with ironing unless it’s a shirt and do it as you get dc ready. Only do yours and dc. Dh does his. If dh needs a packed lunch he does his own. If your eldest needs a packed lunch at school teach them to make a sandwich so that they can make their own the night before. Dh needs to cook too. He can take dc to a club or there’s no club for them. It’s too much.

Your kids do too much outside of school and nursery. Dial that right down. Swimming do at the weekend and take 4yo for half an hour alone. That's not a full day out then. Plus it's not many weeks til September.

Do you have the funds for a cleaner? We have one every couple of weeks and it really helps.

Do less at weekends, schedule weekends with NO PLANS.

I actually don't find us both working to be particularly stressful but..

DH really pulls his weight, including mental load - e.g. he does the dentist completely

We have two children not three

We limit extracurriculars to what we can manage - e.g. DS1 would love to do a martial art but we just can't swing it do he isn't for the mo.

In your situation, I think your DH needs to do more mental load, you might consider a jobshare (3 days), and I would just tell your DD she can't do both football and hockey

DC8’s thing is sport. She is a very talented footballer and one of the afterschool things is with a premier league academy (starts at 5pm an hour away 🤦‍♀️).

FUCKING HELL

Is she supposed to sell one or 2 of her kids? 🤣

Op mine are older now but we both work ft (3 kids) and it's hard, the laundry basket is constantly overflowing, there's always mess (house is clean, but messy) and they're old enough to tidy their own rooms etc.

It will get easier but honestly I just had to let go a bit of standards and expectation of how tidy the house is, acknowledge that there is always going to be a pile of clean laundry that needs putting away that never really is and that sometimes (often) they will have pizza or hot dogs for tea.

It will get easier, but in the meantime accept your house will be mildly chaotic.

Was coming on to say the same thing. I find it much easier and less stressful to just rely on myself for everything than to feel like I need to nag someone else to do stuff. I'm busy but it all works out.

Put that third kid up for adoption OP