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 wonder what your child would think of that though? Most likely will just want their mum around when you scrape away the bull shit.
Nothing more valuable to society than raising a child in the right way- being a SAHM is also a valuable job -there is far more to being successful that what job you have!

Why SHOULDN'T it be the mum?

I earn 20k more than my husband. If that was the case my son would def not have the type of life he’s got now. Also many mums like me would hate to be sahm. My mental health would not put up with it

Why should it? I’d be pretty happy if Dh wanted to drop a day! He’s taking 2 months delayed parental leave end of the year and it will be great.

Both my parents worked when I was a child. I can only thank them for showing me that you always have to fight to achieve what you want in life and not to be told you can’t or shouldn’t do something. I never lack any love in my childhood. Also when I was in school my mum was working so I’d not have made any difference whether she was at home or at work.

if I was a sahm my mental health would be very poor. Doubt that would benefit my son. Just because something works for you doesn’t mean the rest should follow what you desire

I totally agree but this only ever goes one way when threads of this nature are on MN. Sad times.

I became self employed, no chance I could do what I do for the kids working for someone else . But I do what I’ve done for 20 years so I’m skilled

Because the dad might want to do it?
Because not all mums want to be a SAHM?
Because sometimes the mum is the higher earner?

Several reasons.

It’s got absolutely nothing to do with what I desire, except for the fact I desired to have children- as did you.
When I made that decision, I gave up what I desired, age my dc everything they needed - which really was only one thing, a parent to be with them during their waking / non school hours, day in day out, as main carer and someone who would love unconditionally, always.
What any child needs- not to be shown what jobs mum and dad can do or get / wealth / status that’s so way way down the line of what’s important

I hear you OP, and I don’t know what the answer is.

I consider myself very lucky in many ways: I’m currently a SAHM to DD5, and we’ve avoided most of the problems outlined by the working parents on this thread. But virtually all of my friends are frazzled, ridiculously overstretched working parents and I see these issues playing out around me on a daily basis.

My own professional background is in education, and my teacher friends and relatives have started discussing a recent phenomenon whereby they now have two distinct groups of ‘challenging’ children in their classes: the ‘traditional’ group comprising low income, often dysfunctional families, and a newer one made up of children from higher earning but overworked dual income households who have been in full-time nursery from an early age and are now in wraparound care. The latter group should, on paper, be achieving well - they are broadly middle class and from educationally high achieving households - but lots of emotional and behavioural issues are being identified and my teacher friends report that many children are acting out or seeking adult attention in other ways. Teachers at DD’s school, where I am a governor, have brought the issue up in various meetings in relation to pupils’ attainment and behaviour.

Once children enter the equation it is so incredibly difficult to find a sensible balance between domestic and work life. My own SAHM status is by accident rather than design, and while we are fortunate to be fairly comfortably off it has very much come at the cost of my own career, status and financial independence. I’ll be looking to retrain and refocus on my career in the not too distant future, but I’m under no illusions that it will be easy juggling a career with DD’s needs. I’m just glad that we only had the one, as that does make the whole calculation a little more straightforward.

It would be better if the government made more concessions for parents. If only one parent works full time, the stay at home parent could give their unused tax allowances to the working parent. More free childcare, more family friendly working, term time only, job share, compressed hours, flexible working. Bring back proper tax credits, get rid of the two child allowance, increase Child Benefit & remove the earnings cap.

STTE I work fully remote, very flexibly. I have 2 DC, both in nursery, both under 3, so I can't empathise with school stuff at the moment. I start at 8, take a 20min break to walk them to nursery and back. Use 50:10 split when working, which works well for me and gives me little gaps to get house admin done (I do a lot more focused work this way than I ever did in an office). DH also works from home too so we both do 10min house admin throughout the day here and there. I stop work between 5 - 7:30 and then work for an hour or 2 after that and have Fridays off with the kids. I rotate my working location so I don't feel completely overwhelmed by the house (gym, coffee shops etc) and ask our cleaner to zero in on things that have been bothering me when she's here.
I don't think YABU to be overwhelmed, but YABU to say 2 working parents don't work, because every family is different and I personally love our dynamic.

Good for you you did what was best for your family.
again not everyone is like you. Being a sahm would have destroyed me. Do you think that’s really want a child needs ?

op is with her children as much as she can. Unless she really wants to be a sahm really doubt telling her how horrible it’s what she’s doing is the right thing. What works for you might not work for everyone.

When I was a child, my dad worked full time & when he came home my mum went & worked on the twilight shift at a local factory, all the local mums either worked there or at Thorntons on their evening shift, it left them the days free to do childcare, school runs, housework & shopping. Other than hospitality or supermarkets, there don't seem to be any of those kind of jobs any more.

It's not necessarily that simple though for everyone - if I wanted to reduce.my hours from FT in my current industry, my choice would be 4 days or nothing ie. give up my job. The job is just not doable in less than 4 days and many professional jobs are the same.

We can't afford for me to to not work, and I need the financial security and pension anyway. So the real choice comes down to 4 vs 5 days. I've done 4 days before, and as PPs have said, you are essentially doing a FT job for 20% less pay, therefore I work FT. The perk I have is flexibility.

So while I'd love to do 2 or 3 days, and maintain the same career options and progression as someone working FT, it's just not possible.

We both work but i went part time and now do 24hrs a week. My husband does 40. I work opposite shifts to him. We have 5 kids and it was just overwhelming trying to juggle everything when I was full time.

Hi OP. It's very hard with three children at that stage and you would feel like you're constantly spinning plates. I knew I couldn't do it and that's why I'm a SAHM. I'd rather feel like I'm doing one role well than just 'coping' and not doing either role to my potential. Before there's the predictable chorus of "but why why why did your DH not want to do it then, eh, why why why??? - a) he earns about 50 times more than me and b) I'm just better at SAH because I'm creative, prefer to structure my own days, I enjoy it and I find it more interesting and fulfilling. We prefer having our split roles and I think we value and respect each other more because of this. Both take a different type of resilience. In many ways, opposites attract, I think. Also, get a cleaner, even as a SAHM you would need one if possible. Give yourself a break. You have 3 young kids - it's enough.

I’m more asking the question why are you working compressed hours but being paid for part time?

if they are expecting you to do 100% of the work you need to get paid for it. Then you could maybe afford a nanny which would solve a lot of the issues.

No reason it has to be
My friend went back to work FT after her maternity leave, she works in car sales and earns a lot more than her husband. He works weekends only and is at home the rest of the time

I don't think there's any magic way to sort this to be honest.

Either one of you drops hours, both of you drop hours, or you just accept you're going to live in a mess for the next 4 years. Think of it this way - you could spend hours on cleaning and tidying your house, or you could spend hours enriching your children's lives with doing lovely things with them, or supporting them to do them themselves. So long as you know you're not living in a hoarders home you're golden.

You know what I'd love though? I have a weekly cleaner and she's great. But I'd rather have a weekly tidier. Someone to just look at all the crap and shift it all, put it all away.

Just a small thing, but can you drop weekly swimming lessons for the younger two, and just put the older one in a few intensive 1-1 (or 2-1) lessons a couple of times a year (and do the same for the 4yo once they get to about 6 and can make fast progress)? Financially it works out about the same, and will take up a LOT less of your time. A non stop dripfeed of slow-progress big-group swimming lessons all year round for years on end is a huge timesuck.

If you live in Australia and are surrounded by open bodies of water and people with outdoor pools, sure, get your toddler swimming early (because of the risk of drowning, and because hopping in the pool all the time in this kind of culture is easy - I grew up in the tropics and it was like this too!).

If you live in the UK, have no open bodies of water around you and swimming is a cold, wet inconvenient pain in the arse, it is absolutely fine to wait until your kids get to about six and then just blitz it with a bunch of intensive classes.

YANBU at all.
I struggled through with my first child, being the main earner but squeezing full-time work into a shorter week so my child could have some days with me and not full-time nursery. Christ so exhausted, I spent days wishing I could earn enough for a cleaner.

Second child has severe SN and I just decided not to go back to work, but do actual part-time hours at home. It was the best thing I ever did. I sacrificed my career, but there was no option where my child could thrive and me work full-time. People might argue about that, but that is the cold, hard reality. I also was able to be around more for my first child, who had a tough teenagehood. And on top of it all, I could really enjoy being a mother rather than run around so tired feeling like I was not being good at anything.

I work 3/4 days during the week and 1/2 days at the weekend. Dh works 4/5 days Yes to everything you say op, it’s bloody difficult! I have 4 in school and when anyone is sick we argue over who’ll take the day off this time. If they suddenly close the school for any reason we have to juggle and leave work to drop then get back. We spend our whole time running and there’s times we barely get to look at the kid’s’ homework, let alone help them out. There’s pros and cons to both. My ds has asked can I go back to being a sahm because he misses me being about which was horrible, but then other days he goes on about how great it is we can afford stuff and how fun my job sounds, which is great because that’s giving him a grounding for the future. I will say the people who tell mums on here to ‘just go get a shop/ weekend job’ make me want to scream- every two weeks I work Saturday and Sunday which means I’m out of the house early every day of the week (5 to drop dh and the kids off and afterwards get me to work 3 of the days then 2 me working). It sucks. Plus I don’t get Christmas Eve with my family and most of the Christmas holidays.

It was really hard but I am now in a comfortable place in my career. I supported my children through university which included three years living in a different city and forked out for fees, books, rent, food, fares home etc. We will have a comfortable retirement because I progressed in my career and we have been able to put quite a lot of money away. If necessary, we will be able to help our children get on the property ladder.