To crave another baby to get my out of the corporate 9-5 slog

[Darkeyes12]

I know this sounds ridiculous and I am aware of that. I wonder if I’m the only one. My life is hectic. Two kids 12&7. Work full time so does OH.

we are financially comfortable. I was a sahm for a few years. Returned to work full time 3-4 years ago. recently been promoted and now have a bit more pressure.

OH is in a very stressful Job. Sometimes I long to accidentally fall pregnant so I can get a year off work and focus purely on family life. In my heart I’d love to be a traditional housewife but also am ambitious.

I know logically I should cut my hours but as soon as I decide to do it I back out as I worry I will lose future career opportunities. I am seen as reliable and focused. I worry cutting my hours will portray that I’m not as much anymore.

anyway OH doesn’t want another and really neither do I. But it’s strange how my mind plays tricks on me as if that’s the way out of feeling overwhelmed and stressed.

You do realise that anyone is able to stop working? Most of those women (especially in the earlier years of your career) would have been paid for only a small period of that year out, then had to make up the rest with savings or reduced family spending, just like anyone else could.

I think it's sad that we get so stuck in the routines of work (me included) that we forget to lift our heads up and look at alternatives.

It’s probably no different to me fantasising I had Bernard’s Watch when I didn’t want to get up for school. It’s equally as daft.

Talk to your husband about making changes if being a ‘traditional housewife’ (😬 I’d strongly advise against this) is that important. There might be a compromise to reach.

You need to give yourself permission to cut your hours back.
There must be some conditioning in your psyche where it is only permissible for you to take time off for having a child.

What others think is more important to you than what you think and feel.

Why is it permissible to take time off for birthing a child but not to reduce hours to spend to raise the child?
If others opinions are high value to you, here's mine...
Taking time off to have a baby or reducing hours to raise them is drawing from the same well to me, and I would respect any woman, or man, who made this decision.
Lots of people on a four day week in senior positions.

Someone mentioned a coach up thread (career/work coach) i think you could get to the bottom of this pretty fast with a coach and move through it with strength.

Put yourself and your family above others opinions. You will be teaching your children this too.

Best wishes.

I just took 4 weeks of parental leave on the top of my holidays. Spent time with the kids and really rested. I even sent them to dinner camps in the morning just to lazy by the pool and do sport. I think you just need a long break. Use your parental leave. It is a right in the UK. If your company does not really support that, change job. My company welcomed it and facilitated it, better being on parental leave than sick leave due to burn out….

I would seriously consider dropping your hours OP. You can always up them again when the kids are older, at uni or left home and restart your progression then.

I've always been very career driven but after my first I went part time and chose to take a slight demotion so this was an option. I absolutely love it! I get the balance of family life but still get to work in a still very senior position with decent pay but all the stresses of my role mostly fall ok someone else now.

I've chosen to hold off career progression for now for balance and family. Whilst I'm career driven, I feel the most important job I will ever do is be a parent and I won't get this time back. There is plenty of time for me to climb the ladder again when the kids are older.

If you don't need the money, listen to your other needs and try to get some balance in your life.

If you're financially secure I'd recommend looking into dropping down to 9/10ths or 4/5ths working.

Other things to look into is using Ordinary parenting leave.

Me and DH are looking into doing both of these things so that we can maintain our careers but get more time to ourselves and as a family. The 9/10ths working is particularly attractive as whilst we lose 10% of our gross salary and annual leave, we do gain 26 days to do what we want with. Our employer does 25 days + 8 bank holidays, so 33 days for annual leave. So we will be almost double at 55.7 days per year. Plus adding in a couple of weeks of OPL and we'll have 65.7 days per year (mixture of paid and unpaid) despite having a working pattern where we're working 9/10 days.

Given there's around 21 work days per month it means we'll actually be working only 9 months per year 🤩

I promise you all women don’t yearn to be a SAHM and a housewife. On a personal basis I can’t think of anything worse. I would hate the dependence as would many women. It’s very risky to become wholly dependent on another person financially.

It doesn’t follow that because the OP feels tired and burned out she wants to become a full time housewife. It’s completely rational for her to try to find a balance but I think it’s quite irresponsible to urge women to embrace a lifestyle which forces them into financial dependence.

I've been in the workforce going on over 20 years now and I'm absolutely convinced some women get themselves pregnant to get an extended break from work. And it's often happened where the mat leave just happens to begin right before a particularly busy time of the year.

Of course I'll get responses now saying "how dare you, that doesn't happen" but we all know it does!

Food for thought, you get full maternity leave if your a surrogate 🤣

Everyone has the same problem with the brain playing tricks on you. It tells you that to be happy, you just need to get x, or get rid of y. Then when you achieve that, there is another x or y and we are always chasing something that will make us happy. This is because we don't accept that life is always going to be a bit crappie. There will always be something that is stressful. Once accepting this fact then you can choose what is important to you and what is worth making the sacrifices for. Then you won't care about having to make the sacrifices because it's the cost of doing something that makes you happy.
Do you enjoy your job enough that it is worth the stress and commute etc? If not then see if you can find a job that is worth it.
Or, if the thing that makes you happy is your family, then having a stressful job with a commute is the sacrifice that you are making for your family.
To sum up, life is crappie, no matter what you do there will still be a struggle so choose what struggles you want to have then you won't care that it's a struggle.
I hope that makes sense.

And people wonder why maternity leave is seen as a we holiday oo a year off on full pay from work to. Swan about coffee shops while ur colleagues pick up the slack it posts like this thst give over that impression

Pretty much

I would not cope at all being a SAHM.

I think I’d actually go off my rocker if at the end of the day my only achievements were a clean house and fed people residing in it. I’d be worried my brain would run out of my ears like microwaved jelly.

That’s me though. Some people crave that, and I respect it because I really couldn’t do it.

@Hibiscrubbed

Agree: but regardless of whether you would enjoy it (and I wouldn’t but horses for courses), recommending a woman chuck away her financial agency to be dependent on a man just because she’s currently pissed of with work is pretty reckless.

I thought being a SAHP was "like a job" and "just as much work as employment" so I guess you must be unreasonable

I feel like this - especially at this time of year when I go back to work after the summer off. I enjoyed my mat leaves and definitely found it easier and more "fun" than work but possibly that was because I knew it wasn't forever? So sometimes I just want a break, but I know really that I don't want a third baby!
Can you rejig things somehow? I know not all jobs are that flexible but if alternative hours/home working/sabbatical is an option thats probably less drastic than a 3rd baby 😂

If you love being a SAHM and have extra love to give, could you foster? Obviously not a decision to be taken lightly but it’s an option to get paid for doing what you love??

Not the only one! It’s scary how many times I’ve thought while driving to work, what would happen if I had “a little” crash!

It’s the age old mothers are expected to work as if they don’t have children and raise children as if they don’t work!

Sorry OP, I don’t have much advice but you are not alone.

I was home for years with kids, loved every awful minute. Then got a job as a teaching assistant which I absolutely love, for me and get to pick kids up. But then sports day come around, middle of the day so I could let attend. Felt aweful, like really bad mum guilt. Even though I'd been to loads before and they are rubbish, I hate going , but suddenly realised the position of loads of kids whose parents can never come, because they have jobs. It's terrible, especially becaue the same kids never have parents come to events because they can't but makes the kids and mums feels like the worst

Not to a 12 yo and a 7 yo it isn’t - which is I think why OP used the word ‘housewife’ rather than SAHM.

The bottom line is though - and I say this having been a SAHM when mine were really small - is that while being a SAHM to tiny children is hard work, you at least only have one job to do. When you’re employed as well, you have two. And they often come into conflict which is stressful and can be upsetting. Being a SAHM relieves you of that conflict.

Working part time doesn't mean you aren't reliable or committed.....I work my ass off the 3 days I'm in the office and have a case load bigger then some full timers..... having another baby when neither of you want one just to have a year off isn't the right way.....working and babies is hard