Husband wants to go part time

[WickyStizard]

I am interested to hear your views, because I am really not sure whether I am unjustifiably feeling pressured here, or whether I should be working harder to understand my Husband's perspective.

Tldr: Husband wants me to get a job (full or part time but significant enough to cover his salary decrease) so he can go part time, and work 3.5 days a week.

Context: My Husband is the main breadwinner, earning just north of 100K + Bonus. Before having kids we both earned in the 50K region, but since kids 5 years ago my salary flat-lined whereas his has accelerated. He also works somewhere with generous paternity leave and after the birth of our 2nd child took a large amount of paternity leave and we took the opportunity to go travelling as a family, which was amazing.

Since we have got back and my husband has returned to work full time he has been putting increasing pressure on me to return to work now that the kids are settled back into school and nursery(3 days a week). He wants to drop from full time to 3.5 days, so he can spend more time with the kids and doing pick ups etc.

He wants me to get a full time or part time role so he can do this. A full time role working remotely would bring in slightly more than the loss of his earnings over the 1.5 days a week, but would take me out of action for 5 days (worst case scenario) or 3 days (best case).

At home, as well as doing drop offs, pick ups, and bed times (he is home late 3 nights out of 5) I also do all the shopping, cooking, washing, most of the cleaning etc.

It's clearly not clear cut, hence the question!

Op and partner do need to think about what happens if (when) we enter a recession and jobs may be hard to keep or come by.

Having just one parent working means all eggs in one basket, and i dont think isn't a good idea. Recession, illness, death, divorce many reasons why it makes sense for both parents to at least work some of the time.

Man works in a high earning to support his family, took 6 months paternity each time and is very involved in his children and would now like to drop a day rather than slave away making work a priority for the rest of his life … what an utter prick.

It seems like actually quite a portion of women want to gatekeep spending time with children from their partner while at the same time martyring themselves and making it seem so difficult, but only when the woman does it. When the man spends time at home he’s lazy, work shy, “not a real man” and avoiding responsibility. God what an exhausting outlook.

I think they do. They also ringfence the ‘mental load’ and their DH doesn’t get a look in. I’ve got two teenage girls so tbf I need to be responsible for having what they need/ school uniform as he doesn’t have much experience of women’s clothing. I am a control freak over holidays so do that. But he sorts out school stuff, topping up parent pay, arranging parents evening appointments etc. Along with all the household bills/ insurance etc. Just split it up, it isn’t hard. He’s better with money than me, I find that side of life dull. He gets excited about saving a few quid otoh 😂

I only wish my DH could have had the opportunity to go part-time when our DC were small, but he didn't work in an industry where this was possible and it was pre-paternity leave. I envy your position.
The worst thing about you being part-time is that you will probably not have the same promotion opportunities and may earn less for your proportion of a working week than you expect. It isn't fair and you might find this frustrating. Hopefully your DH will get a fairer proportion of his original salary.

A full time job condensed into 4 days per week is the ideal solution to that conundrum IMO: full pay, not being expected to cover a full time role in part time hours, but 3 days off per week and - if you work Tues-Fri - you will get an extra week or so of annual leave to take each year because most bank holidays are on Mondays.

Was going to suggest this too. 4 days each and equal distribution of admin, childcare and house tasks.

It will be good for your independence long term.

How long have you been off work?

I went part time until youngest one was in year 5 and now in a fast pace demanding job; we both share childcare duties, cooking, admin now that we are both busy at work but when I was part time it was more like me doing 70%and DH doing 30%.

The double standards on this thread and overt sexism are insane.

I agree! I can't believe what I'm reading!

*Man works in a high earning to support his family, took 6 months paternity each time and is very involved in his children and would now like to drop a day rather than slave away making work a priority for the rest of his life … what an utter prick.

It seems like actually quite a portion of women want to gatekeep spending time with children from their partner while at the same time martyring themselves and making it seem so difficult, but only when the woman does it. When the man spends time at home he’s lazy, work shy, “not a real man” and avoiding responsibility. God what an exhausting outlook.*

Brilliantly summarised. I could not agree more. I just don't understand the views of some of the posters on this thread... sickening and disturbing!

Good luck finding something you think you can enjoy workwise @WickyStizard

Think if you can both do part time for a while that will be fantastic. I’m currently shoving as much as I can into additional pension contributions and hoping to reach a point I can drop to 4 days, stop the contributions and us be no worse off.

@Coffeerum @Teateaandmoretea yes the extreme martyring stance and the endless mental load complaints you often see do seem a bit OTT to say the least, from my perspective as a lone parent who has always worked full time and yet miraculously manages to work and look after my children and house. 🤣 Time with the kids and at home is leisure time even if you're doing the normal jobs around the house like washing or cooking etc. It's what most people look forward to in their week as relaxing time!

Start gradual.
Find a one or two day per week job and after you find that it suits, DH might be able to reduce to 4 days per week.
You don't want to alter too much before you know the move will be beneficial.
You might find other ways for DH to interact more such as making him the drop off or pick up parent or having you work on a Saturday while he is the primary parent etc.

I personally would t mind this arrangement because I like my job BUT I'd be very wary of going full time unless he is aware of how much slack he will need to pick up at home and with general life admin / mental load, it's a massive generalisation but I don't think a lot of men realise how much goes on in addition to basic 'childcare'. The double burden is very real! It's quite unusual for the breadwinner to be the one going part time, has he looked into the implications for pensions etc?

Expecting you to cover his loss of earnings isn’t reasonable.
He’s an extremely high earner. Do you actually need to work? Working 5 days to cover his 1.5 drop would be ridiculous.

Taking tax into account and its probably a whole lot more do able than you think.

Rough figures
£100k for 5 days = £70k for 3.5 days.
So £30k drop In gross salary.
Take off tax at 40% is a net pay of £18k

For Op to cover the £18k
The first £12k net is tax free
The next £8k net would be taxed at 20% so she'd need to earn £10k gross to get £8k
So really she's looking for a Gross salary of £22k (£12k tax free + £10k taxed)

Op was earning £50k before she stopped work, so it should be do able to get £22k for 2.5 days a week.

I haven't taken into account pensions or NI. That is very simplistic but it also has the benefit of her to earn her own money and for them as a couple not to be completely relant on a single income source

And @Sugarfree23 that doesn't even take account of the nursery and childcare funding they'd be eligible for with him going part time, which could make up the difference in net salary from him going part time anyway whether the OP works or not!

Both parents need to work in order for the family to be eligible for Tax Free Childcare and 30h funded childcare from 3. So they'd only get the childcare help if he reduced his hours/earnings and OP got paid work.

Yip, it doesn't take into account the drop in pension contributions from his company or additional contributions from hers either.

But it does demonstrate that whacking top earners for tax is madness.

Both parents need to work in order for the family to be eligible for Tax Free Childcare and 30h funded childcare from 3. So they'd only get the childcare help if he reduced his hours/earnings and OP got paid work.

Ok. But at £50k FTE OP would need to work 4 hours per week to meet the minimum earnings threshold. Given she's said she wants to work again, I think she'll likely be able to cope with that.

The extremes it has gone to now - not for the genuinely wealthy whose income is paid in dividends, but for moderately high earning people on PAYE - are so ridiculous that we have some of the highest marginal tax rates in the world for this group of people and research has shown repeatedly that it is one of the reasons UK productivity has flatlined. Nobody is going to work more when they received minimal or sometimes even less net income for doing so. Sadly no politicians on either side of the house who are fixing/ intend to fix the problem though, even though they're well aware of it and that it makes the whole country poorer.

Could he drop to 4 days and you do 4 days too? This balance works really well for me and my husband. For context, I’m the breadwinner and our daughter is at nursery 3 days a week. We both do an equal share or housework but have a cleaner fortnightly too.

Yes that’s a good point.

Although I do wonder if you’d be able to find a job paying £50k who will let you work 2.5 days and do school runs etc as well.

Plus if they’re both working and can’t work the opposite days, they’re going to need to find childcare costs for all of the school holidays.
I think OP working is a good idea- especially so there isn’t just the one job/company/industry etc to rely on. But I think it would need to be accepted that the job that the OP can do may not be the perfect fit/money etc

Also the husband needs to take on his share of the housework! If he’s going to be at home 1.5 days then he can also be responsible for clubs, lunches and all that stuff

I don't think anyone on this thread has said grunt work/wifework is 'hard'. Many of these things however are on-going and time critical eg dc appointments. Many of the posters here, me included, unfortunately have a DH who has and has always had a 'me first' attitude. And no, unfortunately I didn't spot this prior to having children.

This is also, imo, not comparable to being a single parent. You are simply doing what many workings mums are doing but you don't have a useless man child that creates more work not less. I do appreciate that you have sole financial burden though. You only have to look on MN to see this is an ongoing problem for women. Whilst I do think there are women who want to stay home and ring fence, I don't think that's the majority. Personally I think many women who accuse this and say their situation is amazing are still doing the majority or taking responsibility for the most of the household stuff (looking for and managing a cleaner for example). They have just convinced themselves they've reached equality because their DH washes up and cooks once a month - well he dies earn more you know!

Honestly I’d support him, my dh earns over 100k and works away in the week so only home on weekends and we’ve got a disabled 5yr old who’s just started school, still has treatment in hospital etc and I’ve just started working as a civil servant part time so I can do school pickups. They are very flexible with hours. And although I don’t financially need to work, I enjoy it. Although if my dh wanted to drop some hours to be home more I’d absolutely support him.

Parenting is a 50/50 thing and what he is asking sounds entirely reasonable to me.

I agree that both the OP and her DH need to be aware that they may not get their ideal pattern.

But increasingly many professional jobs are flexible - the OP clearly had a good career, she may well be able to find a job share or similar pattern at a good salary. Or depending on her field, go freelance.

She doesn't need the job to cover school runs - her DH can do a couple on his non working days and they can also use some wraparound