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!

One of the best and honest responses I’ve read on here from an OP.

I disagree with PP's and think it's not ok that he's expecting you to work full time and him part time.

Why not? Women do it all the time. The children aren't babies. They are at school and nursery. Women will never have equality in the workplace until more men step up and decide to take on more childrearing.

My salary flatlined ( architect here, was / is still very male orientated ) as soon as I announced our engagement.
Then again post wedding
Then again after I had a miscarriage and everyone realised babies weren’t far away.
I won’t bother telling you what happened when I announced twins.
Ps…dh got promotions each time…..

So I know how demoralising it can be.
However
If all things should be equal and dh wants to work 3.5 days you should also work 3.5 days. If that doesn’t bring in enough then you should both up your hours equally until you reach a take home that suits you.

You should share the load across the board. If he wants more time at home with the kids and you can facilitate that by working then you should. If he's home more, he should also pick up more of the domestic stuff that you are currently doing.

So whoever is at home isn't just looking after the kids, they are also doing cleaning and cooking etc - whichever one of you it is.

I think his offer to cut down on work hours and do more with the kids is a good one and you should take it up, but you both need to discuss how that works to everyone's benefit.

You shouldn't be expected to "make up his lost income". It just doesn't work that everyone in a family has to contribute the same ££, some people have higher paid careers than others, and in your case that may have been impacted by decisions you both made as a family and your career needing to be built back up. Do you actually even need the take home pay from £100k income? That's a lot. Though with tax etc, you may find you working a little and him working less is still beneficial overall.

You also need to think about what kind of reduction is going to work best for the family. Him sitting at home while the kids are at school isn't good use of everyone's time, just a very expensive way to get housework done. Could he do 5 shorter days for example? Or does his employer offer term-time-only contracts? Or is him doing 4 days for a bit useful while it still saves a day of nursery? Is he even able to cover all the childcare or childcare pickups to enable you to start back full time if you wanted to? With one at school and one at nursery this sounds very difficult to cover.

He could sound out his employer in principle, but the first thing is to wait for you to actually get a job, and because you're getting back in you may find you need to compromise. Then when you have an option on the table, you can both look at which of the drop offs/pick ups you can still do, what he would need to cover, and see if he can reduce hours in such a way as to make that possible and still cover your household costs.

I have only read your updates OP.

It's hard - my DH announced he wanted to be SAHD and I was going back to work in a fit of pique one day & it terrified me, because I really didn't want to, but then again, rationally why should I get to stay home with the kids on ML while he worked?

I actually agreed & once he was down off his hobby horse he realised that (as I earned considerably less) he didn't want to downsize or move, stop going on holiday & actually he didn't want to do all the grunt work in the house, let alone 24/7 care for a non-sleeping baby so we continued as normal.

Anyway, it's all very well to lay these decisions down as a done deal but he needs to realise it's a decision to make together & he needs to acknowledge that his current comfortable and catered for life (washing done, meals planned, kids appointments booked & fulfilled etc) will not continue.

@Itsjustagoogleaway My salary flatlined ( architect here, was / is still very male orientated ) as soon as I announced our engagement.
Then again post wedding

As an architect, unless this was 40 years ago I find this very hard to believe.
This is not reflective of an entire industry.

I got my Bsc in 1988
My masters in 1993 ( I worked for 3 years then 2 yrs for this postgrad)
Then my final professional Part 3 qualifications in 1994

I got engaged in 1997
Married 1998
Child 1 in 2000
Child 2 and 3 in 2004

Ps. I changed jobs twice due to all the crap I and my female colleagues wanting kids had to put up with.
You complain….they see you….they all know each other.
Getting a job after complaining about sexist treatment then was impossible.

A colleague working as an assistant architect whilst was project architect earning more than me ( I found out ) once told me he didn’t regard me as competition because I’ll just leave and have kids. He said my career was toast.

Why shouldn't he cut his hours? As long as you both recalibrate household duties, I think it's a reasonable request.

Disparity in earnings you shouldn't drop income during a cost of living crisis they are under no obligation to up his hours should it not work out

There is zero logic in that statement, otherwise it wouldn't have been okay for OP to drop her hours or quit entirely.
At over 100k it is perfectly reasonable to cut your house. Not everyone needs to work every hour possible because of an arbitrary cost of living crisis that impacts everyone differently.

sort of wish I could be in a work role now that I feel like I should be in, rather than looking at the roles I am applying for and feeling they may not stretch me. But also lacking the confidence to apply for full time roles at more senior levels.

But you can't expect to step back into a senior role straight away if you've been a SAHP or stepping back from work @WickyStizard . However, once you get started, off course you'll be able to soar into roles which stretch you.

But get your DH to participate a LOT more fairly in all aspects of running the house.

For everyone saying "as long as he steps up with the household duties", look at all the threads with people saying their partner doesn't, even when they are both FT, if you can make a considered decision in advance it makes sense to do so, rather than realising you've been had, after the event when its harder to backtrack.

Interesting post @JaxiiTaxii. I had similar conversation with my partner. When the kids got a bit older he asked when was I going full time, I said I'd be happy to when he did 50% of the housework as I couldn't manage everything, and we'd have to sit down and talk about that as I'd done 100% for the first few years of having kids/working PT and he had zero idea how much went in to everything. Funnily enough when we sat down and I said "here are all the jobs, how will we split them" he changed his mind. Just because housework and child wrangling is unpaid, doesn't mean it doesn't count as someones effort/energy/time.

I'd negotiate him down to a clean-cut 4 days part time if only because it's very likely that extra half day will get eaten up by his work. Fridays off or something.

But if you would have to work an extra 3 days to cover his one then, no. And do bring up the three of those 4 days are home late etc.

Your stress goes up exponentially and his goes down...

Of course it's fair that you should work when he's been the only one working for what sounds like a long time.

If he is willing to do half of all of it - cooking, cleaning, child admin, house admin - I think it sounds brilliant, to be honest.

The career hit you take when you have kids is lifelong. This would be such a good way of reducing it. Kids grow up faster than you ever imagine when as deep in the trenches as you are right now, and you have every chance of making up lost ground and getting back into your professional groove again. I'd bite his arm off, in your shoes.

BUT there do need to be very clear expectations around him truly pulling his weight - and possibly a cleaner, if he's not good at noticing what needs to be done, too. You can't allow this to be a case where you both work equally hard professionally, but you also do almost all the domestic work, too.

I am just not seeing this in the same way at all.

The timing is pivotal here. He waits until the back breaking exhausting part of child rearing is over - the 247 exhaustion and conveniently suggests going part time the minute they go to nursery and school. Call me cynical but that is in no way an accident. Why didn’t he suggest this years ago? How much bonding will take place between drop off and pick up whilst they are at nursery and school?

The second part of this is his lack of responsibility towards your long term security and old age. He earns much, much more than you, you have suffered the loss of career due to two pregnancies - a double whammy and are unlikely to overcome this easily, and now he wants to go part time which will kill his career stone dead, his prospects and his earning potential. Just when you are heading into a golden period of opportunity to save money for old age, university, pensions etc he wants to flat line?!

No way.

It’s a terrible idea. He is not a man in his 60s ready to pull back but a man in his prime with responsibilities. He may even lose his job altogether.

Irrespective of whether you return to work part time or not ( don’t go full time) he must keep his career and long term security. He doesn’t get to kick back and leave you holding up everything.

I would lose respect for my dh if he did this. You have two very young children and decades to go before retirement, and putting yourselves at risk of really struggling financially indefinitely.

I would suggest this idea might work in 10/15 years time.

Just to put some maths on this for those not understanding the high taxes at and above 100k

Dropping from 100k to 80k loses just under 1k a month

dropping 120k to 96k loses only 800 per month

someone can earn 12,500 before paying tax so a 50k job 1 day a week covers the drop

not that 50k jobs exist 1 day a week, but the point stands

The issue isn’t just one of money - it is the overall impact of going part time. I don’t know what industry dh is in, but he would last a matter of months in ours. You are sending a clear message that you are winding down.

Promotions, senior roles, career progression and salary boosts are simply not going to happen. I have seen other peoples careers spiral downwards after going part time.

I believe medics can do this without too much pain but almost all other industries are looking for a highly motivated, competent and committed work force.

@Lastchancechica it’s wider than NHS, a lot of the public sector have senior managers who work part time.

Absolutely.

We now have very senior civil servants in job shares. It really depends.

I have had several promotions while part time

I think this is something op needs to tell us. What is the impact likely to be on his long term career prospects? Is it likely to impact promotion? Salary increases?

This is essential because there is no way I would support a downward spiral. We work in the city, and you would be toast but I accept there are plenty of other industries which wouldn’t see this as a career death wish.

Why does he want to go part time?
Maybe he needs a new job or a change instead?

I have been swayed in to the IABU camp, and that's a really useful place to start giving myself a kick up the bum to do something about it
Hats off to you OP for taking on board the comments.
It sounds like you've got lots to offer at home and in the workplace. In many sectors people are becoming more open to part time management and senior roles, especially as more flexible working is becoming more normalised.

You don't say what industry you're in but some networks I've encountered have been very good at support women returning to work and supercharging their career after children.

I don't see any reason why you can't have your career and your Mum time.