10 years into parenthood, youngest of 3 is 2yrs old. I’ve always taught part time since being a mum.
Husband nhs surgeon in training. 4 years til he’ll be a consultant but we are thinly stretched. He’s commuting for next few years and is out of the house mon-Fri 5:30 am til 8pm on a good week. Bad week add on a 48 hour on call shift to the weekend with only a Monday post nights sleep day to compensate… so 100+ hours a lot of weeks.
So my job has out of hours/ extra work after a 7:45-5:30 day at School. I only work 2 days a week but have an extra 5 or so hours work to do at least. Really struggling to do it as pathetic as that sounds. All constantly tired and it’s very unsatisfying way to live/ work and hard to give my kids attention they deserve. Husband sometimes has kids sat so I can catch up. Evenings getting harder to work with older kids hobbies and all the bedtimes/ husband not there to help. I’ve run out of steam working in evenings. I used to power on when oldest 2 were 5 and under, strict bedtimes etc
So, I’m planning on quitting end of this year. Spend a year with my littlest before he starts school, husband can then have full share of any weekend study/ work time. Has important/ expensive exams he needs to take. You have to pay again if you fail. Will do little bit of supply and build up the following year with view to staying in supply (7 hours a day at school rather than 25+ hours for 2 day a week contract). Husband happy with this and we can manage this financially as currently paying a lot of childcare and youngest’s 3 yr funding kicks in soon.
is it a no brainier?!! Or will I regret it when youngest starts school?! Something has to give I’m not happy with how things are for anyone in our family at mo. It’s not economically viable on teachers salary for me to be main worker as couldn’t afford our mortgage/ costs on my full time salary since we moved to bigger house. So eggs are kind of in husbands work basket rather than mine. I’m ok with this. We’ve always pooled money. Bought our first house on my teaching salary when he was a med student and even back then pooled money pre kids.
Happy to be homemaker/ supply worker for 5 years or so. Should I just go for it rather than drag us all along miserably and tired?! I am relieved/ excited by prospect tbh. Or will I regret it??