To think DH is wrong and this isn't the norm for most families?

[jobstressfedup]

I'm at the end of my tether with DH's job at the moment. It's just not family friendly at all. He works long shifts (often 6am-6pm), nights, and every other weekend. Some shifts even include a 9pm finish. My job is a relatively "normal" 9-5, 4 days a week. Therefore our weekends are all we have as a family.

The hardest part of this is the absence every other weekend. For example this weekend he's worked 6am-6pm both Saturday and Sunday. It's my day off today and he's back working 8-5. I look after our toddler by myself when he's working (no family support nearby). I've told him this is starting to get to me now, and I'd like him to consider a more family friendly job where we get every weekend together not just every other. Some months he will even opt to do overtime on one of his weekends off, meaning we only get one weekend a month.

When I discussed this with DH he said "most jobs" will likely involve an element of weekend or early morning / late evening working and that this is norm for "most families". I disagree and think most families probably have at least their weekends together.

Who's correct?

It’s industry dependant. If he’s in hospitality he’s going to have to do some weekends.

There are jobs where you never work weekends

It depends on his sector. If he's emergency services, NHS or hospitality then he's right. If he's office based he's wrong.

Depends on the job I guess. I work every other weekend. Late finishes early starts too. However I couldn’t/ wouldn’t do it with a young family.

Normal for my family and many of my friends, that one person works weekends sometimes or evenings etc.

Depends on both the job and the seniority.

Even if they are technically off, many senior people have to deal with stuff on their time off.

I know more people who work standard day hours, Monday to Friday (or part time with that) than I know shift workers.
DH iss Army so his varies a lot.. he's also away Mon-Thur as we chose Married Unaccompanied a few years ago.

However plenty of people do work shifts, nights and weekends. It depends on the job.

He's not in any of those roles but he is in a public sector service that requires weekend work. My point was he should look for something that's more conducive to family life. His argument is that he'd struggle because he doesn't have qualifications and the job he does brings home good moment without the need for specific qualifications (it's a skilled job but it's very physically demanding / skilled, rather than needing academic qualifications). He's written off the possibility of anything else without even looking into it, which makes me feel he's putting himself and his career ahead of our family.

No, ‘most jobs’ don’t involve weekend work. In some sectors, obviously it’s normal (hospitality, emergency services, retail etc), but no, not normal.

How easy would it be for your DH to get another job? Mine had a job that was 6 days a week with a day off every other week when I was at work but that’s life. We were paying our bills and looking after our family. The question is, is he looking after his family by maximising his earnings or is he avoiding spending time with you? Can’t you do things with your toddler on your own?

I’ve worked shifts for over 20 years, dh worked shifts before that, 1 of us has always worked shifts, so weekends off are few and far between, we often go the best part of a week without seeing each other depending which days my shifts fall on.

It’s just what we had to do due to family circumstances when the kids were young, and parents also needed care due to health issues.

You just do what you have to, and sometimes that doesn’t for Mon-Fri 9-5

That doesn’t mean it wasn’t fucking hard when the kids were young though!

*good money

Of course I can do things with our child alone but the point is I don't really want to. I want to be a family, because that's the whole reason we had a child together.

It depends on the industry. I am self employed now and have chosen my hours based on what dh can work around so we don't need childcare. He has the greater flexibility in terms of working hours and can wfh whilst I have to so core hours and don't have wfh as an option. I wouldn't be OK with your set up because I wouldn't want to always parent alone or be the one who's always got to pick up the slack. I think it is important to choose a partner wisely and I would have considered this pre kids. If a job doesn't work for your family then it needs to change but I appreciate that is easier said than done and won't be immediate.

It was the norm for us.

I too got sick of it and encouraged DH to change jobs. It was disastrous. He ended up doing more hours for less money and was too exhausted to help in any case. He was definitely better where he was in terms of family finances and his health.

It's difficult to define normal, but yes, it's quite common for both parents not to work at the weekend.

But by volunteering for additional shifts he is telling you (unless you are desperate for the money) that he just doesn't place the same value on family time as you do.

I think it is very common with young children for parents to work opposite shifts, because childcare is so expensive, and to not have any proper regular family time for a couple of years.

Of course there are jobs that involve no weekends. It sounds like his sector requires quite a lot of them though. Or do you think he's deliberately taking these shifts as he doesn't want to parent/ have family time?
I'm imagining it isn't an office type job? If it is then all the weekend working does seem excessive. Surely he can compromise and still do some weekends but less than he's currently doing? It doesn't sound like he's up for a career change.

NHS, retiail, hospitality, factory work, security work, services, some office work -

On any given weekend, over a fifth of the UK labour force is at work, while more than half of working adults report working at the weekend at least some of the time.

I guess it depends.

Can you afford for him to change his career? Is he working overtime to make ends meet? If so YABU.

Also, could you change yours to meet the shortfall? Perhaps if you went full time and he took a day off in the week?

I don't think he's avoiding family time no. I think he genuinely gets very tunnel visioned when it comes to earning and wants to maximise the amount he brings home (hence he becomes quite fixated on doing overtime etc). When I point out there's more to family life than this and we'd actually like him home sometimes, it seems to fall on deaf ears.

9-5 here (office) but I still have to work weekends when required. And evenings. And quite frankly, the job is so stressful even when I'm not at work I am often thinking about it.

As your toddler gets older you'll end up doing clubs, extra curricular stuff etc at weekends so all this family time together is rare.

Saturday we had two sports (playing for one, training another), music lessons and a class party between our kids. Eventually flopped on the sofa about 5.50pm to watch Gladiators.

It was the norm when I had small children for one parent to work shifts in order to minimise childcare costs. However, being ‘ships in the night’ really takes its toll on a lot of marriages.

Was he doing this job before you had your child?

That's how I feel.
We've had one hour in a room together this weekend (in a 48 hour period) to have a conversation before we both crashed from exhaustion. Not sure how this is sustainable.