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 depends on the job, if one parent is in healthcare/emergency services/hospitality etc, then this sounds fairly normal. Could you afford for him to get a job that’s better hours but less pay? He shouldn’t be taking overtime without discussing with you, unless you really need the money.

If he's paid quite well and he doesn't have qualifications, then his chances of finding something that pays as well are slim. My DD and son in law are in this position. It's a bit miserable for them both, but there is close to zero chance of him earning even close to what he does now, given that the vat majority of jobs require qualifications that he doesn't have, and they have a mortgage and childcare to pay. They have looked into all kinds of jobs, but they're not viable, even though he's a hard and conscious worker. School was miserable for him and he didn't come out with the qualifications that 95% of decently paid jobs require.

Having said that, if your DH is volunteering for overtime and you don't need that extra money, then that issue needs addressing.

My husband doesn’t work shifts, in theory it’s a Monday to Friday role but very high pressured and demanding and he is often away from a Tuesday am to a Friday am, he may well then have to work from home a bit on a weekend.
So our family time is limited, I therefore agree with your husband that in many families it is normal to struggle to carve family time. Realistically your husband probably gets more time at home and with family than mine does as we often loose at least a weekend day to work plus 3 evenings a week.

@Vod
Yes we could afford the extra day at nursery but we'd obviously have less disposable income and therefore things like family days out etc would be scaled right back. But yes I think we could do the extra day at nursery, just about.

@museumum
He gets several months in advance

This is an option I hadn't considered. It doesn't get us anymore family time together but it stops me feeling utterly burnt out with solo parenting by day 3 I guess!

In my life/town/experience, working evenings, nights and weekends is entirely usual. I don’t know anyone who works 9-5 Monday to Friday or anyone who works in an office, except one person who works in the school office, but I’m not sure that counts.

Being on call, shifts, nights, weekends are all par for the course. I work evenings and weekends and so does my OH. Our hours change every week with no regular pattern. I disagree that it is unusual outside of hospitality and retail.

My friends and family have all kinds of roles, majority self employed - plumbers, electricians, tutors, several with their own online businesses or bricks n mortar shops/premises for services. Several are in healthcare, police or emergency services. Hairdressers and beauty stuff. Makers and craft fairs and things like that busy making orders into the night and setting up at church fairs and farmers markets every weekend. One works from home doing something technical to do with coding but still works nights sometimes because they have to network with people in different time zones. The people that I know that are most often “on call” for the weekend do tech stuff. All sorts.

For me when you have a toddler is the best time for these type of roles. It’s worse when they are in school and you have a day off and they don’t. With kids in school at the moment we get about one day in every 3 weeks where we are all off on the same day. We do loads of things together and we break off in little groups too, we don’t always have to all do the same thing.

I can’t see how you could avoid this if that’s his job.

I think if this was just job pre kids it's unfair to want him to change. But he absolutely shouldn't be picking up extra work on his weekends off.

Thank you I really needed to read this x

It may or may not be unavoidable, that depends on the specific circumstances for your family.

I don't think it's at all desirable and I expect it will affect his relationship with his child. I had the same kind of dad - he was all right when he was around but he hardly ever was and mum did almost all the parenting. He didn't really know us that well or much about our lives. He regrets it now we're grown up, because he's missed out.

I'd never want a father like I had for my own children.

As you have very young DC, I can absolutely see why you want him around more. I think in certain sectors it is obviously the norm but even outside of those sectors my DH has a Mon-Friday office job on paper but he is at a senior level in an Architects practice and we don't really see him in the evenings as he is often away doing site visits around the country or abroad and as he is very senior, he has to be the one to sort things when they go wrong so IT problem Friday that went into late in the evening so not back until midnight after commute. Sometimes he has gone into the office on a Sunday due to workload. My DC arre teenagers though so they are quite busy with their own lives but I miss him in the week. He also has tunnel vision with earning and providing but we are having loads of conversations about that and correcting the balance between my work and his, whether this will happen though as he is always been driven in that sense and gets nervous about money.

So this is the other issue - he doesn't always discuss OT shifts in advance with me. He will still occasionally agree to one offered by his boss without discussion with me. He's getting better at this to be fair to him but this is another bone of contention. I've tried saying to him that you agreeing to work an extra shift is also the equivalent of volunteering me to do an extra solo parenting shift, and so it needs a discussion beforehand? He's getting this slowly, I think. Been a long road with this argument.

Sorry didn't answer your question, I think wanting a day at the weekend with young children is not particularly demanding but he maybe right about most people making sacrifices in some ways. I don't really know as our situation we have the worst set up amongst our friends but we had our DC quite young in comparison and they are all grappling with decisions like you as they have young children and the women in particular are expecting more of a balance.

DH and I both work hours that can involve him getting up at 5.30 (today it was 6.30) and I'm more of a late worker so I can finish up to 11pm on a standard weeknight. We both have senior roles. He works weekends more often than I. I'm in finance and he's an MD.

I know lots of people in nursing who work evenings and weekends and nights.

It sounds like he's happy to do it and hopefully hard work will improve things financially for your family. You know have one dc so that's not too hard to handle. Just make plans with friends and family and don't have any more kids as it'd probably be too much for you if one is hard work (not judging, one child can definitely be hard work!)

If he enjoys his job and it’s well paid I don’t think he should leave as it’s always a gamble when you start a new job. But I do think he should understand that you are unhappy about the very limited time you can enjoy with him so he should cut down on the overtime unless you badly need the money, and concentrate on family life a bit more. Money isn’t everything and his wife’s happiness is very important too.

Ummm, well I work in the NHS and wouldn’t be able to easily find another job that would accommodate your preferred hours without taking a significant pay cut, circa £20k.

He sounds like he measures his contribution to family life via financial support, I think when you have a DH, partner like this, they rarely change, they make the right noises about it but it is almost a personality change. I have found you then get used to the money and with teenagers we need it! That said, we are trying to organise our work so that it is the same but fewer hours on DH, my concern is that he is not genuinely interested in pay reduction and the corresponding status slip.

It's very industry and skill set dependent eg if you are an engineer on the railways (we have them in our family) it's often overnights, holiday weekends and long commutes to wherever they are working or staying overnight all week - it's simply the job, decent pay considering no academic qualifications.

I'm not saying it's easy but plenty of people are away for long periods working so partners are left holding the fort, you aren't alone but you can be aggrieved - just be aware that it's not as simple as get another job

I wouldn’t say it’s the norm. I work one weekend day a month and my partner works no weekends.
However, it’s not optional in my job to opt out of weekend working so I took the position knowing that. I’m sure he can find something a bit more family friendly.

For short term it sounds like he could cut down the over time - perhaps only do it if you need money for specific things, and to check with you first.
Then plan longer term. Dd will be at school before you know it, and there will be school stuff to manage between you. Also if it's a physical job how long can he carry on, would the pension be enough or would he still need to work somewhere?

If you think you might have more children then how things would work with 2 or more needs to be discussed too.

Money isn’t everything and his wife’s happiness is very important too.

Even more important, his child. I can't tell you how desperate we were for the scraps of time and attention we received from our father as children. We practically worshipped him because we had such limited access to him. I think this made him think there was no problem, because we seemed to adore him so much.

As we grew older we just stopped expecting or wanting anything from him. We basically got used to his absence and just detached from him emotionally. I love him but it's nothing like the love I have for my mum and my brother. Because we knew he didn't have to work so much. It would be different I think if we knew he didn't have much of a choice. But in his case, he just put his career ahead of family every single time.

You seem to have very set views on what you want, how you feel about things, what’s important to you and what you want your DH to do. What about what he wants? Why isn’t that important?

I know plenty of people who work weekends or nights. The reality with small children is that it is tiring and can be lonely. Having lots of family time to bicker about how your standard of living has fallen due to changing hours and lack of money to enjoy doing this isn’t going to be much fun either.

You were quoting me and yes I agree of course his child’s happiness is very important too. Probably too young at the moment to question why their Dad is so absent but yes, they will one day if nothing changes.

I know plenty of people who have to work shifta etc, do some evening and weekend work. The world needs healthcare, hospitality, various other things 7 days a week.

However - for me the question wouldn't be when the hours are, it would be how many hours is he working in total each week?

Some people get slightly addicted to working excessive hours to earn more and get very tunnel visioned and don't notice its usually placing a heavy burden on the people around them to pick up slack on family/home responsibilities.

You need to talk to him about how those hours aren't "free", and that by not being around for family life he is placing an unsustainable burden on you

Most people i know who worked very long hours earlier in life pre kids have had to cut that back a bit to accomodate family.

Then you need a family calendar and you need to put sometime to yourself in there. If he then chooses an additional shift - he has to source childcare.

This will only need to happen once.