Who is living life the right way?

[flowergirl24]

Sister A and Sister B met up over the Christmas period. Their lives have gone in different directions and they are both late 30s. They both have 3 DC.

Sister A works 60 hours a week in a stressful job. She manages to take the children swimming at the weekends but they don’t do activities after school during the week. She has invested money in rental houses, and is concentrating on being able to have a better quality of life in the future.

Sister B works 8-10 hours a week. She has ponies and the children enjoy riding after school. She is not focused on a career at all, but does a lot of driving the children to after school activities. Sister B has expensive cars and is living for today, with no concern for the future.

Who is doing life right?

They might be better off as a family but like I said, shit can hit the fan including divorce and working 8-10 hours isn’t going to go far, especially since you can’t always just switch to full time.

Unless you are very senior, DG level at least, no one should be working 60 hours a week. You are not paid enough

But also, money doesn't buy time back. No point earning £170k and seeing your kids for 45 minutes a day and working every evening.

It sounds like OP gets long holidays so is able to spend more quality time with them then plus some weekends. Nursery child also has a full day with dad.

She will also be able to spend a lot of time with them during pivotal years if she is able to retire in 10 years. Maybe more time than Sister A if she is still working then.

Swings and roundabouts really.

There is no right way to live life. If only it were that simple. Unfortunately there is no formula any of us can follow that will guarantee a happy, healthy and prosperous life. It’s a rather reductive way of thinking to imagine there is, not to mention lacking in empathy
as the implication is that people who don’t ’do life right’ are to blame when things (as they do for everyone) go wrong.
Why the need to be so judgmental? Well, I think lots of people feel the need to vindicate their own life choices by finding fault when others go a different route. But how someone else lives their life has no relevance or impact on yours.
Also, the very notion of choice over how to live life is quite privileged - in many times and places women have had very little self-determination and even in modern Britain some still don’t. Rather than thinking in a prescriptive way about the ‘right’ way to live life, wouldn’t it be more realistic to think about positive ways to live? Both examples you give seem to have positives, along with some potential drawbacks, both could work really well depending on the individual women involved.

It sounds like sister A is jealous of sister B.

My husband is a civil servant working similar hours and it's good in that it funds me being a sahm to our 3 kids under 4. But I feel like he misses out on a lot of them growing up and I do feel lonely at times. The job is great and makes a difference etc, but I think it's a bit like gas, it fills up any space its given. Maybe have a think about whether all of those hours are worth it. He does a 9 day fortnight so that he gets a magic wednesday to spend with us all

Is this a "hypothetically" question/post?

If not, then which sister are you?

...or are you just an "interested observer"? 🤔

I live quite like sister B except that I work more hours. I don’t think there is a right or a wrong but I would never choose to swap!

I’m sister B. Not your sister but describes me.

I have a sister A. I love my life and am very grateful. No expensive cars. That’s sister A.

There is no “right” way to do life.

Hi op,

that.

it got you thinking. If you want to make changes because now that you have done this, you want to do that…why not? You don’t need to be only one side of yourself forever. Maybe you feel you capitalisé enough and want to venture on other difficulties land?

Good luck op 🌺

She said she is sister a

I agree with this. My DH will be left a very nice inheritance due to his parents sending him to live with his grandparents when he was little because they were both working, he was the youngest, his older siblings lived at home, he saw them almost daily but it effected him especially after his mother died in her early 50s. He spent so much time away from her because her and his DF were building a nice retirement nest egg, she never saw it or any of the many things his grandparents took him to. I know he couldn’t care less about what he will eventually be left by his DH. I wouldn’t say he’s jealous, but he definitely envies the time his older siblings had with his parents.

We don’t have much but we decided sending our dc to full time childcare to take home a few extra pounds a month wasn’t worth it. Well actually DH decided, I was happy to go along. For us it’s about having someone home, doing school runs, sick days, assemblies, spontaneous trips to the park after school…

I know we are very lucky to be in this position.

i do find it condescending when people talk about only working mothers being a positive role model. I worked, I worked from age 13, multiple jobs at a time for many many years, travelled the world, had amazing experiences through work opportunities but now, just because I choose not to work while my children are growing I’m somehow less than or leading a bad example, it really pisses me off.

If DH felt so strongly about it, why didn’t he become the SAHP?

If you have the option to work less then do.
One of my children became very unwell a couple of years ago, it put everything into perspective for me.
I appreciate some people can’t but if you have the option to slow down and spend more time with your family then you won’t regret it.

Not sure how you could conclude from the OP in isolation that sister A doesn't spend good time with her kids. May not be much compared to some but it may well be of good quality. And I'm not sure how you conclude that sister B is palming her kids off, as you put it. Some kids actually want to do activities and allowing them to isn't palming them off at all.

OP this comment, and others, illustrates how there isn't a right answer. Ultimately whatever you do someone will come along with a negative judgement about you so the best thing to do is what makes you and your own family happy. Every individual is different and wants different things. Not all adults, or children, are the same.

Because he has 2 degrees I have zero GCSEs, my years of work experience count for nothing when looking at career trajectories, not that I cared about a career, I worked to pay the bills. I was very lucky I was able to earn a decent wage given my lack of education. At the end of the day though, he simply had far greater earning potential, he is younger than me and I wanted another baby.

Happy?

Edited - I also suspect (he’s never said) that it was because it was his mum he missed most growing up and because he lost her so young he wanted our DCs to always have me around.

They are doing what works for them

They usually do. One of those reasons is because even if they want a SAHP at home, they are rarely willing to give up their career to do it themselves.

It sounds like it's just the other way around with OP, she is the higher earner with the best career trajectory and her DH is able to do the school run by working less hours and also having one day a week with nursery aged DC.

God, you'd have to pay me a ton of £ ro work 60 hours per week. What does your hourly rate work out at?

We are gifted life- there is no "right" way to do it.
Clearly the lives of sister A and B are not comparable- sister A obviously gets no support whereas sister B either has a partner or a trust fund.
I would be wary of always living for tomorrow- sister A's children will not have a second chance to build great childhood memories, and clearly the children of sister B are much more likely to have great childhood memories.
Having an eye to the future is a sound strategy- but it is no guarantee you will do better in the future, life has a way of throwing curve balls.
Rental properties are also not the licence to print money they have been in the past, taxes have been coming for buy to let landlords, and will continue to increase.
In the future the "better quality of life" you have invested in will probably not impact the lives of your daughters greatly, as they will leave home and have households of their own.
There has to be a reasonable middle path between these extremes.

What would happen if you said you weren't going to work over the weekend and every evening? I assume you're a senior civil servant so you won't be badly paid, but you're probably also not well enough paid to work all the hours God sends.

I am public sector and I'll have weeks, even months, when I am working 60 hours a week but it's clearly bad for my health and it's not something I sustain as a long term thing. I've made it clear whenever I have taken a job that I'll put in the hours when necessary but that there has to be give as well as take. So far no one has had an issue with that.

I guess what I'm saying is, if you could cull your weekend working to pretty close to nothing, claw back even two evening a week and arrange to knock off work at 4pm religiously one day a week, you'd massively improve your work life balance. Working even less might improve it more but maybe small steps are the way to start.

To be fair to my DH, when we met I was the higher earner, he was just happy taking the easy road job wise. He had 2 degrees, he’s a learning nerd, but was happy in a call centre operator role. My job included travel and relocating. We talked about him being a SAHP at one point but I was made redundant during my second pregnancy. I’d worked my way up in the private sector and was being paid well above average for my role. Even after I went back to work part time after baby #1 I still earned more than his full time job. Once I was made redundant and even with industry connections I would never get a new role anywhere near as cushy as I had. That’s when we reassessed everything. I only went back to work briefly after our 2nd, thats when DH stepped up and I stopped working, neither of us has ever been particularly career focussed. DH works hard but he’s happy to clock out at the end of the day, he’s happy meeting targets and getting bonuses, but isn’t keen on promotions. But because he has qualifications and is actually quite good at what he dose he’s exceeded anything I could ever earn.

Fair enough. It does irritate me when men want a parent to be at home but somehow, it never seems to be them. At least your DH discussed it and considered it himself.

He actually sounds similar to my DH, though he wouldn't want to be a SAHP but he isn't as career focused as I am so after reaching a certain level, became content with meeting targets and getting bonuses whereas I'm the one always chasing a promotion when the opportunity comes up.