To wish I hadn’t married a man with a well paid job

[butteronthebread]

DH earns well, not loads but realistically is always going to be more than me.

So as a result it’s naturally meant my career has had to take a back seat. I know some manage without any compromises but we’ve no additional support and someone does need to do the child related things so this lands on me.

its very much diamond shoes are too tight. And I know this. But sometimes I wish I had the luxury of working more.

Make it work so that you can work full time and invest in your pension to protect your future.

Then what about a local childminder? I have always worked and i’m a single parent (their dad largely works overseas, and my family all 250 miles away). If our wrap around closed that early i’d have got a childminder. There are options. Doesn’t mean you have to take them, but it’s not true to say you can’t have a full time career. I had a serious health issue thrown in too, but the DC still went to all appointments, I attended assembly's etc. Their dad didn’t, but he chose to put his career ahead of the DC. His choice, and he has missed a lot. I wouldn’t say I have it all, as I don’t but I don’t believe it’s true that you can’t have a career and raise kids successfully. Mine are 20 and almost 17 now, both exceeding academically, no hang ups on going to wrap around care and I genuinely believe that they’ve only benefitted from me being a working mum.

Salary figures don’t really mean much without an understanding of cost of property where OP lives. (Not suggesting you tell us OP)

Your kids are still pretty young. Once they are established in primary school you could use a childminder after school that would allow you to do a full working day.

Does your career not lend itself to WFH at all? That could give you at least a couple of days where you can do school pickup and get back to work when they are older- my 8 year old amuses himself happily after I pick him up at 3:30 then come home and get back to work ( senior professional services job).

We live rurally. There just aren’t an abundance of childminders and most village schools here are tiny and don’t have them. Childminders only serve the schools closer to a town / suburbs.

And no sadly - I can’t WFH at all, otherwise that would potentially work well.

So move? Or accept that your desire to live rurally outweighs your desire to have a career.

And if your children are nursery age, then most day nurseries open sensible hours, 7:30/8 am until 6pm. But if that's still not flexible enough for you, a childminder is still the way to go. Cheaper than a nanny. Totally doable.

Your career would take a back seat anyway I'm afraid. Default parent doesn't only happen to women who "marry well"- you just don't also have to worry about losing your house while your career is being stiffed

That rather depends what your expectations of your lifestyle should be.

The grass is always greener though. I earn more than DH and our marriage isn’t great. I’m completely trapped because of this - if we split he’d be entitled to half of everything despite the fact I pay all the mortgage, owned a house before we met and have a NHS pension I’ve been paying into for 22 years. I would have to massively increase my hours to afford a divorce basically. It’s not as if his career took a back seat due to mine either - I work PT in term time so I do nearly all school runs and the “mum admin.”

So you've made choices to have kids with someone who earns nearly 100k which makes you feel your career is very much second place.

And you've made a choice to live rurally with a lack of childcare provision.

Yeah, I get it, you're frustrated. But other choices are available!

Welcome to the world op.

It sounds as though you are relatively ordinary.

Roof over your head
Clothes on your back
Car on the drive
Food in your bellies
Toys in the cupboard
Able to use the heating

I am sorry you are discontent. The only way to change it is to seek co.promise and work harder if possible.

Here is a half full glass. It is better than one which is half empty.

Be grateful that your issue isn't scraping by. In reality life would be far worse if he was in a low paid job, and generally part of having a higher household income is some level of sacrifice time wise.

@HotCrossBunplease i often see ‘move’ thrown out as a solution to so many things and honestly it doesn’t account for the fact that it’s hugely expensive and inconvenient!

Childminders aside, if I was to really want to progress I’d have to be around work a lot. I’d need to be prepared to do a lot of late nights for events and so on and that’s just not going to be easy.

In many ways it is how it is. There’s no point insisting we all move and children move schools / nurseries for a career promotion I might not even get!

Absolutely! My husband does more school runs than me, despite earning more than me (roughly same full time wage, but I work 4 days and he is full time). But his job works with wfh, my job doesn't work for wfh as a physio, so he does more school runs. There is no 'I earn more so you have to do the child stuff', he just does it because he is able to do it, and likes doing it.

while some jobs offer flexbility there are a whole heap of jobs that don't and can't , many jobs require you to be physically onsite often at specific times.if you are in construction or on a production line ( these jobs can be well paid) and everyone needs everyone else you can't have one person starting late or leaving early never mind those on fixed shifts my DH spent a lot of time in building trade often everyone needs to be there befre 8am to travel to the site and they all come back at same time too so if you have a dental appointment you either have to drive to site maybe 40-50 miles and back again or the policy is that you are off the whole day as you are in a team with X number of members which can't operate minus one for 3 hours while you go to an appointment, they usually facilitated this by finishing lunchtime on Friday so you could book appointments friday afternoon
it is the same if you are a paramedic / police etc or work at a bakery or a car plant there are set hours you can't nip out for a school run, a concert or to drop at brownies. most jobs are not actually office and computer based

I think it's only the end of your career if you want it to be. I appreciate being a working mum is not easy, I appreciate you say you're not in the "nanny bracket" but ultimately if you want to work , you can and you will.
My children are adults now ,my son went to school with 3 brothers whose mum was at the time manager of barclays bank. I'm talking 25 years ago. She openly admitted that all her wages go on childcare because she didn't want to lose her job. More recently my cousins wife is quite high up in a corporate worldwide company. Her kids are ferried constantly from nursery to school to childminders to kids clubs. She's says it's stressful but she openly admits she likes putting on her work suits and heels and earning her money.
I think if you're determined to it you can. You just have to ask yourself do you have that determination? There will always be obstacles if you sit down and think about them. You just need to decide if you can overcome them, plenty of women do

Have you thought about changing your career? I did to fit more in with my children's school hours? Have you thought about using your energy to retrain?

@lolly792 I’m not really complaining. More … pondering to be honest. My PFB starts school this year and since while I know children can and do move schools it does make things kind of permanent as I’d be very reluctant to do so once he’s settled. And I am not very happy at work just at the moment and would like to move jobs but I can’t … I am just thinking more than anything. No one should feel they have to ‘solve’ it for me.

You could do an OU course to have even better credentials than you have now.

I wouldn’t be able to use it though so no real point.

Well you've answered your own dilemma. There are things you could do, but you don't see the point.

Other people might do things differently. For example, I've already explained that dh and I set out from the start to not let either of our careers become incompatible with family life so that when we embarked on babies, we were able to share everything as equally as possible. We chose not to live so rurally that childcare would be very difficult to source.

You've made different choices, and that's valid, but you now seem to resent them

So as a result it’s naturally meant my career has had to take a back seat.

Why? At various times in our marriage we’ve both been the higher earner, neither of our careers suffered for it. What an odd concept.

Apologies if I've missed it, but was this not discussed before you married or had children?

So you’re saying that on the one hand you want to pursue your career. On the other hand it’s too expensive and inconvenient to move somewhere that makes that easier to do. So you’d rather forgo an entire career’s worth of salary and self worth because moving house might be a bit of an upfront cost.

You won’t engage it questions about your husband making changes.

You’re really just here to moan about a situation entirely of your own making but which you are not really willing to change.

If you were a man would this be the case? Would it automatically be him whose career 'took a back seat' if you were the higher earner. I bet it would not.

I earn far more than my DH. Always have done and always will do but it was me who went part time when the kids were little.

My point is that he can take a step back if he wants to you just both have to agree to take the financial hit.

If it's always somehow 'impossible' for the higher earner to ever take time off with the kids then how can the lower earner ever progress? They are just trapped and it happens to a lot of women. Worst case scenario he then leaves you.