Am I took fussy/is annual leave a deal breaker for you

[Ladyoftheapple]

New to a new role. Smaller team, I work part-time, my husband works full-time. In my old job, I could pretty much pick the weeks I wanted off and they would be approved the majority of the time.
In this new job, one person can be off per week so it's limited. I love having two weeks off over the school summer holidays so that I can have that time with my husband and children but it's looking like I'll be lucky if I get a full week approved!
I'm struggling with this more than I thought and actually I am feeling like the quality time with my small children is more important. However, I have family members telling me that I need to suck it up, "I'm lucky to have a good job and I should want to get somewhere in life" 😳

I wonder what generation the family members are who are telling you to "suck it up". There are not many jobs where you can't guarantee even a week of the Summer hols off.
It would totally be a deal breaker for me, but it would depend on your options - if you live rurally for example finding another equivalent good job would be harder.

When the thread started, I would have said suck it up for the first few months, as leave has already been allocated to existing staff, but it would sort itself out. That is fairly common, apart from existing holiday you already have booked. Most places would suck that up. So you both do a bit of sucking up to start with.

But the updates change my opinion. Their policy is stupid and that would be a deal breaker for me. How can you plan??

That sounds similar to our employer. It is crazy and unreasonable. A lot of staff have left and are leaving due to this.