Full time job with young kids

[Calica1]

Current situation is I have a 13 month old little boy who I get to spend a lot of time with as I'm lucky to only have to work 2 nights a week in a supermarket for us to get by.

My partner is really keen for me to go back to full time work in order for us to have more money and improve our lives (bigger house and nice holidays)

Our son is going to nursery 2 part days a week just to get some socialisation but honestly I think he hates it and I'm keen to pull him out which is the opposite of what getting a full time job would entail as he would have to go in full time.

In order to go back to work I'd have to retrain for something else as I can't go back to retail management as the hours don't work with 2 parents in retail management and personally I just think my little boy is just too little to be made to go be with strangers all day and barely see his parents.

I appreciate the fact my partner wants to improve our lives and also that he doesn't like our current arrangement of never seeing each other as I work the 2 nights he doesn't but I feel like our son is the priority. I'll also add I'm keen to have a second baby soon which then means putting 2 young kids in nursery just to earn more money.

So am I being unreasonable to say I just want to focus on my kids until they are a lot older and it's okay if we are getting by on my part time wage?

It's more a case of yes I'm sure I could get a basic 9-5 minimum wage job. But it wouldn't improve our financial situation as after childcare and costs for the extra car it would work out the same as I'm earning currently.

I guess it's hard not to feel defeated to an extent as I want to make my partner happy but I don't really see a way of doing that. The job which would allow me to have a good wage isn't feasible due to my partner also working retail management and lack of childcare for such early morning/late nights and then the option of a minimum wage full time job provides us with no actual benefits just me with more stress due to working full time and then trying to make up for all the lost time with DS without gaining anything financially. I feel like this could put more strain on our relationship because he will still be stressed about finances whilst I'm going to be resentful about losing out on time with DS for no reason besides the perceived benefit of 'full time hours' even if those full time hours don't provide additional income.

There wouldn't be any childcare for him to pick up as DS would have to be in nursery. He already helps with all the cooking etc anyway as he prefers cooking.

Kids are only young for such a short period of time. I appreciate his work ethic, can you not bump it from 2 nights that you work to say 4? I'd be keen to not have my kids in nursery either. You can work full time hours when he's in school. A second child is a whole other topic.

I feel this is something you should have discussed and agreed before having children. Your opinion is just as valid as his. They are your child as much as his and it shouldn’t be one of your opinions over another’s. Personally my kids do fine at nursery, my career isn’t on hold and I have a decent pension built up. But I never wanted to be a sAHM and we discussed that before getting pregnant

Unfortunately he also works nights so I can only work the 2 nights he doesn't. I do keep an eye out for daytime overtime but this doesn't come up often and involves paying for additional childcare which kinda defeats the purpose!

It’s possible to compromise on this. It doesn’t really sound like the right time to retrain and work full time if you are thinking of having another baby. Can you talk about it and agree a rough timescale to you increasing your hours, maybe in a few years? Childcare from a very early age seems to have become the norm here now (I moved back from another country not so long ago after many years away) and many consider it strange or unreasonable for mothers to want to stay at home with their children in the early years. There is deep value in this and it is incorrect from a child developmental point of view to insist that being looked after by a primary caregiver and a professional are the same. They are not. You consider being a SAHM more important than a bigger house or nicer holidays. You need your husband to understand this and also you need to appreciate his point of view. If you talk more about it hopefully you can reach a compromise.

I agree. I shouldn't have rushed having a baby and we should have had enough everything ironed out beforehand. However that isn't what happened so now we have to find a way forward that makes financial and sanity sense.

I'm really glad you didn't have to put your career on hold and your kids are happy at nursery. Keeping my career wasn't an option with us both working retail so there was always a question mark over what I would do but once I was pregnant I knew I wanted to be with my little one as much as possible and I decided if I couldn't have the career I enjoyed I wasn't working my arse of to have a career I had no interest in.

But I do clearly need to look at things and see how I can improve our situation to help make us both happy!

Thank you so much for this. Yes I think I'm going to sit down and go through things and see how I can make us both happy without compromising on my time with my children.

Ah I get you. God this is a pickle. I can see you are really trying. Sorry if you've already answered, can you not work the 2 part days your little lad is in nursery?

I second this. Its such a temporary situation that you can never get back. I do think children generally are better off being looked after by a parent when so young, if its not feasible its not feasible. But I guess it comes down to priorities. I wouldn't be sending my child to nursery full time for a nicer house and holidays. But plenty of parents do want those things, so you can only do what you both feel is best.

So 1 of those days is the morning after my night shift. I send him so my partner gets a chance to have a bit of personal time and also so I can sleep without listening to a screaming toddler 🤣 the other day I keep an eye out for overtime but since the minimum wage increase etc they seem to have really tightened up on overtime. I'm hoping once things settle a bit they may start offering some again so I can at least get a little extra in each month which we can then use to do up the house bit by bit.

Time flies by so quickly, if you're able to work part time and stay home whilst your children are young, then you're in a fortunate position. You can always make more money once they're in school.

You can't do more than that. Its a shame you weren't 100% on the same page regarding childcare and working but you are contributing massively.

I want to be with my kids and I don't really want them raised by other people.
Wow! What a statement!
Don't send him to school then!

Op you've said that your wage is currently about the same as smp, so just over £800 per month, 37 hrs at minimum wage is a take home of just over £1700 per month. Even taking into account the extra childcare of £450 and the car costs of £250 that you've estimated, that's still nearly £200 per month that you as a family would be better off by. That's a significant amount of money. Financially you are not in a position to be working part time. You've got debts, you had to go back to work in order to pay bills at all, and your home needs significant work. You're being completely unreasonable. I'm quite a bit older than you but I can in all honesty say I've got no memory of whether my parents went to school events, but I can remember holidays I went in from age 4 to my teenage years.

I understand why you don't want to work full time when it wouldn't bring in much more than you're earning with two nights a week. But you do need to change something about your current circumstances. I think what you put in your OP - that your husband wants a bigger house and holidays - is a little unfair in the light of your other updates that you're living in a house with your ex and without ceilings in the kitchen.

I'd advise thinking outside the box in terms of bringing in money and look for work that you can do with your son, or from home flexibly in the short term, in addition to having a longer-term plan around retraining.

If you have experience in retail management, could you offer your services to small businesses that don't have the money to have someone on the books but might want some one-off or occasional advice on improving their management processes?

Is being a Secret Shopper a thing in the UK? (When you go to a franchised cafe or store and report back to the company on your experience.) Or delivering flyers. Pop your son in the pram and chat to him as you do the run.

On your half-day when he is at nursery and you haven't done night shift the previous night, can you do some work doing data entry or filling out surveys? Or something related to retail management for small businesses. I've seen ads for people to train AI. I'd want to look into the ethics of this but it didn't seem like skilled work and they would provide the instructions.

While holidays are a want rather than a need, I think you need to recognise that your partner has given you a very big thing that you wanted (a child) in the timing that you wanted, to his own detriment. I do think it's fair that he then expect that you consider his wants a little more closely. And holidays are so much more important once you have children because it's often the only good chance you have to connect as a family away from the day-to-day drudge (and in your case, away from your ex). Holidays help maintain your relationship, which is incredibly important for a child, more important than spending all day every day with one parent.

If my partner was willing for me to homeschool I wouldn't!

I get around 910 a month bring home currently. A bit over SMP. Bring home on full time would 1674 (miscalculated previously) so after childcare and a very low estimatw of car costs it's £74 a month extra. Not taking into account me needing to take time off for sickness. So yes potentially I could work an additional 27 hours for £74.

Honestly not sure what sort of holidays or housework we are gaining from a potential £800 a year if we are lucky and DS doesn't get sick at all every year.

Thank you for your response. Yes looking for something I can do from home but doesn't require my full attention (DS isn't the sort to play on his own or let me sit on my laptop) is something I've been looking into just not had much luck with finding anything but something could always pop up.

There’s a lot of issues here but I agree with most that yes - you need to work. Your child needs to spend more time at nursery, you need ceilings, children often get more expensive as they get older, and you’re not going to get yourself any more employable by putting this off. If you opt out of working for another five years, you’ll be in this exact position then - with a massive career break and no experience whatsoever. What happens if your partner can’t handle the stress and leaves or goes off sick? He’s not coping, your finances aren’t coping, and refusing to work is a luxury you can’t afford.

My husband and I have always worked full time. In offices though so appreciate shift work is harder to manage. We’ve made it to almost all the events, brought our kids to endless clubs, made their breakfast, lunch and dinner pretty much every day and had a lot of fun in between all of that. It’s hard sometimes sure - but not as hard as struggling like you are just now - our kids have a safe home to live in, two parents who love them, and everyone is fine.

I’m not surprised DP is unhappy… working unsociable hours, paying £1,000 a month to pay off debt, paying a mortgage your ex lives in, living in a house without floors and ceilings, minimum pension contributions and you’re refusing to work more hours so that you can go to school plays in a few years time (how do you think parents with two working parents cope) and desperate for more children. Honestly, it sounds as if you’re massively taking the piss. If the genders were reversed this thread would be full of LTB and people telling you to get ‘your ducks in a row’ etc.

There is nothing wrong with being a SAHP if it works for for both, and honestly from what you said it doesn’t.

If you look at her updates you’ll see the ‘nicer house’ her partner wants is one not owned by her ex with no ceilings. It’s not exactly a luxury life he’s after.

You absolutely need to work more. Don't have another baby either, that will just make things harder.

This isn't fair on your partner at all, not to mention how financially vulnerable you are as well.

Thank you for your response. It's not a case of not being willing to work more hours necessarily. It's about not being willing to work more hours with no financial benefit. Working an extra 27 hours a week to be full time but paying that out in childcare and car costs to leave less than £100 extra which is very likely to get eaten up by various sick periods over the year with DS.

It wouldn't solve my partners stress and would just create more stress for me and DS? But I do appreciate I need to keep looking for other ways I can make money.

I worked part time until both my children were well into primary school. I don’t regret it and you’ll never get the time back. However, I was older than you when I had my children and therefore more financially stable, although it was still tight.

It seems your desire to have a child has led you to having a child with someone you’d only been with for a year, which is why you don’t have the same view of you and work.

No one can have it all. You want to be at home, have children close together but you have debt, need good house doing and your partner isn’t on board.

Good luck in whatever you decide but think carefully and try not to let the ‘I just want children’ feeling cloud your judgement.