Male colleague needs part time working mum to take care of 1 child

[colleg]

I was talking to a colleague recently and it came up that we both had sons who are 3 years old. I also have a 5 year old daughter.

my colleague was saying that he could never do the job ( the same job I do ), if his wife didn’t work very very part time around the needs of their 3 year old.

I was pretty shocked he said that to me. Isn’t it funny how a man can take such huge liberties and convince his wife that she can’t possibly work full time / she has to be the full time default parent for their 1 child, while there’s a woman standing next to him, who has two kids, does the same job as him and is also the default parent !

and before you start, no the child does not have special needs. It really does seem that this colleague needs his wife’s support to do the job I do, with two kids in tow.

it’s a high pressured job, but it’s a desk job. We aren’t going out to fields, farming the land or working in construction. We aren’t nurses or doctors on shift work. We have a 9-5 desk job in essence. And we also work from home, for most of the week.

A bit odd? It’s frigging diabolical. Mums get slated for daring to use childcare on this very thread but it’s only ‘a bit odd’ for a man’s own child who he willingly had to need to get ‘used’ to him. If this was my husband he’d be out, he can use his big important penis job to pay for a place of his own and have his kid 50 percent of the time and manage as women always do

And which one of you stopped working full time to make the ‘work life balance’ better ?? And who has the better pension now ??

Why is it OK for your DH to leave the parenting to you, whilst you both work? But this man is wrong for his wife working part time?
I think your anger is misplaced. Perhaps your DH needs a new job so labour can be divided more fairly?

Maybe consider why it bothers you so much ??

But he doesn't need to usually, his wife has a pretty full time job of looking after their child, she no doubt has a routine of picking up and dropping off and that's what the child expects. It's what used to be considered a conventional family, and if it suits them fair enough. And if his wife was working full time too they would have to make other arrangements so he could continue doing his full time job, a nanny, childminder or full time nursery, he couldn't just fit in looking after a three year old.

It was actually DH! We both applied and i changed my hours to still be full time but condensed. DH went part time. Pensions are both fine, thanks.

I'm not saying it’s not possible to both work ft, lots do, but we didn’t find much joy in it for our family.

I see this sort of attitude all the time. From women and men. I work full time, as a nurse and I'm a lone parent of 3. I see people with less kids then me, with partners and saying they couldn't possibly work more hours. I always say it's nice you have a choice 🤷

You’re sounding very judgy, maybe his wife doesn’t want the big job, maybe she doesn’t want to work full time, maybe she wants to be at home for pick up and drop off. Me and my husband have a similar situation, I was more than happy to go part time because i WANT to pick my children up from school and be around on a morning, if anything he’s propping me up with his ‘big job’ because without his job I wouldn’t of been able to cut my hours so low. Everyone is different and what works for me one doesn’t work for everyone

I work 4 days a week, mainly for child care - I was full time before DD. DH didn’t convince me to do it, or force me, or pull the wool over my eyes to get me to do it. I chose to - in fact, I suggested it to him.

The “get used to him” comment is weird though, I grant you.

I’m actually really surprised and happy to hear that we considered this and will probably do it in the future if we can financially. Looks like you got a keeper lol

Pensions are considered a joint asset in marriage. I'm not saying divorce is easy and things always get split 50/50 but pensions are taken into account.
Different if they aren't married of course.

I have done senior jobs for years and can’t tell you the number of colleagues’ female spouses who have told me their husbands can’t leave early to do pick up as “they’re not allowed” or who can’t apply for PT because of their job. As a manager, none of these men ever even ask. Yet countless women do the same so they know it would be approved.

On the occasion I met a male spouse in the similar situation, they see it for what it is: they’re enabling the worker to get ahead because of x/y/z. They tend to be very upfront with it.

What men tell their spouses and reality are two different things.

It can be the mum wants to stay home and has engineered it so the husband has no confidence looking after the dc. I’ve seen this with close friends they clearly wanted to be sahm. Their husbands expected them to share care and go back to work. When the baby comes the wife barely lets the husband get a look in so they never get to learn on their own or be on their own with their child or are criticised for how they do it. My friends didn’t ever go back to work. We used to meet up occasional weekends as a group. Eventually there were so many dc we couldn’t find anywhere big enough to hire. As dc were older the working mums suggested just us mums (the original group of friends) met up without dc. The sahm either didn’t come or would only come for a day / 1 night as their husbands had never been left with the dc on their own and couldn’t be trusted to look after their own children. It was ridiculous but it really wasn’t the husbands fault the mums had made parenting into a fulltime job only they could do to avoid having to go back to work. I have worked with men who hid in the office until the work with dc was done but I’ve also seen men who wanted to be more involved and weren’t allowed to be.

It doesn’t bother me at all - I don’t have kids so no skin in the game. I imagine it bothered the person who raised it with you

I found your post thoroughly nasty and unpleasant but as I say, didn’t upset me on a personal level.

There are more variables at play than just gender:

1, Personal capability.

Some people just have more ability to keep going. I've met people who look exhausted when hearing about my life.. but equally people who look at the work I do and think of it as easy and relaxing. We all have differing capabilities for work/stress/sleep etc. Perfectly possible that you have the ability for full-time work and great parenting, and others just don't.

2, "good parenting"

This one will annoy some people, and I make no assumptions about you OP. But what "parenting" is, isn't the same for everyone. If you define good parenting as sticking the TV/Tablet on, using lots of Childcare, Ready meals etc. Then yes, you will have far more time for work. But if you require yourself to be a much more involved parent, then its going to leave you less time for work.

Again, no judgement relating to the OP. But I've met people whose idea of parenting requires considerably less time and effort than others. Again, I've equally met people who do so much for their children that it sounds exhausting to me.

So, it isn't always a gender thing. (could be though...)

A lot of people cannot manage or don’t want to manage working full time and looking after children. I know lots of women who stay at home or only work PT because they couldn’t handle the multi tasking or don’t want to. This is not a man- thing.

We both work and have kids. A woman I know who SAH and has kids at school was asking me when I have time to do all the housework and I honestly think I just don't do a very good job. We definitely don't have a show home! Also dh has to do housework too. He wfh two days a week so probably does more housework those days

But I imagine if I SAH and did everything, dh would not be doing much housework and probably wouldn't be able to fathom me not doing it all

I get you. It annoys me and it also made me realise that now I’m a mother that is how I’ll likely be judged. Interviewers often asked what my OH job is and when I say he's a lawyer I can see them thinking I’ll be the default parent, and they’re correct. Every family is different, we pay for a lot of additional help (nanny, cleaners) to enable us both to work FT.

I think it’s a sensible choice for a lot of women. You said yourself OP that you are the default parent even though both you and your husband work. If this guy is also incapable of parenting equally then it doesn’t make sense for his wife to be killing herself trying to do everything. I know mums who went back to full time once the kids were bigger and less demanding.

I do think a lot of men opt out though and are really quite pathetic with their learned helplessness bollocks. I’m a SAHM and Dh always drops DD to school because it’s their chat time and it’s important to him and will leave work early to watch her box. More men could definitely do more than they claim and definitely have more flexibility if they are an office worker than they claim.

DH and I are both mid-earners so both work full time so that we and the children can have a nice house and cars/holidays etc. I would jump at the chance to go part time and spend a but more time with the kids and on the house etc.

However, I don’t care how much money he earns- I would not have married a useless man child who can’t competently look after his own kids.

Is it really a man thing though?

It's just that women are more expected to be able to manage it, whereas men arnt.

I hope you don't work in law. 🤦‍♀️

I get what you mean op - and really weird for him to say this to you when presumably he knows you have 2 kids?

I’m also curious as to how the OP seemingly manages to do her job and look after a child at the same time.

Ok - maybe his wife prefers spending time with the children. I perhaps used the wrong word so does this make it clearer? My point is that everybody can make their own choices. That might be easier for some than others but the fact that OP manages job, children etc (and well done to her - it's not easy) doesn't mean that everybody can or even wants to.

Not really sure I’d spend my energy getting het up about some colleague’s family set up.