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.

Agreed and I'm not a stay at home mum. If you're at home with your toddler there will be much more mess than if you send them to nursery 5 days a week.

I think it is best not to overthink other people's life choices as a value judgement on your own.

Lols you are not remotely unreasonable

My ex H and I do the same job, but he is 4 years older than me so was always slightly more senior. Over the baby years I went part time (still 4ish days a week), he was soo stressed, couldn’t manage two children at the same time, would pick up the 2 kids from crèche on a Friday at 5pm as I had to stay at work until 6 and I had to order pizza from the dominos website for him
bc he was soooo stressed he couldn’t possibly manage that as well as look after 2 kids single handedly for 1.5 hours.

I am a single mother now, I have the (still primary school aged) children. 12 nights out of 14, I am more senior to him and have a massive job and somehow I still cope. Incredible. Men just like having a vagina to delegate to

You obviously know more about his job than us, when I first read your post I thought that its more to do with physically getting his kid to school and then getting to work on time - Which if your employers aren’t flexible could be tricky.

But then you said that he could help more with pick ups etc as you know his job so are you saying he is probably pretending to his wife that his job isn’t flexible and that’s why he can’t help? Which is different to what you first said so you would probably get different replies.

It's like when mum is away for a couple of days, or even just an afternoon, and comes home to a total chaos, children still in PJs, eaten total junk, house a mess - and everybody goes that 'aww bless, but he at least kept the kids alive!'
Can you imagine if mothers did the same?

we are both full time management, with 3 dc and we are pretty maxed out. I can do my job, but I can’t take on more at the moment. I have managed it well in that I worked my ass off through all the more junior roles- I couldn’t do those roles now with my current schedule, they took long hours and constant availability and x can talk at 6pm and tell us what they need from us then we can have it for them by the morning type. Now I have got to where I am, both in seniority and also an industry move so have more flex which I need for my kids activities now they are older. Neither dh or I could handle it without the other pulling their weight at home, it is hard. I would roll my eyes at a man whos never done pick up on his wfh day, and his self centredness that he hasn’t noticed what the op juggles.

I think you are just a bit too invested. Everyone is different and copes differently with their load. Your view of the situation is clouded by your opinion on men. Let him live his life how he wants to if that is what suits their family.

Why is he taking a liberty?

Why are you assuming he talked her into? Why are you stripping women of agency?

I don’t have children but if I did I know I could not mix motherhood with my job without a partner who was either PT / SAHM or I would have to do a different job.

Why is their arrangement your business?

The fact that he said he has to take some time to 'get used' to his own child is pathetic.

I know exactly what you mean, OP. It also doesn't surprise me that some people are falling over themselves to defend him.

The standards for men are really on the floor.

I get what he's saying. He's used to having his wife there to pick up all the parenting jobs, and therefore he's admitting without her he'd find it very hard.
If your nursery or whatever childcare you have suddenly stopped be available for a week you'd find that week and the juggle hard.
His homelife and system is different from yours, I'm assuming you use paid childcare and he in the main has his wife.

Why do you say he hasn't noticed what OP juggles? He clearly has, because he says he couldn't do it.
You say your life is hard. Not everyone wants a hard life.

I'm.not sure. When my children were small I worked part time, term.time. I strongly believe that this allowed me to provide a level of input, support and influence in my children's lives that was invaluable. When I had my 3rd child I actually gave up work for a couple of years. Being around so much allowed both my children's fathers to work in a way that allowed them to make choices at work that they wouldn't have been able to make if I had also been at work ft all year round. This especially relates to travel with work.
Obviously, I could also have worked ft and we could have used more childcare but the impacts of that would have been significant and honestly I think it would have put immense strain on family life and both parents. I am a strong advocate of choice in the realm of how people choose to work and raise their children. However, I can't help but wonder if some of the mental wellbeing issues we have as a society and some of the changes that I see in children as a teacher are due to that choice being taken away from families (due to finances) and many simply cannot choose to create a family/work life that works for their family.
Tbh, I would appreciate more acknowledgement from my ex husband that his career has been facilitated by my availability at home with the children.

This.
It’s not a man thing. I equally could not work a full
time job without a small job. I look at the parents I work alongside doing a shift before work,
sprinting home to do pick-up / see their kids for a couple of hours before bed then having to log back on at night to make up for that.

I find life tiring just working full, doing life admin and domestic labour and trying to squeeze in time for health and fitness and social life. Adding children to that….something else would have to go.

We are all different and that’s fine.

But people need to stop insisting that mothers who opt not to work full time have been talked into that by male partners. This is often not the case and not everybody wants to use wrap around childcare:

Oooo absolutely OP. For a decade, while my own kids were little, I was freelancing and working with a Big Man on many projects. Desk based also. We did the exact same work. He had an enormous office in his house, all hail the Big Man.

In my house, I got the box room.

My husband built himself a whole office to work from, in the garden, which I actually paid for, since he needed the room. I mean, he DOES need the room. His job does require huge computers and a printer.

But equally, I later discovered that my colleague had almost the entire downstairs in his house to do his Important Job (the same job as me). Yet I had decided I didn’t need all that space. I could have the poxy box room. Then it dawned on me: my reaction = a life time training of being small.

But if the childcare costs would be more or as much as she brings into the house then what's the point, in stressing over getting a child to nursery, for you as a couple to no better off than for the lower earner to stay at home.

Everyone I know in real life looks it that way rather than you both pay a percentage of the cost, especially if your married or using a joint account.

If Childcare is £50 a day
Dad brings home £200
Mum brings home £60

I think it’s you not getting what others are saying actually because you are so entrenched in your view.

When I was on the partner track at one of the Big 4, it was widely acknowledged that those who had a partner who was either a SAHP or worked part time were generally more successful and completed the process quicker. Not having to juggle home life and work life is massively beneficial to your career.

Add to that, some people find juggling in general extremely difficult and that isn’t a gender thing. The female CEO off where I now work has openly said she wouldn’t have the career she has now if her husband wasn’t a SAHP when her children were young.

I had the same issues, I’m not very good a juggling at all. I’m all or nothing. So found having young kids and a career very difficult at times. My DH had a “big job” so I couldn’t rely on him. I solved the issue by having a full time live in nanny when the kids were small.

You are trying to say that your colleague thinks the way he does because he’s male and useless but you’re female and brilliant because you manage to do it all. That is nonsense.

I don't understand your outrage. My husband has a desk job and almost never picks up from nursery - because I am not working at nursery pick up time and he is. It's factually true that he couldn't do his job without me not working full time, unless he paid for childcare. We prefer me to look after our child vs using childcare.

Ergo - she really IS judging him and his/his wife’s choices.

This is true. Some of the responses on here are very me-railing. One's own personal ability to cope with and manage certain work and home patterns has nothing to do with someone else's. Most of us do not place some unrelated individual's experiences at the centre of our decision making process.

I get what you mean OP. I had a conversation with a colleague recently where he was telling me how his DP just assumes he will not be available for childcare due to him working shifts. It is just an excuse. DH and I both work shifts, and have both managed to do some actual parenting around that.

Maybe he and his wife feel strongly that both parents shouldn't work full time if they have children and that's what he meant? I.e. someone should be there to do school pick up/drop off, homework, after school stuff etc etc

In their situation he works FT and his wife PT to accommodate this. Maybe his wife wanted to go PT after having children and didn't need convincing.

I don't understand why you're so upset about this OP other than you're unhappy that you work FT.

Dh does a very high-pressured job - I stayed at home because we couldn't handle the pressure of running a house and looking after the kids - life would have been horrible for us. Dh said it was pretty standard amongst his colleagues too (for the women as well as the men). It was unusual for a couple to be both working full ti,me high pressured jobs but if you can - good for you!

My male boss once said to me and my female colleague "I've just realised that you don't have wives!"
It had suddenly struck him that he had a wife at home doing all the home stuff - cooking/cleaning/home admin etc etc etc - whilst we were working AND doing this!

He meant it in a supportive, admiring way (he's from a different culture), but still!

Whilst her own husband appears to do not much on account of his big important job.

At least her colleague’s wife isn’t having to keep the home fires burning on her tod AND work a full-time job at the same time. And colleague acknowledges his wife’s effort (and OP’s) so he appears to be less gormless than many some.

Hope he gave you a pay rise.