Should DH's job come ahead of mine because he earns more?

[OpalFruitsAreBetter]

Both DH and I work full-time with two primary age DC.

DH is the main bread-winner by far - he earns over 3x my salary plus share options etc. It's a demanding and often stressful job, but he is something of a workaholic and he is chasing a promotion.

I recently took new role at a 50% pay cut due to burnout, general unhappiness with my job and the fact neither of us had enough time to devote to DC as we both worked way in excess of our contracted hours. My new job has a much better work-life balance but it's still full-time and I have a team to manage, deadlines to meet etc.

Part of the 'deal' with DH in me taking a lower-paid job was that I'd be able to pick up more of the day-to-day work of managing school pick ups, running the house etc. But I feel like DH has started treating it as if I don't have a job at all and arranges his schedule with little consideration of what my commitments are. For instance, I always have to try to fit my office days around his and never the other way round.

This is starting to cause tension but his trump card is always that we can live without my salary but we can't live without his. Which is true. And my workplace is much more understanding of the demands of being a working parent, which is also true.

So do I just accept that my work has to fit around his?

YABU - he's keeping the mortgage paid so his career comes first
YANBU - just because I'm paid less doesn't mean my job doesn't count

is he choosing to work extra and go in at the last minute or is that a basic expectation of the job he’s choosing to do? That’s the key issue here - is he opting out of family life or does he need to focus on his work?

I have a friend whose husband has a massively intense job that pays really well and has really high expectations on him. He cannot be relied upon at all so they have their whole life sorted out on the assumption he is not available, ever. So if your husband’s job is like this then that’s the starting point for working out what makes sense.

if he is choosing to socialise with friends or go to some time intense hobby etc that’s totally different.

if neither of your jobs can work with the childcare hours you’ve chosen something needs to change.

Have his last minute clashes only started since you took the reduced salary job ?

This is my thoughts- that it is passive aggressive. He may be feeling the pressure as the main breadwinner now or the demands to get the promotion so the household income goes back to where it was. Not many households can take a wage drop of £50k pre tax.

If your DH needs to go in last minute he needs to go in.

It seems to me that you need extra backup in case this happens, rather than be complaining about your DHs attitude.

No I'm confident he is 100% behind it, but I think he's taken to assuming that the up-side of me being more available is that he has total liberty to set his own timetable. Because 9 times out of 10 that's fine, he seems to have fallen out of the habit of thinking at all about the 1 time out of 10 that it isn't.

Sounds like there might be some mixed messages going on. I have noticed with DH that if I give him an inch of goodwill he will take a mile. Not because he is a bad person but just because he is inherently a bit more selfish and makes assumptions in his favour.

With us it’s about our dog that only he wanted to get. I have had to make it clear to him over the years that if I do an extra walk say if he has an early meeting, he must ask me in advance so I actually have time to have breakfast before starting work and just because I do something once does not mean I am default person for this task.

Therefore I would suggest that you make your office day sacrosanct and do not change it unless for life threatening emergencies. Or plan B you both find some alternative care for that one day of the week so you don’t need to be flip flopping on what day you go in and you have concrete cover for the 1/10 occasion when there is a genuine clash.

Personally I would go for plan B and get a bit of contingency in place. The cost is worth it for a bit of flexibility and sorting out extra care for one day a week shouldn’t cost you £2k per month. Plus it will stop the arguments.

School holidays were always a pain because of holiday clubs with hours designed for those working at them, not for the working DPs paying for them.

I also think there’s something in there about you convincing yourself that your job is still valuable and important. Of course it is and £50k is a great salary and worth holding onto especially if you enjoy what you do.

Define "need" - he isn't needed to examine a patient, hit something with a hammer or tinker in a server room.

His work is nearly all internal meetings and it generally appears to be a case of reluctance to shift a meeting online or ask for it to be rescheduled.

Lately some of these "emergencies" seem to have arisen because he's not blocked out his diary to allow for him arriving in the office in time for him to have done the school run so it's like "damn, Keith's put in a nine o clock, I need to get in for it". Totally avoidable.

@rookiemere

Personally I would go for plan B and get a bit of contingency in place. The cost is worth it for a bit of flexibility and sorting out extra care for one day a week shouldn’t cost you £2k per month. Plus it will stop the arguments.

Genuine question, what does that actually look like in practice? Because I don't actually know what kind of provision that would be.

I fully agree with this. It says something about our society when wage = importance to this degree.

And let’s not forget about the reams of research that make the point that salaries for professions that are typically more dominated by women are kept artificially lower than those dominated by men. Because patriarchy. And so we end up in this continuous cycle of seeing men as more important than women in every aspect of society.

I don’t know what it looks like for you. I know for me I ended up asking a neighbour at one point because we were snowed in. Actually worked out marvellously as she ended up becoming a childminder for a number of years because of looking after DS.

I also did a lot of inviting for play dates at the weekends - DS was an only so it was good to have company for him - so I had favours to bank for the school holidays and was quite brazen about saying so.

It is hard when they are young and you’re working ( and then they grow up and you get to look after your demanding elderly parents sigh) but I just found it easier to focus on solutions rather than the inbuilt inequalities.

The reality is that as someone earning 3x her salary, his wage is more important to their household than hers.

But - that doesn’t mean she isn’t important to her employer in exactly the same way that he is important to his. And she says one of the big things about her job is the flexibility it offers that her previous one doesn’t.

However, that doesn’t mean that he gets to ignore her contacted days in the office.

YANBU.

DH and I have a similar salary discrepancy. The only diary clashes DH has affect his lunch break. If he’s needed for childcare (rare to be fair) or something at DS’s school he makes sure he keeps the time free.

Yes, if it was a genuinely important meeting you would have to be flexible but it sounds like your DH has slipped into you being the default parent.

He says that, but in Ldn, with more than one child, if you have expectations of a certain standard of living, then life is expensive.
You have already gone from a £250k to a £200 k household. Dropping another 50k is nothing to be sneered at. You won't be below the breadline on his salary, sure. But life is better and financially easier with both your incomes. He needs to remember that. Next time he says that, imply that you want to give up. I wonder what his reaction would be

But it does mean that he gets to ignore her needs because society is telling him that he is more important than she is because he earns more than she does now.

He treated her more like an equal partner when their salaries were comparable but now that she is on a lower salary his treatment of her is already changing. Give it time and he will start doing less domestic labour, less childcare, being less thoughtful etc etc. Because society tells him more money means more important.

And their children pick up on that messaging and perpetuate the behaviour. So it carries on and on.

I disagree that that’s inherently because he’s a man - though I agree that as a man he’s more likely to drop the domestic responsibility ball, though it’s not a given.

In this instance the woman (the OP) is also still a high earner at £60k.

Really, much of this is down to society not valuing motherhood, and thinking that equality for mothers means women behaving exactly like men. But a lot of women think this as well.

Sorry, that’s a bit rambling. Lots of thoughts bouncing around.

I think it’s important to always keep in mind that we live in a patriarchal society. And no matter what, our needs will never be a priority. This is a society designed by men, for men, and as individuals we can either fight against that or give in and accept it. And that has to start in the home and in our own relationships with men.

Yes - and the workplace is the same workplace designed by and for men, and has been tinkered about with here and there once women joined the workforce, but never actually designed for our needs.

But within a private household you’d hope that the patriarchy wouldn’t hold sway by default. Though I daresay I’m being unrealistic!

I think the problem isn't which job takes priority, it's really just about DH thinking he takes priority over you. I strongly suspect he could keep his job and fulfil his family duties if he really wanted to put in a little forward planning. The problem is that he knows you will pick up his slack and he doesn't respect you enough to make it his problem instead of yours. I don't know how to solve that problem.

You don't need a £2k a month Nanny, you just need someone to cover the 1 day a week you have to attend the office. Sure you can afford that from £200k a year.

In fact you don't even need someone all day, just someone to do the school run one day a week. Get an au pair.

His work is nearly all internal meetings and it generally appears to be a case of reluctance to shift a meeting online or ask for it to be rescheduled.

You are completely deluded.

If an employer is paying you £150k per year you don't fuck about moving meetings because wife can't collect the kids. If you want a £150k lifestyle pet you need to either earn it or facilitate it.

How about you get a £150k a year job and hubby can give up his job and collect the kids from school every day.

Not really.

Earning 150k doesn't prevent a man from having his planned WFH day or blocking 2 hours a week to pick his children from school.

I suppose he did all of that before when the OP had the 100k job.

The just need to adjust expectations, mostly the fact that her new job doesn't mean she has 100% flexibility now, only 80%. Which is still significantly enabling his job, but means he still need to listen to her, participate in planning and book those two hours in a week.

That’s not the culture where he works at all. .

Your job should come first because proportionately yours pays more of your fundamental needs. I read a book on feminist economics that made the case for this very well.

My salary is bang on £150k and this is not the case for me at all. And quit it with the patronising ‘pet’

It’s not really about moving meetings though @DiaryofaProvincialLady , it’s him not bothering to remember to block out the time before a meeting is scheduled.