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

Do you properly share finances or have seperate bank accounts and then put a portion of income in joint?

If it all goes into a shared pot you both have access to then maybe his job and salary has slight priority if your working as one financial entity for the family pot. However if you both keep seperate finances then your job definitely has exactly the same importance as his.

Quite frankly even if you do pool resources I would still consider your career of equal importance, if you enjoy your job and want to keep it why shouldn't it be a priority. £50k is still a bloody decent wage (even though many mumsnetters would consider it a pittance 😅)

You being more flexible does not mean that he does not have to communicate with you to make sure the schedule works for everyone.

Simple tell dh these are you office days. You dont have flexibility now due to not meeting office days (because of him) you can't move them so he needs to work around them

This.

My salary was leas than half of dh's during ds's childhood, even allowing for the fact I worked part time . I was responsible for everything child twlated on every day that I didn't work but my job has very little flexibility on the days I did have to work with no working from home allowed. Dh"s job was much more senior and so he had more flexibility about when and where he could work. Sometimes not but very often he did. This meant that he often covered when ds was ill on my work days. He sometimes worked from home or rearranged things to suit himself

Obviously there were occasions i had to take time off as he could not cover my work days but there was always a discussion about the possibility and it was never just all my job to cover everything by default. I just would not have stood for it. I am just too selfish. Luckily DH is not that sort of man at all

I think this is it - I'm OK with the fact I do more than 50% now. But it's getting to a point he just assumes I can be endlessly flexible.

So tomorrow - does it really matter I'm not in the office? Not really. I'm supposed to be, and I've ended the day saying "see you in the office tomorrow" to my team so it looks flaky. But I can still get the job done. Technically I'm not meeting my contract for office days but it's not so bad it's attracting management attention.

But it really grates when I'd gone out of my way to confirm with DH that I'm going to the office tomorrow, that he can work around the childcare drop-offs and pick-ups and for him to simply announce he's going into the office tomorrow as if that conversation never happened.

I don't think I'm imagining things to say that never would have happened when we both had "big" (ish) jobs but he just seems to think my new job counts for nothing. I actually care much more about my new job - I've got great colleagues, the work is meaningful, I want to do it to the best of my ability. But it doesn't feel like it carries any weight because I'm not bringing home the bacon.

Let's be honest, nobody is going to lose their job over switching office days to let their wife get to office/important meeting, picking up kids as a set arrangement etc. It's just an excuse. I was the main earner for many years (triple my husband), but worked closer to home so I did majority of school runs. My husband now earns x2 more than me, but since covid he can work at home a few days a week, so he does school run on those days. He manages a big team, and it's great that he can say "Leaving early guys. Got to get the kids". It creates a really positive atmosphere where family is deemed as important, and his team love working for him and are highly productive. It's about partnership, flexibility, and just being a decent parent and human being. Nothing to do with salary. Your husband doesn't need to be working every hour of the day, it sounds like he has poor time management skills and just doesn't want to be part of family life.

I'm in this situation and it sucks.

I presume the OP can't afford to stop working & wouldn't want to anyway. Mortgage rates going up has made life really tricky.

Before Brexit an au pair would have solved this nicely, just covering the bit between aftercare & the commute home.

I'm thinking of applying for a higher-paying job in another country - I'm practicing the line that the family needs my income, since it's more than what DP earns. I'm sure he'll listen and will be delighted to become the remote worker doing the school runs.

Have you got a shared calendar @OpalFruitsAreBetter? I set one up with DH when I went from Samsung to apple and it’s a game changer. Amazing how quick the denials of previous conversations stop as well when there’s a diary entry in the shared calendar too! Might help a bit.

Yes his job does come before yours

his job enabled you to take a massive pay cut and a more family friendly flexible role. Now you are being asked to be more flexible you aren’t happy about.

he doesn’t have the luxury of experiencing “burnout” and then quitting now - he has supported you through it by taking on the financial load for the family

if he is earning what you say then you can afford the childcare to enable you to meet your office expectations

The thing is, it’s not about ‘worth’, salary, importance, it’s about agreeing to something and then breaking the agreement. That is disrespectful.

Quotes

I'd double checked with him yesterday this didn't conflict with any plans of his. He's just walked in and announced he has to be in tomorrow, so I can't go in. I have a minimum contracted number of days in the office and I'm currently not meeting it because the last few weeks this has kept happening.

I'd gone out of my way to confirm with DH that I'm going to the office tomorrow, that he can work around the childcare drop-offs and pick-ups and for him to simply announce he's going into the office tomorrow as if that conversation never happened.

It doesn’t matter if it was OP’s work commitment or a day at a Spa, she checked and he then moved the goalposts without even checking with her if she could accommodate him. If he’s so important then he should be in a position to say ‘No, I can’t do that – prior commitment’.

I think given the very significant difference in salaries then yes, it makes sense that your work accommodates his. However, he shouldn’t be diminishing your contribution - you do work, and sometimes putting your job second will cause you issues that he should acknowledge. He should at least be grateful that you are doing all you can to help him continue to be successful and earning a high salary. You aren’t some sort of slacker!

Exactly. I grew up at a time when middle class women didn’t work and even when women did work, men’s jobs were ALWAYS “more important”. Men always banged on about women spending “their” money. We women of the 70s and 80s fought hard for the right for women to be regarded as equal economically. And here we are all these years later still accepting that a man’s job is more important because he earns more or simply because he says it is. Relative earnings are neither here nor there. What’s the point of being in a family, in a partnership, if you are not on each other’s team? I despair at some of the answers on this thread. She’s earning 50k for god’s sake. It’s not a hobby job. They made an agreement and he went back on it because he earns more. As a PP said, I’d like to see his face if she gives up her job since the family couldn’t live without his money, but could without hers.

You need to tell him that x are your days in the office and he's got to manage his work around that, stop putting your job at risk, people will get fed up of it..

Enough of the inverted commas trivialising of burnout. It was the worst time of my life.

He's unreasonable. Stand your ground. Don't get a reputation as awkward and inflexible at your new job. Also don't get him used to the inequality. You still need your own career.

I think the key part is that you chose to reduce your income so that you could inherently become the default parent. Seems like it isn’t quite working out as you’d have pictured but I think it’s important to prioritise the higher earner in this scenario. Instead of this demotion, you might have done better to negotiate part time hours or flexible working so that it wasn’t such a massive cut.

However it seems like you need to sit down and work out your logistics together each week. My husband and I have a joint calendar to note everything both of us need to do (both work full time and have two kids to drive in circles). We work out how to balance everything together. He earns more than me but only 20% or so, we need both our salaries.

if he’s working this much can you outsource more? Get wraparound care, build an office pod if the home working doesn’t work with both of you, etc etc?

I was actually saying it's OK to take a step back for the family (for the man or the woman) because it IS a partnership , my Dad was a SAHD, my BIL was a SAHD and I'm a SAHM, I don't want my young child in nursery 40+ hours a week. I'm doing it by choice, my husband and I were both high earners, although he is slightly higher than me. He would actually love to be a SAHD but it makes more sense for him to work as he does earn more. It doesn't have to be equal all of the time as long as there is mutual appreciation and respect. FWIW we have a joint account, I spend what I want, when I want and all assets are also owned equally by both of us. I agree OPs job doesn't sound trivial and her DH shouldn't be chopping and changing things last minute, bit surely that can be resolved with a conversation

Would your work be happy with two half days in the office instead of one full day if the hours are the issue? I think it’s very frustrating when colleagues have this sort of flakiness to be honest so I’d figure out a way to be more reliable for your coworkers before it becomes a problem.

So yet again the little lesser earning woman has to make changes because her husband hasn’t got the balls to say ‘I can’t do that, prior commitment’.

For 200K a year you can easily afford to pay for somebody to pick up kids from school(s) and feed them etc so you meet your office commitments. I think this is very much a first world problem and YABU.

Well it depends on the job, right? Not all roles you can do that. That's usually why jobs pay differently because some require more skills or commitment. It's not actually a woman thing, so you're getting annoyed for the wrong reasons

But she now earns £50k as she changed roles which us a significant difference

Okay,

So yet again the little lesser earning person has to make changes because their partner hasn’t got the guts to say ‘I can’t do that, prior commitment’.

I've done that in the past despite earing twice what OH did. She checked, he agreed, he broke the agreement without even asking her if she could rearrange. He rode roughshod.

From memory he’s on £150,000 so surely is in a position to say 'no - prior commitment' without getting the sack ?

Sorry, I still don’t understand why it’s all about earnings and not about breaking an agreement.

I don’t know the details. At my job I can’t do that - if I need to go in, it’s my responsibility to do so for any of my contracted hours. I work from home 2 days a week typically, but not always - hybrid working isn’t contractual and no one needs to give me notice if I’m needed. My husband works from home most of the time, but if something breaks he needs to be available on site with no notice at all. So it depends on what’s contracted and what is required for both of them. If he has a last minute, high demand job without a contractual right to hybrid working, they need to collectively work out those logistics.