OH wants me to leave PT job to work FT....

[GreenLemonHedgehog]

My OH wants me to leave my part time job, it doesn't pay that well although it's term time. I do 3 days pw tutoring. Start at 9 and finish at 2.30. This gives me enough time to collect the kids/school run morning and afternoon. We have 4 children, they are at primary school.

My 2 days off; one day is spent on washing, housework, errands. The other day is spent volunteering for a SEND organisation. I advise parents on the phone, help with the EHCP process and other things. I plan to move into a local authority role in a year's time, which has scope for progression as kids get older, better salary and flexible/home working with liklihood of term time working. (I had an interview recently for this very job, it went really well but they needed a little more experience and asked me to keep in touch.)

OH and I agreed this was a good plan and both happy with it. Now he's exploding,
telling me to leave my job and just get a better paid job anywhere else, doing anything. He feels weighed down as the breadwinner and wants more from me financially. He's told me he expects me to bring in 2k pm to lift the burden. I'm no where near that. I have an 8y gap in employment due to children and had a rough time with my MH during that time. I've just started dipping back in and now feel completely responsible for his satisfaction with life and money.

I've explained I'm trying to help as much as I can, and my wage goes into the pot. I've explained we need to think about school runs, him wanting me to just go and find anything else will mean unlikehood of term time working, or hours not compatible with school, who will care for the children? 4 is a lot. The school run wrap around care but it is expensive, £400 pm for 4 children.

I want to contribute more but I'm struggling with his expectations, which I feel are quite demanding and unrealistic. It's caused a huge argument and he is now passively aggressively sending me jobs to apply for.

He says I'm not doing enough to contribute financially, I feel like he only sees money as worth and can't see anything else. He works very hard, long hours/early mornings, I know he is feeling burnt out. We've gone through finances and cut backs.

I feel like I'm juggling a lot already. I get the feeling he resents me, feeling I have the 'easy ride,' which I don't feel is fair at all.

When I try to explain my feelings or respond to his views, I'm dismissed and 'talking boll***s.'

AIBU???

My Ex-DH was suddenly desperate for me to get a full time job many years ago, and also cited the financial burden on him after being happy and encouraging me to work part time for many years.

Turned out he was having an affair and wanted me to have a full time income for when he left because it would reduce what he needed to provide to me and give him more money for himself!

That was one of the minor duplicitous things he did, he also escalated with physical threats and abuse.

I did go back to full time work after we split on my own terms. Not saying this is true for you but don’t be bullied into it without doing all the sums and having a plan for childcare that works for you and where you both pull your weight.

You have to be realistic that 4 primary age children will dictate your earning potential. I think you’ve done well to get a term time school hours type post. It also sounds like your husband is not imagining himself doing any of the school runs.

You working term time only has a value. If you had to factor in childcare you could be looking at £50 per child per day for holiday clubs.

so if you had to go full time, you’d be looking at needing 6-7 weeks of camp over a year (and that assumes your husband takes leave to cover some holiday. That could easily be £6-7k and that would need to come our of taxed income so you’d need to earn an additional £8-10k just to pay for holiday childcare.

If you’re then factoring wrap around, mine has been £17 for 3-6 per child. Full time at 39 weeks that would be £3315k per child. Yours potentially sounds a bit cheaper but I think you need to work out the sums over a year and show him what the cost of childcare actually looks like.

4 primary aged kids for me would cost around £20k in childcare to work full time. By the time you’ve factored in pension contributions, ni and basic rate tax, you’d be looking at needing a £30k salary increase just to break even.

I would tell him to sod off, literally and metaphorically but I don't walk in your shoes and I don't know your feelings. One way of looking it is to put his nonsense aside and consider that working full time will be good for you in the sense that you can progress in your career, be financially self sufficient and stop doing all the housework. I would embrace it but and it's a very big but he has to do his fair share. I would write it down, as he seems to delight in belittling you in conversations, and tell him what he will need to do because you can't do all the housework and see to the children. I wonder why he's pushing this now? Has his business taken a nose dive?

@GreenLemonHedgehog

Hey - well done! 4 kiddos is tough & twins are next level. I know I have a set 🤪. I also have a third and have worked between pregnancies.

There is a lot of choice about how you spend your days and what you see is best for you and the kids. Which is normal and good. But your husband doesn’t have any of that luxury. There is no choice in how he spends his time or deals with the pressures he faces.

Things have changed now the kids have gone to school, so this is why he is expecting more now. It’s logical - he hasn’t pressured you before it seems.

If the roles were reversed - would you be happy. Ie if you had lack of time with kids and for volunteering / time at home? Would that suit you or is it that you don’t want to give up the choice of how you spend your time.

It is hard now to see how you can move forward - but way leads onto way in a work setting and being a partner as well as a parent is important.

Re working in a school - that is absolutely do-able - kids can go into breakfast club and you can hire a mothers help to pick them up and bring them home. It’s only a few hours a day and your husband can agree to fund it as a condition of you working.

If you split you will have to work more - so best to see how you can flex further now rather than wait another year.

The job market at the moment isn't great. There's a lot of people competing for work, people applying for many jobs and not getting a peep out of employers. Even if you could magic a full-time job up tomorrow, how will school runs look? School holidays? Inset days? Children unwell? At the moment you are working, plus managing the children and I bet all (or a very high proportion) of the household chores. You have a solid plan in place, to seek better paid employment as the children become older. Have you discussed the above with your husband? Is he going to be prepared to stay off work to look after a sick child? Is he going to use holiday to look after his children during the school holidays, whilst you're working? You can't simply get a full-time job without any clear plan on how this is going to work. If your husband is expecting you to work full-time, manage the children and the house, then he needs a metaphoric slap around the head!! I understand that he works hard, works long hours etc, and he's the main breadwinner. Up and down the country, that's the same in a lot of families. Your husband should be appreciating the fact that you have been there for your 4 children, that you've taken on the lions share of household chores/parenting etc, so he's been able to work full-time uninterrupted! You need to sit and have a conversation with him, a calm one and ask him how he sees school runs/holidays/sickness fitting in with you both working full-time? Why is he now frantic for you to be working full-time? Is there something that's triggered it or is he worried of redundancies at work for example?

I think your plan sounded sensible but if it needs some accelerating, exploding at you isn’t helpful.

if additional tutoring isn’t an option, while you wait for the volunteer experience related job, can you do something else entirely in your spare day? Or better, at the weekend so he can take on the 4 kids himself!

I said up thread that wraparound care can be £200 a month but I meant per child. That's what DD was paying two years ago for one child and not 5 days a week.
So for 4 children and then holiday cover OP really needs a good wack to cover the costs.

You’ve organised your life brilliantly, particularly in terms of your progression to a better paid job. 4 children at primary school is just a huge amount of work and organisation, paying someone else to do this would cost an absolute fortune.

You need a long hard chat about everything and ignore those who say about the housework.

First off say to him grandparent help isn’t a long term solution they will burn out especially with 4 - can he help with school runs etc or recognise the cost
then admin and housework yiu are happy to some extent for him to take over for you to work as well if he wants a better balance

the solution isn’t to pile more on your plate.

because the answer if both parents works full time is to outsource and that makes sense when finances allow but do yours?

All of the options here just basically pile more and more onto you so you can give more financially whilst he stays the same and that doesn’t work

He sounds like my other half was when my kids were little.

He just did not get how much work was involved in running the home and raising kids. I worked 30 hours a week from home. It was for minimum wage but I needed to be home because he thought that because he earned so much more than me he never had to lift a finger with either the kids or the house, including no cooking, bedtimes etc.

Not even willingly/happily taking the kids while I was working when he had his 13 weeks off work. Not even for a day or two. He always complained about having to do it in his down time.

Every time he said that I should go out to work I would show him that it would cost £800 a month for a childminder to do wrap around care. So any extra money I earned would be swallowed up by childcare. He could never get it!!! Or he didn't believe me that it would cost that much.

I also said that we'd probably have to get a cleaner if he wasn't prepared to do his half at a cost of £100-£150/month.

He got all school hols off so I said that he could run the home and look after the kids in the hols to save money on childcare. He didn't like that idea!

Basically, he wanted me to earn more but still do everything around the house and take care of everything to do with the kids. Not a fucking chance!

It was because he never lifted a finger so he had no concept of how much work it is raising kids and running a home. I think he thought I just sat down drinking cups of tea all day and meeting other mums!

Your OH sounds just like mine...

I think having one breadwinner and a sahp/part timer only works if both are happy with it. He's clearly not, maybe he'd like to go part time but can't

This?

Having read your updates, I can understand why you went for the set-up that you've done. Again, well done and sending you huge amounts of respect. I found juggling two kids (with a nearly 7yr age gap between them) hard at times. God knows how you (or others!) do it with 3-4, all close in years.

I think you have a good plan with regard to getting back some good work experience. I understand the stress of being a breadwinner (I am one, and have always been one!)....but also if your OH isn't considering who is going to step in with childcare, and how it will be funded, then I don't think he's thinking this through at all. Easy for him to assume that your (and his!) mums will step up to the plate...but you guys can't rely on that - particularly if they're not in good health.

I would - in your position...

• cost up childcare assuming that there is no one to help. So, childcare to cover 4 kids during term time (wraparound)....plus during holidays. Who would look after the kids on INSET days? I'd stick costs in for that too (I remember paying £130 a day for my two for that when they were both at school). Who would take time off work to cover if kids are sick/get sent home from school sick? Cost up price of nanny vs childminder vs wraparound vs holiday club setting for 4 kids. Note the times that these settings are open/available for childcare. List up the (insane amount of jobs/mental load stuff) you do each day/week. Who would be responsible for what? I get that he is stressed, I really do, but I don't think he has thought through the logistics properly.

• see what you would need to earn that would not only cover the £2K/month your OH expects you to earn, but also cover at least half of the above childcare costs on top of that. Compare that with what you are qualified to do. Present that to your OH. Because I'm betting that those jobs (ones that pay that amount, that you are qualified to do!) are rare as hens teeth, unless you're already qualified/experienced enough to do them. There was a point when my two were little, when my childcare bill wiped most/all of my earnings, and I was living off credit cards. I was a B5 nurse at the time...and only one setting in my area covered the hours of my shift pattern (I dropped the kids off at 6:30am and picked them up at 8:30pm) - at a cost of £220 a day (ten years ago). Nursery was open 7:30am and closed 6:30pm (about £65 a day). Wraparound only covered from 8am and up to 6pm (IIRC £25 a day for my DC1). My shifts were/are 7am start, 8pm finish. I live in a commuter town where there are 3 hospitals in the area (one large NHS one, and two slightly smaller private hospitals)....but naff all provision for covering hospital day shifts.

Your twins have just started school - are they on the weird "settling in" schedule that a lot of primary schools have for reception kids in the first 2-3 weeks (I remember the schools my DC went to had these: just morning for first week, then stay til after lunch for second week, then stay whole day from third week)? Get them settled into school and plan going forwards in the meantime. If the volunteering gives you additional training/CPD/experience, then I'd keep going with this (it's cheaper than retraining). Once kids settled then you can always speak to your manager about wage increase, and working an extra day. You could also, advertise to do some tutoring at evening/weekend time to get hours up a bit. I say that with the caveat that your OH takes on doing more about the house and with the DC. I don't know why, but I have the feeling that he's not considered that he would be needing to step up. Fair enough when you've been SAHM, but not when you're working/earning.

Also you planning extra work etc, assumes that OH is hands on when possible. Is he? I know plenty of guys who do share childcare/housework etc with their wives/partners. But my XH didn't (yes he'd had a big accident just before DC2 was born and couldn't work but I couldn't rely on him at all - he was ok to go awol, binge drink etc but not a story for this thread)...and I know others don't either (you read about plenty on MN!!). A couple I know - very good friends of mine - she is the higher earner, he works in a school on a lower wage. But his job is term time only, which has been a boon for them during holidays/weekends due to not needing to worry about childcare costs - that has offset the lower wage he brings in. He also cooks/cleans/parents etc. Once their DC are more independent, then he said he would look at changing roles. My DB and DSIL have a fab set up, as do many of my other friends. All working, sharing home/childcare responsibilities etc. But they're all good teams with good support of each other etc....and that is vital.

I think your current situation is reasonable with four children and a plan for progression.

Yes your DH might be feeling burnt out, but he needs to talk with you so you can come up with a plan together, not this.

This is one of my biggest issues with feminism - motherhood is completely devalued and our worth is only our pay check.

He doesn’t value the parenting you’re putting in quite clearly. So agree to full time but sit down calmly and explain you’ll need:

• Childcare wraparound and cost.
• Cleaners and costs - currently this is your free labour and you won’t be able to keep up.
• More convenience food and costs as you’ll be working full time with limited free time so not the home chef now.

And do reiterate to him that as you’ll both be working full time he’ll have to do 50:50 childcare at night so doing the kids dinner, bath, bed etc.

Men like him can’t have it all ways where we’re bringing home the bacon and frying it too.

I haven’t read the full thread OP but I think you have massively underestimated the cost of wrap around care. Mine is about £500 a month for two kids to attend before and after school club four days a week. I suspect you costs will be at least £1,000 for four kids.

well, your DH is not being unreasonable to want to share the financial load. But by the sound of it, you keep the house going and you are the DC's primary carer.

If you go full time, would he be happy to share the home load equally? Doing half of the households/shopping/washing/school runs/school holidays childcare or would he be happy to pay a share in proportion to his income to fund wrap around and school holiday childcare?

I understand that you want to take steps to develop professionally but I equally understand his annoyance with the fact that money is tight and you work for free (volunteer for SEND org).

She’d be better getting a Nanny which would swallow her wage up 2bf. Some men just want it all and have no understanding of the hidden labour Mothers do. it’s a classic “the divorce came out of nowhere” situation.

Is he off weekends and evenings?
I'd keep at what you're doing (maybe increase the tutoring by one day), still part time hours for school runs. And then find an evening/weekend part time job in a supermarket or something local.

He's obviously feeling pressure financially and not communicating it well. But is he expecting you to earn and do everything else you already do?

In your situation I'd 100% be looking for a role that took me out of the home while he is home, giving him caring and housework responsibilities. That eliminates the need to pay out for childcare, doesn't rule out the other role you're interested in applying for in the future, brings in extra cash (and potentially food shop discount) and could give him some appreciation for what you're doing while you're not working.

Agree with this. A day for housework and a day for volunteering would be lovely but simply not possible for many of us. Obviously, DP has gone the wrong way about suggesting it, but it doesn't sound like he's being entirely unreasonable - many mothers work full-time, particularly once children have all started school. If there are money pressures, I can see why he's getting stressed.

@GreenLemonHedgehog would increasing the hours you spend tutoring be an option? I would be cautious of putting too much hope on the SEND volunteering turning into a paid position given you've already been interviewed. Unfortunately, the suggestion of 'keeping in touch' isn't a guarantee by any means.

So it's perfectly acceptable for OP to work full time, do all the chores and care for 4 children?
Because if you have read her full opener, I doubt her partner would step up. It is obvious the homecare and looking after the children would fall on her shoulders. I've never understood why a woman is expected to do the same number of work hours as her man but then get the added bonus of husework, cooking and cleaning if her partner chooses not to share.
It's bloody hard enough when you are a SAHM.

The problem is though that once you start having kids and think it is easiest at the beginning to have that kind of divide stopping having that kind of divide is nearly impossible.

DH and I were fairly even in our jobs when our first was born but over the years of part time (and I have always worked) his stock had risen and mine has stagnated so that now my earnings are the same and he earns 4x more.

But he is also aware that me working more and out of the office impacts him - we tried after my redundancy and it didn’t work. All of the other stuff that comes with it needs sharing and actually that made his life much harder than when I wasn’t.

At the moment my freelance work is diminishing (thanks AI) and there have been some job opportunities looked at but it is hard because things need to move around.

The OP having made the sacrifice can’t just waltz back in and if she did (into teaching I assume) the impact would be high.

what he wants isn’t realistic and is to put everything onto his wife so discussions are needed as to what sacrifices he will make and wants to make

The obvious solution is for you to stop the unpaid volunteering, because you can't afford that, and tutor 5 days a week instead. You don't need a day while children are in school for housework, most working parents simply have to fit it in around.

I'd be looking to move company as well, tutoring usually earns more like double minimum wage if not more, you should be able to earn more.

Do your costings, have it in black and white. Will he be covering the cost of childcare or would he be expecting you to seeing as you do everything else?

Tell him if you are to go back to work full time then he will have to share the load. He will need to do some of the school runs, some of the housework, washing, shopping, appointments, etc.

If he wants things equal show him exactly what that will mean

It sounds as if he wants a solution to his burn out and stress. In his mind, you taking on a well paid role would solve that. However he is so stressed he's not thinking clearly and is not listening to reason. Of course you can't immediately solve his problem like this.
How else could his situation get eased because it's not fair to place all the blame on you.
Does he have anyone else in his life who could talk to him? Friend? Dad?

I'd extend my hours to 5 days as 4 kids and 2 adults needs a lot of money and he must be under a lot of pressure. A day volunteering is a luxury most can't afford. A day for housework is nice but most cope without...on the understanding he has to do more.