Anyone else in office until 6 with long commute and young kids ? How do you do it ?

[opali]

I just started a new job and stupidly assumed that office hours would be 9-5. They’re not. They’re 9:30-6. 3 times a week.

anyway, I’m sure others have this - what do you do with your kiddies ? Mine are 3 and 5.

my last job was 9-5, but I used to leave at around 4:20 to go and get back in time to pick up my kids from after school club, which finishes at 6.

I didn’t really take a lunch break and caught up on whatever anytime anyway, so it didn’t really make any difference or bother anyone.

the new work place seems super office performatory and of course I don’t want to ask in my first week.

even on my work from home days, I don’t think I can pick up my kids. On my office days I don’t get back home until 7:30 pm.

I have a nanny who helps me of course with drop offs and pick ups, but it’s so expensive and now she’s going to have to stay with them until 7:30 on top of the pick ups and drop offs, 3 times a week.

in my last role, I just asked my manager a couple of weeks in and explained I need to leave a bit early to pick up my kids and his response was that he’s in the same boat, so understands and it’s about the total output and catching up if required.

anyway, has anyone else navigated this ? No one else seems to have kids, so I’m not sure they’ll really get it. They know I have kids and need some flexibility with travel for example as they said they needed a lot of travel and we agreed on a bit less for me.

nearly every woman I work with has the same issue. Some dads too but it is rare as women are the ones supposed to do pick up and drop off while the men just stay at work as long as they want. They just pay someone. Or arrange to work 9-4.30 and then work after bed time. I do that. I do all the drop off and pick up as no family here, I have before school club at 7.45, get to work at 8.30, after school club till 6, so I leave at 5.10-15, dinner homework bath reading, I am back on line at around 8.30 till 11-11.30. A few nights till midnight. Don’t work Friday night or weekends. If I need to travel I always come back at night, even if it means get the last train from Manchester and be home at midnight. I get a nanny then. I push back on any travel where I can’t go back home at night as I don’t have anyone else staying with my kids and paying an overnight nanny would be too much. I try to work from home 2 days a week. I am very good at my job and produce double than any other kid less person, so no one ever complained. But I am exhausted and once I got a nanny to pick up just to be able to go out for drinks and the possibility to be able to stay in the office without the stress of pick up, it was just amazing… be able to mingle around with colleagues not have to rush and actually go for a drink.. it was so great! 10 years till uni!!! And hopefully they can be autonomous earlier!!!

My DD does wraparound - now at school but she did long hours at nursery. DP is self employed and makes sure he leaves for work at 7am so he can be home by 6pm.

It is pretty standard.

Dh is self employed and he does the morning drop offs.

@OP to give you some perspective and a different take on "your children can't possibly not see you 3 nights a week!"

I moved to France recently and family routines here are quite different. It is common for families with 2 parents working in corporate roles to not be able to be back from the office until 7pm or even later - while WFH may have helped in the past, there are now many companies that require employees to be back in the office 3 or even 5 days a week. That's also increasingly the case in the UK.

These families hire a babysitter who can pick up school aged children and mind them at home until their parents are back, and that's anything from 1 to 5 evenings a week. This help is subsidised and after tax credits, it's usually about 5-8€ an hour.

In turn, women tend to be in full time employment a lot more frequently than in the UK, for better or for worse.

But at least, there's a lot less guilt involved for women (because frankly most dads do not ask themselves the same questions ime): the fact is, a lot of families need / want both parents to work full time, which is incompatible with children school hours. It doesn't mean, from what I can see, that French children are traumatised by their parents absence in the week.

So in your case, it does seem like yes you will need a nanny a few evenings a week if you want to make this job work. And that's ok.

I didn’t say it was realistic. However I couldn’t imagine both parents being out the house till 6-7pm every week night is healthy for the children however there’s many that have to/choose to do this so it’s okay it’s not my children or my life so I’m not judging. I’m just grateful for my own self where I can do pick up and drop off and work 5 hours inbetween.

I was stating in my original post that I couldn’t do it because I couldn’t. I’d much prefer to be home with my child and earning the minimum that I do

I'm quite surprised that you didn't look into and discuss all of this before excepting the new role?

We use ASC till 6. Usually I pick up but dh does two pick ups to allow me to stay at the office till 6 twice a week. Our whole cohort of ASC kids are in a similar position with each parent doing 2-3 long days (office or hospital or other healthcare and 2-3 pick ups.
anyone I know with one parent working as late as your dh that parent does drop offs so the other parent can flex their hours earlier.

Sounds dreadful. By 7.30 it’s bed time. As they get older loads of extra curricular stuff will kick in too early eve!

The OPs question was how do you do it?

So people are giving examples from their own experiences of how they do it or did it.

Do you have a spare room? Have you considered an au pair?

They either have a nanny like you, have parents taking turns or have 1 parent pick up the slack.
When I go to the office my husband stays at home and collects our children and vice versa. We only have 1 day when we're both at the office and on that day leave the office whenever I need to make it.
Unfortunately your job is not family friendly, it's hard if no other people have childcare responsibilities.

I think you'll be regarded as a CF for trying to get hour changes so soon after starting and it really shows you up as being very disorganised/ unintelligent to have not checked first.
I think you should suck it up for a few months and then say you are struggling with after school, and are there any flexibility options for you.

Commonly at my DD’s school, the fathers are just as commonly doing the drop offs and picks from wrap around care as the mums. OPs DH won’t help though.

How can there be any possible change to shifts that don’t either increase number of days have an earlier start time or later finish time. We have all had troubles with childcare it’s the way of the world rightly or wrongly.

we have no family and both worked full time with long shifts in high stressed jobs that paid the big bucks. We did this until DD was six built up a nest egg that we are still using (10 years later) to ensure we can live.

I think, to answer your last post about how parents cope logistically, it's, as always, a mix of solutions:
primary age children often attend breakfast club and after school club so parents can get their hours in,
OR, one of the parents works part time (so often still mums rather than dads, annoyingly),
or, people stop work early enough to pick up children, then log on later (after dinner bed bath time) and do another hours/whatever needs doing to get the job done.

It really depends so much on the job, the employer, the situation.

We choose our nursery mainly on location, as adding commute time by having to go in opposite direction to work would have made a difficult day, impossible!

Did you not check the work hours and travel time before taking the job? Or did you just assume you could pretend you could commit to it to get your foot in the door and then start demanding hours to suit you??

Before and after school clubs and nursery's that's how they do it you should of checked the working hours before taking the job !
Your husband is his own boss he absolutely could pick up the slack if he wanted to but he doesn't so he won't!

I used to leave at 7 am and get home around 7 pm. Husband similar.

We paid for a full time nanny who stayed until I got home.

Then when my daughter was around 5 years old and son 7 I managed to get another role that was 100% work from home which was amazing. So I could drop to school.

However I used to pay a childminder to pick up and bring home and then the TA from the school would arrive ( she couldn’t bring my kids back! As had to work until 4!) and she acted as an after school nanny cooking food/ supervising homework and did some cleaning.

That continued until kids could walk home from home alone

My daughter works 9 to as long as it takes, many times that’s 11pm. Her husband similarly. Now both children are in school, the children go to breakfast and after school clubs. One parent finishes to pick them up at 6. That parent then continues to work at home after the children are in bed.

I've always negotiated flexibility at the point of the interview.

Surely if your dh is self-employed that means they can make sure they are available? I have a self-employed dp and we did this.

See If there is any flexibility with your employer, I’m fortunate enough to work in a role where on office days I can go in after the drop off and leave before pickup (if needed and within reason) and log back in before / after from home. It also means I probably give it 110% every day because it gives me what I need to manage family / home life!

I wouldn’t do it. When mine were small I worked less and we managed. My husband is also self employed but had to step up when I wasn’t there and vice versa. I can’t imagine wanting a house or holidays so badly that I’d work the hours you and your husband are working. It’s not a great quality of life.

SAHD was the way for me. There were no child care tax credits or subsidies back then. It was the only way to afford to live with children.

Being a working parent is a tough gig but in none of your responses have you address med the questions about why this is all on you and why your self employed husband gets home so late?

I have just changed jobs (end of first week) and I discussed all this pre application in an “informal” conversation. My application included that I was applying “in line with my current working pattern” eg 30 hours / 4 days even though advertised as full time. I chose/negotiated my start and end times. I chose/negotiated a 30 minute lunch break (usually an hour). So I do 845-445 and I work close to DC school so it means I can drop and collect him from wraparound care. Ime, if there is no one else with kids on the team, they won’t be flexible. But you need to sort this out now.