AIBU to ask husband not to take job that would make me solely responsible for childcare during the working week?

[Veganornotvegan]

My husband and I both work full time 5 days per week Monday to Friday, typical office hours. We both do a combination of in office and WFH (average 2 days in office / 3 days WFH per week) but exact days vary week by week depending on our diaries. Both of our offices are approx 20 minutes away.

Our toddler son is in nursery approx 10 minutes away.

We currently split drop offs and pick ups between us 50/50 (I typically do pick ups, he typically does drop offs) but we communicate daily on this if we want to swap for any reason and this works well for us.

My husband wants to take a job which would be a little extra money (not significantly more, and whilst we are not rich by any stretch, we are comfortable (and not in the middle class way where comfortable means rich! Just comfortable)) but accepting the job would mean he would be out of the house 7.30am until 7pm every day. These longer hours would mean that I would have to do all nursery drop offs and pick ups, as well as all dinners, and bedtime prep for our toddler (which we currently split). I would also have to do all kids sick days as I would be significantly closer to the nursery than my husband, so it wouldn’t be fair to expect our child to wait 90 minutes to be picked up by dad, when I am 10 minutes away (nursery is in between our house and my office, so whether I’m WFH or in the office I’m still only 10 minutes away.).

WIBU to ask my husband not to accept this new job? As a household we would walk away with only a little extra money, which arguably we don’t need, but I would have to take on more of the childcare responsibilities. My husband isn’t unhappy with his current job, he’s just bored, and this new one would be more interesting for him.

He's going to make your life harder and limit your career (because you'll have no second parent backup for working later/ starting early/ not having to leave every single time nursery or school call because a child is sick) because he's bored at work.

He thinks the new job will be more interesting- but he's never done the three hour commute day in, day out to know whether that will make him hate the new job after six months.

That's what it comes down to.

He should keep looking nearer home, but meanwhile ask him whether he thinks making your life more stressful to make his slightly less boring is fair.

We are both probably at the top of our careers now, unless we wanted to become directors / extremely senior (which neither of us would want because of the stress and 24/7 nature of those types of roles, at least this new job would be a longer day, but wouldn’t require weekend working for example). Any career moves would be sideways for us, with limited possible salary increases.

Even with the extra commute costs, and longer days, his ‘hourly’ salary would work out to be a little more than he’s on now. However, it’s not that much more. I guess if we were talking double what he’s earning now then maybe that would be a different conversation, everyone’s got a price, right? Seemingly his ‘price’ is lower than mine.

Gosh - loads of alarm bells. Your husband is almost certainly under estimating the impact commuting time will have on his own happiness (ONS did an extensive study on Commuting and Personal Wellbeing in 2014- Google it). This is on top of the negative impact it will have on your wellbeing, the realtionship and the family generally.

As PP said - once you factor in additional travelling time, his earnings per work related hour is probably going to drop. There is no guarantee that the new job will be more interesting in reality - all sounds lovely at interview.

Exactly how much more money is involved?

I feel like the only way I’d be considering this is if the extra money could fund an in home nanny/housekeeper to pick up the slack 🤷‍♀️

I think you need to frame it as what benefit would this change bring to the family. It sounds like it is actually very little and you will be losing a lot. I think this should hopefully get him thinking about the needs of the family rather than simply why he might like.

Edited for typo

I don’t want to give an exact figure, as money is ‘worth’ different amounts to different people, and is ‘worth’ more in some areas of the country vs others. However, what I will say is that even with factoring in the additional costs of commuting, he’d walk away with in the region of around 20% more.

Seemingly his ‘price’ is lower than mine.

That's because he's NOT paying the price. YOU are.

It works for him. He gets a more interesting job, and more money. And he no longer has to do school runs or bed time. This is not a PRICE he's paying, it's a bonus.

Don't do it! It's really difficult being solely responsible for the children.

I think it's a bit rubbish that he's just expecting you to pick up the slack. And would only get worse when you have school hours/term dates to deal with too. (or if you have another child).

Absolutely no fucking way. And I'd be raging that it was just assumed that I'd be picking up more drop offs, pick ups, childcare, chores, cooking, sick days etc etc just so that he could have something a bit more interesting. Anything that affects the family significantly should be discussed and agreed with the people that are responsible for the family. Both me and my husband have turned down very decent job opportunities because it would have been too much for the other person due to travel or commuting involved (and also we actively wanted to see the kids in the evenings etc). That's one of the shit parts of being a parent.

It's also about the general mentality. When my husband or me are away, we will do our best to cover what we normally do. Eg my husband will do extra pick ups and drop offs for neighbours kids before he is off, and ask the neighbours to do some of his share when he is away. I do more cooking than him so will so some batch cooking before I'm going away. As we both recognise its tough to work full time and do all the kids stuff yourself. When my husband did seriously consider a much higher paying job with more travel one time, he researched after school nannies to see how it would work. I'd be asking your husband why he thought this was your problem to solve rather than finding a solution himself to cover his share of pick ups, drop offs, etc etc that he was proposing no longer to do. Any gain in salary is likely to be offset by how tired and busy you are and potentially having to drop your own hours or outsource more help.

Lastly...don't mean to end on a negative message, but we found the logistics harder when they started school. Both our kids have evening hobbies, various school events (open mornings to share work, performances, parents evenings) that they want parents to attend, one of our kids had health issues that meant a lot of popping into school for a time. They go to holiday clubs in school holidays which often start at 9 and finish at 3. We can only manage all this by sharing it between us, trading favours with neighbours and friends etc, we couldn't both work full time and have just one of us manage all the logistics of primary school kids without something giving (we already have a cleaner).

So if he brings home £2Kpm he’d clear an extra £400pm or £4800 per year.

That’s significant.

I think you’re unreasonable to say ‘no you can’t take the job’. I think you’re reasonable to ask ‘what is his plan for his pick ups/drop offs / bedtimes / sick days / etc’. I don’t think you should assume you’re the default because that then makes you the default. You need to make him see you’re not the default and he needs to come up with and own the plan. Ie maybe he can arrange childcare once or twice a week, batch cook on weekends, hire and manage a cleaner. But he needs to drive it and more importantly he needs to know he’s driving it.

I think you are completely fair here. My DH works 1.5 hours away and i work 10 minutes away so it was just automatically assumed that I was solely in charge of drop off, pick up, tea and bedtime, and all sick days and doctors appointments.

It is absolutely draining and really unfair. Especially when DD has back to back sicknesses (thanks winter) and I go back to work for a day, hardly get caught up with the shitstorm left behind at work, and then have to go back off again.

My employer is understanding, and although we have a strict no WFH policy i try and do bits and bobs in the evenings when shes off just to keep things moving, but after caring for a sick child all day there isn't much left in the tank.

I know that is a lot of money, but we are incredibly fortunate that we don’t need it. We are in a very lucky position where we can consider things beyond just base salary, things like commute time, family time, work/life balance, etc. I know it’s a privileged position, but we can think beyond just the figure at the end of the month.

i’d say no. As someone who was lumped with all the childcare for years; it’s unfair

I would need to write it down like a for and against type of thing. When something is in black and white in front of you it becomes more real.

I mean the pluses would be your DH being (potentially) happier in his role with more money but that'd be it. The Againsts would be huge - mostly impacting you but also DH missing that quality family time which frankly you can't put a price on. Tricky one!

That would be virtually impossible around school timings.

I’d literally need an extra 20k a year in pocket to make it worth it. Enough to employ help

the money is irrelevant if he's not understanding that he can't just dump extr responsibilities onto his wife.

It sounds like though your husband would find the job interestIng, and would earn more, as a family you would have less time together and you would be carrying a greater burden.
It sounds like, as you don't ‘need’ the extra salary, overall your family’s quality of life would go down with this change.
Can you sit down with him and physically write a pros and cons list so you have all the issues visible?

Unless you’re actually a single parent, please don’t say this it’s so cringe. Single parents do not have a partner working at the office but available for disasters, emergencies. sharing the financial and emotional burden.

Seems like a total ‘no-brainer’ to me… and I think you already know it.

Quality of life and family time together is much more precious than additional money, if you already have enough.
He will be able to have more choices work wise when your child is older and at school. Until then he just needs to suck it up. It is good to have investigated different job opportunities, but he has not looked at the realistic overall picture.

I hope for your sake he does not resent you for it, but it’s fairly obvious. He cannot take this new job.

YANBU. If you wanted to take that job, I'm sure he would have plenty of problems with it! He is a parent and he needs to take that into consideration when making decisions about his professional life.

So, if it had been you who'd applied for a similar sort of role, being out of the house for those sorts of hours requiring your dh to pick up the slack, what would his response have been?
Although I'm guessing many more women than men would not have even contemplated the idea.