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.

"Absolutely not", would be my response.

Again, for goodness sake. I’m epileptic but despite having a seizure being the equivalent impact on the body as running a marathon in a few minutes, and taking several days to recover from, I don’t get my knickers in a twist when people say they say they / their children “threw a fit”, because I know they mean figuratively. They are not saying their toddler “throwing a fit” is literally the same impact as having a seizure, they’re saying both things are sudden and difficult. It’s really not that tricky to understand!

Surely it’s up to him to demonstrate the advantages of this move to your family ?

As PP point out, you are not the default parent. Why does he want to opt out of family life? And is prepared to reduce his effective earnings per hour to do so?

How is he selling it to you?

It doesn’t sound worth it imo maybe when your little one is older , you’ve both got lots of time career wise. I’d stay as you are, have a serious conversation with him about it all.

Its the wrong time basically. Currently he has a duty to fulfill the childcare responsibilities that rightly should be shared as you are working full time as well.

He needs to either find another job that is more suitable with childcare responsibilities or apply for other jobs when the child is older. I don't think being "bored" is a good enough reason to fail on his childcare duties.

Has he not even considered that he won't see his child? Won't he miss them?

Not exactly sounding like a good parent is he?

I wouldn’t waste your time OP, some people are just determined to be offended no matter what!

What are your DH’s thoughts on the extra pressure this would put on you and the impact on his time with his family, work/life balance etc? Also how would he feel if it was the other way around and he would have to do all drop offs/pick ups, dinner and bedtime?

Me and my DH also share the load as you and your DH currently do. I’d find it extremely out of character if my DH was seriously considering a job that would impact so much on the family routine and the quality of our family life.

I’d be asking him what his priorities are, and if the answer isn’t you and the children over money (that isn’t needed) then that’s a whole other issue.

What I’m reading from your comments (so Apols if I have got this wrong) he has lined up a new role for himself in which he opts out of family life for more status and a bit more money.

id be really interested to know how he is trying to sell it to you. If you have up until now been parenting roughly 50:50 he would need to have a stronger argument than ‘being a bit bored’ with his current role.

you gave him credit from ‘not really twiging what the impact would be on you and the family as a whole’. I think you are being unreasonably reasonable. Now that you have pointed out that impact, the all the benefit for him is directly at your expense, how does he respond?

I’m pretty cross on your behalf at his attitude.

I hope you get in touch with how unreasonable he is being and not afraid to show him this.

And he claims he can’t even have a fortnight in which to understand what he would be letting you in for? Yeah, right

im so sorry this is happening to you.

So he is prepared to make your life much more difficult, and miss a huge amount of time with his children - to alleviate his boredom? Is he incredibly selfish in other ways?

Yes he has lined up another role for himself, but with my blessing during the interview process on the agreement that we would discuss the offer before he accepted. He’s now got the final offer, and I don’t think the money is significant enough when weighed against the impact on our lives, he feels it could be (no decisions have been made either way, we are still discussing).

He’s not really trying to sell it to me as such, we are still debating the pros and cons. He has, however, said the additional money he brings in will be ‘mine’ to decide what we do with it as a family (considering we don’t ‘need’ it, I can decide whether we put it towards the mortgage, a bigger house, more holidays, more savings, etc.) and I don’t believe he’s being disingenuous in this statement, because for him, he also doesn’t feel we need the extra money, it’s entirely the status of being able to say / knowing he earns X amount (we both come from poor single parent backgrounds, and it’s a matter of pride / confidence boosting for him that he’s been able to earn this much). I would therefore likely use the extra money to make our lives as easy as possible, a cleaner twice weekly instead of once, nanny / personal assistant / etc. but I guess I still feel that we would also be missing out as a family unit in no longer having evenings together. Plus the overall ‘mental load’ shift of becoming the default parent, instead of the shared parent.

We have, however, talked about when our child goes to school I would drop my hours to school hours, and if my husband were to take this higher paid job, I could do that without it impacting our joint monthly take home. Although we always planned I would reduce my hours anyway regardless of him taking a higher paid job as we will have a lot more leftover money each month without nursery fees, as we don’t qualify for any government help due to our income, so we are paying 5 full days a week at nursery that we obviously won’t have to pay when he starts school.

I think you are right, he needs to speak to the new employer and ask by when he needs to make the decision, and try doing, even for just a few days, everything he’s asking of me. Experiencing it firsthand might make him see it differently.

For crying out loud, OP. Just tell us how much extra it is so we can make an informed decision!

You’d look at getting a “personal assistant”

😂that’s enough Mumsnet for me tonight

She doesn’t want to, and has made that clear: if you don’t feel you can give an opinion without that data, there’s a whole site worth of threads out there

So he wants to give up time with his wife and child for a but extra

I think he would be a fool, and you shouldn't be the default parent.

He should wait until your child is older

More money isn't always worth it. Time is money as well. He will be working and losing time with his spouse and family and to me that is not worth it if it'd for a bit more money and won't really effect you financially. Sounds like a demotion even if it's more money

More money isn't always worth it. Time is money as well. He will be working and losing time with his spouse and family and to me that is not worth it if it'd for a bit more money and won't really effect you financially. Sounds like a demotion even if it's more money

Hard no from me. He’s being selfish and not working as a team

I am your husband, l could do a job further away with more money and is more interesting. But it’s not fair on my husband having to pick up the slack every day. But it’s not going to be forever and he needs to bide his time

You absolutely should get a say in whether this role is suitable or not, in your circumstances. It affects your life significantly.

My DH is very much in a provider mindset. He once considered a role that would double his income but would come with the trade off that he would be given 24 hours notice regularly to go overseas for the job, for three weeks at a time. It would have meant I couldn't do or plan anything for myself or the family, and we had a bunch of young kids. Absolutely not.

We’re both consultants (although in very different fields), we’re both additional rate tax payers, and this pay rise would be approximately 20% more per year for my husband. We do have a mortgage, but no other debt, and we have enough savings that one of us could be out of work for roughly two years without impacting our lifestyle. Does that help you make an informed decision?

“Experiencing it firsthand might make him see it differently”

See, this is what I mean about your unreasonablr reasonableness. I’d want my 50:50 parenting partner to be able to see this for themselves….

… in the way that I don’t need to be unfairly executed in order to understand the danger of capital punishment.

do you really want him to restrict his role as a parent to ‘providing’ and leave everything else to you.

My reading , as a complete stranger, is that he is being pretty manipulative, it seems to be making ‘making it Work’ your problem. Promising you anything in order to, well, would it be check out of your current 50:60 family life, score higher status so that he gets a less boring life and you pick up all.the.slack

why isn’t he ashamed ? Or maybe that’s why he can’t quite understand what you are trying to point out. Because he doesn’t want to admit how selfish he is being.

I would not be happy with this. I'm very career oriented and share 50-50 with DH (earn more than him). DH and I are both senior in our respective fields and have a lot of responsibility and stress.

But if you aren't career oriented and want to drop to school hours soon anyway then it's worth considering as your DH could build his career further.

For me I'd rather do your DH's role: get me time on the commute, avoid the miserable grunt work of getting them up dressed to nursery / later school, don't have to deal with the tiredness after school and juggling after school clubs, don't have to feed or bathe them. Just rock up at bed time and give them a cuddle, remain the favourite parent through novelty.

I more just mean someone to help out occasionally, we wouldn’t need (or want) a full time nanny, but another pair of hands on occasion to watch the child, or help prep dinner, pick up shopping etc. would be handy. Especially as neither of us have any family or support of that kind local. We have friends we could call on in emergency situations, we’re not isolated, but no day to day support / babysitting etc.

I understand we are privileged that this would be an option for us, but I just don’t really see the point in outsourcing what I can do myself (I was hesitant to even get a cleaner!)

My husband and I come from similar backgrounds (single parent and not at all financially stable, we had baliffs at our house regularly, needed to use food banks, and I remember walking to school in the snow without a coat, because we couldn’t afford one). I feel so incredibly lucky to have what we have now and would be happy to stop pursuing ‘more’, whereas for my husband he wants to get as far away as possible from his experience, and so more and more and more money makes him feel like he’s doing that.

it seems to be making ‘making it Work’ your problem. Promising you anything in order to, well, would it be check out of your current 50:60 family life, score higher status so that he gets a less boring life and you pick up all.

That stands out to me as well. He will now work and you will be responsible for the rest. Yes you can use the extra money, but it will still be your responsibility. He should be considering how he can do his share, not dumping it all on you to sort.

It’s not that I’m not career oriented, we are both senior and respected in our fields, perhaps me more so as I have some papers published / career awards / industry recognition etc. it’s just I think we have enough, whereas my husband is a bit of a status chaser. (I know where that comes from for him, and I’m not criticising that, just stating that’s how it is for him). And that’s where we differ, we don’t need the extra money, but it would give my husband a sense of personal pride to be earning X amount, as well as a slightly more interesting role, but I don’t think that it’s worth it for the impact on our family life. I honestly don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer here, as what works for one family, might not work for another, and we all place different value amounts on different things. It’s just an interesting debate, and one I am enjoying reading and understanding the perspectives of others on.

Yes, you’re right, by ‘giving’ me the money, he is making it my responsibility to sort the extra bits we ‘need’ to not have this impact my life negatively. That’s an interesting point, and one I will think on! As the additional mental load is of course part of the impact! Thank you for your insight.