To feel jealous of work colleagues

[Sliverofdarkness]

I've taken a career break and have gone back to work after several years out with the kids. I didn't have much choice in the matter as the kids were close in age so childcare was so expensive that there was no advantage to working, only a logistical nightmare. And we had no family support on either side.

I now find some of my peers far ahead of me (mostly male but some female ), in director roles. I know they have similar age kids. But whenever any mention is made of school holidays, teacher training days, teacher strikes etc, and I end up taking time off, often unpaid, it emerges that they simply send their kids off to be minded by grandparents, often for weeks at a time in summer. Or they get away for a weekend with their partner, while their parents mind their kids.

I can't help feeling really annoyed. Neither of our parents would ever do that for us, and at this stage we wouldn't even ask. But these people I work with seem to act like it's totally normal. They also all seem to have free holidays in their parents' holiday homes whenever they want, in France or Spain. Am I being unreasonable to be pissed off about it?

YABU - I'm a single mum and I had no choice but to work full time and also rely on help from my parents that to manage. You are lucky you had a choice.

I'm also behind on my career as I was pushed out when I was pregnant and even though I only took a year out on mat leave I've not been able to get back to the same position. Now back in work I'm constantly having to balance feeling like a bad mum for working and a bad employee for constraints around childcare

Women are disadvantaged all round when having children whatever we do. The motherhood penalty is alive and well. No point in comparing but we should be angry we miss out this way.

It’s not something to be pissed off or jealous about. I’ve continued my career with young DC but we have no family support either; you made the choice to have children close together and then not work for a period of time. You could have continued to work or you could have spaced your children so that one would be out of childcare before the other one enters so only one set of fees at a time.
Lots of people don’t have support and need to rely on expensive childcare but it tends to be quite obvious before children come along. In my case, GPs were never going to want to do childcare or babysit. They were never going to want to be heavily involved in my DC lives and i knew that based on who they are as people. It doesn’t benefit anyone for you to be jealous and pissed off about any of this.

You said you had no choice in the matter but you actually made quite a few choices it seems. Having children close together in age, knowing about childcare costs and I assume both sets of your parents didn’t have a personality transplant overnight?

I get that it’s not fair when others have something that you don’t seem to, but this just seems to be part of a bigger picture of you seeming to not feel responsible or in control of anything, that it just ‘happens’ to you and that others are lucky.

As soon as you change your mindset and focus on things that you CAN control, I think that your outlook will change as well

I can relate, having a young child with my husband and no grandparent support (my side have health problems, my husbands side too far away). And neither side have any holiday homes for us to enjoy haha. But these things are lucky/nice to have, not an entitlement and I love my parents and in-laws, would certainly choose them over others that were able to help more but lacked their qualities. There are always those better off than you (and worse) and there's really no point in comparing but being human I think jealousy is normal at times!

I’m surprised at the amount of commenters saying they also have no childcare from GP. I am very much in the minority amoung everyone I know, when it comes to zero help from extended family. I’ve never had even an hour of babysitting from either in laws or my parents or even my siblings. They’re all quite openly against helping out and have gotten quite rude with me for asking for favours so I stopped asking a couple of years ago. I don’t know any friends in this situation and I feel immense envy when friends tell of dropping kids with grandparents for a night away or whatever. The jealousy radiates from me. I read your post and had to put my phone away it upset me to think of it.

This is annoyingly true. DH spent after school with his paternal GM and every school holiday with his maternal GM. He had a wonderful close relationship with them and my MIL enjoyed a great uninterrupted career and all the financial benefits of that. She still takes regular expensive holidays. But never once babysit my kids and said no anytime I asked. I just don’t get the disconnect.

Ask FIL then since he got exactly the same support.

This happened to me also. And rather than help me out, my mother and siblings saw it as an opportunity for me to help out with my nieces and nephews! “You’re not working yet so you can do the school run for SIL”. But when I needed help I got the “no no we’re not going to do that”. I emigrated again after a year. It was easier just looking after my own kids than minding them and my nieces and nephews.

Your colleagues aren't the norm. Holiday homes in France and Spain? Grandparents willing to look after the children for weeks at a time? The majority of my colleagues juggle childcare themselves, either working shifts alternating with their partner, or paying for a child minder or nursery. Stop comparing your life with theirs. There are plenty of families without active grandparents, and without the opportunity for cheap or free sunshine holidays. You gave up work to be a stay at home mother. Some people don't have that luxury.

As the parent of two teens, the teenage relationships in families like this (where parenting of young children has been delegated to grandparents) are likely to be an absolute fucking nightmare.

This is the exact same as us, I’d go as far to say that it’s almost principled .. I’ve had family members stay with me and I’d juggle bed and baths and running up and down stairs to fetch stuff and they’d literally be watching me from the couch with a glass of wine in hand, absolutely bizarre tbh ..

But of course , their choice , their choice , no one is obliged to help anyone 🙄

The thing is - life isn’t fair is it? There’s no such thing as a fair life.
and to compare our lives to others only hurts us. Develop a mindset that says ‘it is what it is’.
we can all wish for things we haven’t got. But it doesn’t help.

these were the types of things ai was hoping to hear about, sadly it boiled down to having grandparents and Nannie’s for the women doing the talks. They are brilliant women but the talk missed the mark for me as it was saying, you can have all this but you need things you will never have to achieve it.

Well if the poster meant just the dads then she would have said what shit dads, not parents. We all know what she meant.

Maybe she just doesn't like small kids.

I'm 55 and my tolerance for them wanes the older I get and with so many people having kids older than the grandparents are older and may have a lower tolerance.

I had no trouble looking after DGC1 17 years ago when I was free, and even 9year old DGC2.

But the little ones? I will do in an emergency but not regularly

I mean, it could be because she didn’t enjoy looking after young children that much the first time around (hence making use of lots of help and continuing her career) and therefore she still doesn’t want to do it now she’s older with her grandchildren? That would make sense. Essentially, you want her to do something that she didn’t even want to do with her own children.

I'm jealous that you got to stay at home and parent your children, I had to return to work after 3 months and yes my Mum looked after my child, I missed out on so many things, the first step, the first word. So you could look at it that way.

Not my experience. Sorry to burst your sputeful, gleefull bubble

Well done. I’m working on those boundaries with elderly parents / in laws that are now demanding help and company even though they refused to help me. My siblings who benefitted from all the free childcare are shockingly (though perhaps unsurprisingly) not pulling their weight and my mother complains about never seeing them. It’s hard to refuse to give in to her requests. But I trying to draw the line. What’s even harder is accepting that my extended family are assholes. I loved the idea that we used to all get along but that was an illusion and based on my continued generosity and once I pulled back on that, their anger was evident

I wish I had worked more when my DC were small.However DD was badly bullied at School, and had to be home ed .DS was a lot younger and DM was ill with Alzheimers! Be grateful that you have had some opportunities come your way! Most people do not have relatives with second homes!

Feel free to ask. Perhaps I should do an AMA 😁

i was never looking for regular childcare from them… just to have someone help in an emergency would have been a life saver.

As a boomer I think you are being a bit unfair.
Most of my friends aren’t helping a lot with childcare as they are still looking after elderly parents in their 90’s. Then their children went to university (we didn’t) and moved a long way away for work, so it’s not logically possible to help on a regular basis.

I’ve done well in my career and enjoyed long weekends abroad with my husband thanks to lots of family support from parents and sister. I have returned the favour to subsequent siblings, nieces and nephews. I don’t think any of us are shit parents. Lucky, grounded, well rested, very fortunate yes… shit definitely not😜

FWIW I toyed with another. It would have been a lot to ask of our family and I didn’t want my career to suffer. I chose to maintain a good work life balance by limiting the amount of children I had.

Why would you be pissed off about it. They have a different situation to you. My DD can go and stay with her aunt for a week in summer but she couldn’t do that with my brother for example.