Sticking at 1 child because of zero extended family support

[StressedSquirrel]

I am just wondering if other people ended up making this decision. We have one DS, 14 months old, and although he is has been in full time nursery since I returned to work, DH and I have found it insanely stressful since my maternity leave ended.

My parents are 1 hr 50 away, DH only has his Dad who is a long haul flight away, so we are doing everything ourselves. We found that having zero family help, when we both work full time has been insanely stressful with the amount of nursery bugs he has picked up requiring him to be sent home. Also, the lack of down time and needing to pay circa £50 for a night out without DS has taken its toll on our marriage.

The main issue is that neither me nor DH wants to put our careers in the back burner, and all the families I see with more than 1 DC either have a nanny or one half of the couple works massively reduced hours or is a stay at home parent.

I feel really sad for DS that he won't get a sibling, but I think a second child would destroy mine and DH's sanity and possibly our marriage.

For context, I am getting close to 39, so this isn't really a decision that I can postpone until DS is much older and less demanding.

We have no local family support. Parents on both sides live 3+ hours away. The day to day we do all ourselves. We have two DC but with a 4 year gap which I think helps matters. It’s not easy, but we are managing. DH works full time, I work 0.8 (I don’t think that is “massively reduced hours”). When the youngest starts school I might look to juggle my hours around a bit.

If you are finding it hard when using a fulltime nursery it will get even harder combining work with children when they are school age with long holidays, much shorter education hours, teacher training days, snow days and they still catch bugs.

DH and I have chosen not to have kids at all and the main reason is the sort of struggle you describe OP.
Of course, if we desperately wanted one, we'd have to make it work, but we're not fussed enough to try.
We live 90 mins in one direction and 3 hours in the other from our parents. All are now in their 70s (we're 38 and 40) and 3 of the 4 of them are in increasingly poor health. Between us, our only sibling in this country lives 3 hours away.
I work full-time hybrid, and my days in the office vary from week to week. When I travel in, it's 70 mins door to door.
DH is in a line of work where no two weeks look the same, with lots of long days, travel and some staying away at a moments notice.
We have a lovely little dog that needs an hour's walk a day. Plus all of the usual 'life stuff' that's needed on top.
I think having a child under these circumstances would absolutely BREAK us and wouldn't be worth it (to us).

I could have written this post a couple of years ago, @StressedSquirrel - word for word! It's incredibly hard - and we knew it would be hard, but as you say, until you experience it, you don't know how hard it is!

I'm hoping I can show you there's light at the end of the tunnel. Our DD is 3 now, DH and I are both 43, and I'm expecting our second baby in the summer. DH and I met relatively late in life and I'm only able to conceive via IVF so it's been a long hard road (would love to have had children younger but we are where we are).

I couldn't have contemplated a second child when DD was 14 months - it's only recently that I've felt we are strong enough as a couple to do it.

Don't get me wrong, it's still hard - DD is off nursery today with a bug so we're juggling - but it doesn't feel as bad as it used to. I think the first two years are the most brutal and demanding. If you can weather this storm, you may find things easing with time.

Hang in there

Oh and @Ohdearnotagain76 how unpleasant that you felt the need to judge. You sound incredibly sanctimonious.

Having only one child so that you can focus on your career is a perfectly sound decision.

Many families have multiple children and no “help” whatsoever. I’m not sure the two things necessarily correlate.

Your reasons are fully valid.
Can I ask though, out of pure nosy ness, could one of your afford not to work to cover early years childcare?

The thing is, you do have a choice, you've just chosen to prioritise your careers over more children! And that's fine, and allowed, but if you've made that choice you kinda have to live with it.

It's not anyone else's job or responsibility to help out or make your life easier. It's nice if they can but ultimately it's down to you. Your child(ren), your responsibility.

Is there no way you can manage on one salary or one of you go part time? We don't have any family support either, but I'm a sahm and we make ends meet on DH's salary (£30k).

We manage it by having a small house (the drawback is there's no space for visitors to stay), never going out to eat or on holiday, not buying new clothes, fancy cars etc. Obviously some people wouldn't be prepared to make these sacrifices, but it works for us. We have stress free, happy lives. We enjoy long walks, gardening, visiting friends locally, board games, romantic nights in when DC are in bed. And so on. A holiday would be nice of course, but we prefer our lifestyle overall.
I really really appreciate that many people don't have husbands that earn £30k, and if that's you I'm sorry to be insensitive. I'm just trying to point out that for many people on an average salary, they could actually afford to reduce working hours, but prefer the luxuries that more hours can buy them. That's fine of course!

We never get time away from the DC either. But that's fine! Bedtime is 7.30, and me and DH get the evenings (usually). You just have to make staying in fun?

We've just got one DC who is in year 4. We had no family help whatsoever. Just wanted to say it's much more common to just have one dc now. Our lives are calm and enjoyable. Don't feel guilty if you just stay with 1 dc. Lots of people try and make you feel guilty or inadequate, but as pp have said there are no rules and anyone that says you need to have more than one can do one. You just have to focus on the positives of having an only child and make an effort to maintain friendships with neighbour's DC or schoolfriends

We have two kids, no family support, senior jobs.

What I would say is that this is a really difficult stage - if he has just started nursery in winter, there will be lots of bugs, it does get better and I found DS2 had a better immune system because of being around DS1.

The other thing is that you can't keep comparing to people who do have family support - your situation is different. We do pay for babysitters regularly, yes it's an expense many don't have but there we are. The odd day off together when the kids are in nursery/school is really great as well

We have two kids, 5 and 3. Both sets of grandparents 2+ hour flights away. Both of us work full time, although only one of us frequently travels with work. Both kids in full time school/nursery, but no nanny. You can make it work if you want to - yes. We have friends who we do swaps with in the evening so we get to go out for date nights in exchange for looking after their kids sometimes. I poured quite a long time into making friends who were happy to do this with us - reaching out to people in similar situations on Facebook and asking friends to put me in touch with people they knew. It gets easier as they get older too.

But - you don’t have to do this. I’m an only child and had a fantastic childhood. It’s hard with no family around and making your own network isn’t easy. You don’t have to have a sibling for your current child.

@Gingernuttie did you miss that the OP doesn't want to be a SAHM?

neither me nor DH wants to put our careers in the back burner

Yes, but in how many of those families with zero help did both parents retain their careers at their previous level?

My point about no extended family help, is that if you don't have it and aren't rich enough to afford a nanny, then you're confronted with into a trade off where one half of the couple would have to give up on career progression (or on having a career at all) in order to make having a second child feasible.

However, if you are lucky enough to be able to rely on your Mum, Dad or in-laws to pick up the slack when you get that dreaded nursery call then working full time and dealing with random sickness for two children doesn't seem out of the question.

Again to reiterate, this isn't to say that grandparents owe their kids this kind of childcare support, but knowing that you don't have that support makes the question of having a second child far more difficult. I have a relative planning a second and they have extended family support on tap.

@StressedSquirrel - neither of us have given up on career progression, we have both progressed a bit slower than we might have done without kids but have both had multiple promotions since having kids. I think having relatively flexible jobs and short commute/hybrid working has helped a lot.

If you don't feel able to manage it with your financial and work set-up then that's fine.

That said, I wouldn't say that being two hours away definitely means your parents can't help out. My DPs and DPILs are two and three hours away respectively but they were still hugely helpful with childcare when the DC reached school age: they'd come to stay with us midweek over half term and look after the DC for a couple of days while we worked. When the DC were a little older they'd go to stay with each set of grandparents for a week during the holidays. They might also do overnight babysitting while we went for a weekend away.

It's definitely part of the equation but it's more than just the family support.

For us it was a whole lot of different but interconnecting reasons that made us decide to stick to 1 child

• we have a 3 bed house, 1 bedroom is a box room, we can comfortably have 1 child who has their own double room.
• we have MIL and FIL (I have no family) but they both work so while willing to help when they can, that help is extremely limited.
• we both work and want to work
• we could afford to move to a bigger home but like that we are very comfortable financially. Mortgage will be paid by the time I'm in my mid 40s, we have enough money to save a decent amount for DDs and our future and for luxuries like holidays.
• we have limited time due to working so want to be able to give that time to DD, adding another child would reduce that.

So yes, limited family support is a factor but it's not the whole picture.

Yes, but in how many of those families with zero help did both parents retain their careers at their previous level?

We did. Both our careers have continued an upward trajectory since the kids were born. I feel like you don’t want to hear that though as you’re maybe justifying to yourself not having another? Apologies if I have the wrong end of the stick. Maybe it depends on your circle of friends/how old your kids are? We have actively sought out friends in similar situations so I know we are not the exception to the rule being able to maintain/progress in a career without family or paid support. If that’s not your experience then I guess it’s easy to feel like it’s impossible.

As for the sick days - they reduce as the kids get older and we make sure we take 50% of them each so no one’s boss is more annoyed than the other 😂 it’s life with kids - mostly they get sick at the same time thanks to a shared bedroom so we don’t take substantially more sick days for two kids than we would for one.

Oh and "Yes, but in how many of those families with zero help did both parents retain their careers at their previous level?"

We did. DD went to nursery full time from 9 months and I went back to work full time. She's 8yo now and I've quadrupled my salary over 5 promotions. DH has had less growth but that's because while he works fulltime and wouldn't want to be a SAHP he isn't that interested in career progression.

In you situation, don't do it. The big difference form going from 1 to 2, is that u get way less me time. Basically u each have a child to deal with. That's how it feels to us. Obvs we do both have times where one of us has both of the kids so the other can do something but it's few and far between.

I work 3 days per week and my parents used to take them 1 day a week before eldest went to school (other 2 days ok nursery) and that was a massive saving on nursery costs just for that day. Saved us nearly £500 a month for that alone. They also take them overnight about once a month sometimes more or less. Can help in school holidays too.

My youngest is 3 and I think it took me to about age 2 to recover from the shock of going from 1 to 2. Although I suppose she was born just before covid hit but then again my husband was also on furlough for the first few months of her life so is some ways it should have been easier. Also may depend on the child. My first was happy baby that slept well. The second, well she was not 😆

Apart from actually giving birth, 2 close in age doesn't add much more chaos. We don't have local support so have to share time off, but the older one shares germs with younger one meaning starting nursery for no 2 is less fraught.

You'll probably want family support for the actual birth though...

He's only 14 months everything gets easier as they get bigger. Go for thr second if you want to.

But from your post, it sounds like you only have one child, which is kind of the point of the thread: that going from 1 to 2 without extra childcare help makes dual career progression harder to pull off.

@StressedSquirrel
We are the same we have no family help either it is hard but when we had our kids we had a much better support network which had diminished via death, divorce and people moving for work it is hard.

If I knew what I knew now I'd have stuck at one maybe not had any it's a nightmare