Who arranges child care when 1 parent goes away?

[EL8888]

Husband wants to go to a festival next year that goes on for 5 days -3 week days and 2 weekend days. He seems to assume l will take annual leave to facilitate this -they are cared for by a combination of 2 days at a child minders then between us as do the rest. We both work. I’m not thrilled by having to do 5 straight days of solo parenting of our children and most likely having to use some of my annual leave for the privilege. I suggested as he’s so keen to go, then he try to find some cover for the days he usually has them e.g. grand parents. We are fairly new parents so lm not sure what people usually do about this kind of thing?

The normal run of things over the 5 working days is 2 days of childcare, 1.5 days looked after by mum and 1.5 days looked after by dad. So it may be 5 days -depends at what points in the week the childminder will have them. We are working out the finer points of days, with our respective work places and child minder

Generally I work it out because it's easier for me to deal with my parents and my MIL prefers when I ask her as she feels like I don't want her there if my husband asks her (dunno why, im delighted she helps and we get on well)

We would do a mixture of that and take annual leave.

His work is mon-fri flex time and I do full time irregular shift work so its easier for me to manage all childcare and just tell him the plan

If I ask him to take leave then he would and regularly needs to for my work.

It works for us

He always asks before planning a trip and vise versa but I do tend to plan