Poll: if you both work and children are primary age, how much holiday time do you get to spend with DH or DP?

[MollyAndMuck]

Just trying to work out holidays for the next year and how to divide them up. Was easier with nursery so we mostly spent them all together, with me having an extra week as I get more holiday time.

Primary school is a big juggling act, so just wondering how difficult it is with a partnership/marriage where both work? Do you end up doing it all in shifts or do you get a few weeks where the whole family is off?

Vote to the nearest whole week please for simplicity.

Also if anyone has tips on how to divide things I'm interested! Sometimes doing half a week each seems a good idea as a whole week on your own can be a bit of a slog!

My DC are 12 and 15 now, but those primary school days were tricky. The school did have a great holiday club though, which covered half of all holidays, but not INSET days.

The dc used to go to holiday club for 3 days a week. Then I'd take Fridays and dh would take Mondays. Then we'd battle it out between us for the rest of the time. Fit all those years, annual leave was at a premium, we'd only ever have bank hols and 1 week in the summer off at the same time.

Holiday clubs seem to often be half days here, or very short hours, so often you'd need to have a half day to work around them which is a bit frustrating.

When we were in this situation we had one week off in the summer and time at Christmas. The rest of our annual leave we took separately to use as childcare.

We don’t really have time off together usually other than Christmas and Easter (have a good chunk of time at each). But that’s more a strategic choice. We each take time with the dc individually because we have a dog and a farm, so it isn’t easy to just jet off to Spain for 2 weeks together. Not because of holidays, but because someone needs to be home with the animals. I guess we could hire someone to do it, but we just aren’t that fussed.

We have loads of family time altogether, but it’s just so much easier to do it this way. So we’re almost also staggered. We take dc away while other is home. We have days off with them while other works. But we are together all weekend and rarely home later than 5, so really do have lots of time together.

We tend to do a mix of holiday club and AL to cover holidays and I’ve never run out of AL. Usually I have more than I can carry over left each year.

DH gets 6 weeks AL and we spend about 5 weeks off together in total as a family, I have my own business and can work flexibly to cover school holidays. Usually have 2 weeks in summer, 1.5 weeks Easter, 1.5 weeks Christmas and some long BH weekends away.

We use holiday camps when we aren't going on holiday, but usually hobby-based ones and often need ferrying to (up to 1.5hr round trip), sometimes 10am-3pm hours so only works with my flexible hours. But more interesting than the generic holiday club at school which is a 5 min walk, a full working day at the same holiday club for several weeks feels very long for little ones.

We both get quite a lot of holiday 33 days plus bank holidays, and both work consolidated hours so I'm off Mondays and DH Fridays, so school holidays we're only thinking about covering Tues weds Thurs, this summer we have two weeks off together, PIL are taking ds away for a Monday to Friday holiday one week and the other 3 weeks I have him Monday, DH Friday my mum Wednesday and holiday club Tues Thurs, although one of the Thursdays we have a family event so we're all off, so 5 days holiday club in total for the summer

Not really helpful but... I'm a teacher and dh has one of those "unlimited leave" jobs.

I've known lots of colleagues who have got jobs in schools (not just teaching) to get around this problem

I'm surprised that there's so many at six weeks plus!

Definitely useful to hear how other people manage it. DH and I both like our jobs so not up for a change of career though (neither could work in a school*).

• I mean, our jobs aren't things that are needed in a school rather than we'd fail a DBS check or something. 😬

I would like an unlimited leave job though!

Yeah it works really well by the sound of it, no one takes the piss.

Dh works in tech and I think the sector in general are way ahead on family friendly policies like extended paternity leave. Dh sometimes finishes work an hour early and then catches up after the kids have gone to bed.

Being a teacher has its pros and cons - I love having loads of time off but I can't choose when to take it. I can't choose when there's a parents evening and I need to work late. On balance though the pros definitely outweigh the cons and I'd recommend it to anyone thinking of training