Should the primary earner have to take time off for sick children?

[Sunshine231]

I am the “breadwinner” in our household and pay 75% of all our household bills / expenses plus any extras like meals out, family days out and holidays. I have a high pressure job as a senior associate for a consultancy firm. My partner works in a warehouse packing and labelling online orders and earns minimum wage.

We have 2 kids and whenever one of the kids is unwell I am the one who has to take time off work. I was talking to my mum and she said it was always the way when she had young kids, that the mum had to take leave to care for the kids and never the dad but I can’t help but feel this is because traditionally the man was the higher earner therefore their job took priority because that’s the job they relied on to pay most of the bills?

My partner however thinks that because I work from home and he has to go in person, it makes sense that I take the time off. My work has a strict no kids rule regarding working from home and I also have multiple client calls per day.

Today our youngest was sick and I had to tell my boss I needed to take last minute leave. I had to cancel 4 client calls and it went down like a lead balloon. This is the 3rd time I’ve had to do this so far this year alone. I have bad anxiety about losing my job as we rely on it to pay the bills. I’m just trying to get perspective on whether my partner is right about the wfh thing or should my job be more priority as I’m the higher earner and contributing most financially?

Just seen this. It changes things. In this job market you absolutely need to pull your finger out. If you don't improve you're out.

Definitely him, are you not a mismatch in real life?

Then clearly he needs to cover sickness for a while.

A man will always insist that what he does is more important than what a woman does.
The more she out earns or out does him in any way the more he will insist the what he does is more important.

It's completely context dependent.

I earn three times as much as my husband and that's WHY I am the one who always takes time off - my contract is from the times when contracts had good conditions and job security, his contract is from after the enshittification of jobs. (Though we very much work in the same field.)

Oftentimes the better paid jobs are also the more secure ones.

It should be shared 50/50. My DH works from home, I work outside the home, we both earn the same. Now DC are a bit older (late primary), DH takes the lions share of sick days for DC because he can work a bit while they are in bed but when they were little and needed someone with them constantly we split 50/50. They aren’t actually ill that often.

In this case he should definitely have taken time off because the impact of you doing so was greater - the cancellation of the client calls. His work would probably have been covered within his team or there would have been likely inconsequential delays in the process. It should also be the aim that you broadly share this sort of time off, which is clearly not the case when you've done it three times and he's not done it at all. So you'd be able to do it if it was needed on a day when you don't have any client calls, particularly as you'd probably be able to catch up with emails etc in the evening.

But in general, whatever the type of job, impact of time off or amount earned, most men would prioritise work and most women the family. There's your inequality and what needs to change.

If you'd said this in your OP the answers would have been different.
Do you have this much difficulty explaining the crucial points to your DH?
"DH I'm already on a Pip. If I take any more unplanned holiday I'm in real danger of losing my job. And the house would follow. YOU are taking the next one or I'll have to rethink this marriage."
Because if you split up and he has the kids 50-50, he will HAVE to look after them if they are ill on his watch. Maybe point that out to him too.

He should be doing at least 75% of the sickness since he doesn't contribute in other ways.... However Wearhouse jobs are ruthless, he isn't special and very easily replacable so ideally he'd be looking for something that is more accommodating so that he can take on that burden

This!!

What is right will vary between families won't it. Equality and equity will always look slightly different.

We never really kept track when kids were young. It was always a question of who does it make the most sense to stay home with the kids THIS time. So we would share what we had going on at work and the person for whom there would be the least impact stayed home.

DH earns nearly twice what I do but I have clinical commitments so actually he stayed home more often than I did. Although equally when I was shift working I had more days off so often the sickness coincided with work I wasn't working. And I did do some very much not fun days of working a night shift and then being awake all day with a poorly child and then awake most of the night with the poorly child too. But there has never been any resentment there because we each respect what the other does. Now the kids are teens and it is more about appointments for the orthodontist etc actually DH is the one with the most flexibility in spite of being the main earner so he probably does more than I do.

I agree that it sounds as though the split needs to be more even for the op. But I would not say that the warehouse minimum wage worker should do all the sickness because of the impact of may have on their ability to progress.

Ultimately though, although it feels like forever, they are only small and constantly sick for a short time and things will settle.

Well of course it should! From a rational point of view.

The problem is, I imagine, that your DH would lose face (or feel he would) if he took time off for sick kids, and as someone in a job that's much lower paid and status than his wife's, that's probably a big deal to him in a way it wouldn't be if the roles were reversed.

I don't know what to suggest practically though. It's hard to argue with a feeling.

My DH takes more time off for our child than I do (although he earns more) but that's because I'm a secondary school teacher and taking a day off is really problematic, whereas his lecturing job allows WAH and bizarrely he has to lecture fewer hours as a full timer than I have to teach as a part timer...

But I would say our jobs are more or less equal status and similar enough that we know what's possible (and would know if the other were trying it on...!)

Oh gods, this makes it even worse. You are on the knife edge of losing everything and he is being a male chauvinist dick thinking his minumum wage job is more important than your career.

It might be time for you to start looking for a similar role with a more flexible organisation. And it will be easier to do that while employed than if you get let go and have to explain to a future employer. But in the mean time, show him the numbers, map out what happens if you lose your job vs him losing his. He needs to step up.

It should be shared unless you both agree it makes more sense with least amount of risk to loss of earnings for one to take more time off than the other.
If you lost your job would your partner be able to step up and cover all essential household costs? If not it would make far more sense for him to cover the lions share of sick leave.

This. He knows exactly what’s at stake he just doesn’t want to do it.

Because he thinks my boss should be understanding that we have young children and therefore should just accept that if they are sick I will have to be off work with no notice. He can’t seem to believe that my boss would be annoyed about this and he seems to think it’s “ illegal “ for her to take any kind of disciplinary action if I’m taking time off for the kids. But on the other hand he seems to believe he would be instantly sacked if he did the same thing because he works in person and they only bring in the exact amount of staff needed for the number of orders they have each day so if one person is off they are immediately short staffed

Well he’s an idiot then, isn’t he?

This is exactly the issue 🙌 I started working in consultancy prior to having a child and it wasn’t an issue then. I could work over time and that way I always met my targets. After having kids it has become nearly impossible to fit in any overtime. The job is extremely competitive and high pressure and to be totally honest is not really suitable for someone with small children unless you have a mega supportive partner or family who can help at the drop of a hat. None of my colleagues have young kids and I can see why.

I was about to post and say your job just doesn’t sound compatible with having young kids.

How would your DH feel about changing jobs to work evenings only or being a SAHP? Maybe for a few years you would save money on childcare and have a less stressful life.

Or is a career change for you an option?

We took it in turns, although it wasn't something we had to do very often anyway .
Who earned more didn't come into it , we both had work commitments (this is generally true whether you earn 200k or 20k). I believe that sharing the load makes it seem more reasonable to your employers tbh.
We have a colleague who always has to be the one who takes time off when her child is unwell. It grates and everyone thinks her husband is a useless piece of s* .

I wish it was something we didn’t have to do often but our kids seem to get sick a lot. This is the 3rd stomach bug we have dealt with since January. There have been other instances of colds / fever which grandparents were willing to help with and just after new year the youngest got an awful ear infection but luckily we were off work anyway. I breastfed them both for 18 months, they take vitamins every day, eat plenty of fruit and veg and they still seem to get poorly every other week 😩

@SecretSquid Yes, it sounds as if he needs the stark reality of the situation pointed out to him. Sorry that you're dealing with this stress @Sunshine231

I understand it precisely. My OH was a Director at Deloitte and he quit when we had our second child because he knew he couldn’t be the kid of parent he wanted to be whilst also working there. We were fortunate that my job paid almost the same but is much more relaxed. You need to make him aware, in very simple terms what is required of you. If he can’t get that then I honestly can’t see gow you ca have a relationship with this person?

I think he’s a CF tbh and he should take emergency leave or annual leave if dc are ill. Your job is much more important for the family plus you’re having to cancel clients to take time off which is crazy in the scheme of things