I don’t want to go back to work and miss my babies childhood….

[wandoqebu]

As the heading reads, I’m only going back two days but will eventually have to be five. How do parents manage going to work. My baby is in childcare for one day a week and it’s fine because it’s one day, but I miss the whole day. Basically home-time is bath dinner bed. I can not imagine this being the only time I spend with her five days a week. There has to be another way!!!
I know I’ll kick myself looking back and missing this but I simply can not afford to live without two incomes. What do people do?

Well we can't live without two incomes. We don't live an extravagant lifestyle at all but very much need to two incomes to afford our mortgage, bills, car and other essentials.

Not everyone is on mega wages that can afford just one income to live no matter how much you cut back. I love the judgmental comments from people who have NO IDEA about individual circumstances that somehow everyone can cut back and live on one wage. Having children shouldn't just be for people who are affluent.

Our children are loved, happy and spend plenty time with us. We're not any less attentive or loving parents.

In fact there's plenty of research that shows mothers now, even though they are working are still spending more time with their children than previous generations.

There will be people reading your post who are living on two incomes and still don't have money for holidays or expensive activities. You may want to tell your DH to look at it another way and to be grateful for the sacrifices his mom made for him. I'm very proud of my mother and how hard she worked too - as a stay at home mom. We didn't have any much money but we played lovely games at the park, drew together, baked together etc. She made my childhood wonderful. It always amazes me on here how little respect is given to actually being a mom or a sahp. It's not considered worthy (or hard) work, there is very little respect for it on here. There are more important things in life than expensive holidays.

Same here. I am 49 and a mum of 3 teenagers. I sacrificed my career because I didn’t want to ‘miss out’ on being with my kids. Although it was often lovely at the time, and I returned to when when youngest was 2 (but different lower paid, less stressful job) we have always been the poorer family of all our friends even now and the kids all say their ambition is to make money because they are fed up of us always being skint! Im pretty much financially dependant on my husband still as the years being a SAHM meant his career became big and important, he was and still is at work a lot and even years later and both working full time the housework and life admin is all on me as it never changed when I went back as he has the more stressy job still.
so I guess moral of the story is try and think long term.
i know it’s hard though

It's his childhood, he's entitled to feel how he feels about it. And it wasn't about expensive holidays. For your information, he had times where his dad had struggled to meet the basics on his wage. He was bullied at school as he had to wear a 2nd hand uniform. Bullied because at activities week everyone else could afford to go on activities and he had to stay in school.

So it wasn't about expensive holidays at all. But living at times in near poverty, not affording the basics and being bullied are things that stay with you for life. If his mum had worked and realistically would have been a part time job when they would have been at school would have made a significant difference to their life. He's allowed to feel resentful over it.

And quite frankly I don't have respect for women, who choose to stay at home, living off a husbands wage while their kids have a worse standard living than if they went to work.

How insanely judgmental you are.

Do you have no respect for women that take their full entitlement to mat leave, even the unpaid bit?

Do you have respect for women who have chosen low wage careers? Or men who choose low wage careers for that matter.

That clearly works for you and that’s fine and your children are happy. I’m talking about the people who desperately want to spend the time with their children but ‘can’t’. I know several mums myself who say they wish they could work part time and spend more time with their children in the preschool years but have so many outgoings, endless spending on non essential things and could easily make changes and re prioritise if they truly wanted to.

I work two days a week so I can spend as much time with my children as possible. I’m fed up of other mums saying to me oh I wish we could afford to do that. My husband is not a high earner and neither am I with my two days work. We have lots of high bills. But we are very careful with money and choose where to spend it wisely and we have extremely happy secure children who are very confident and independent when we’re out and about. We’ve made careful decisions and changes to allow us to live this life and I wish other people wouldn’t assume we are so affluent to do so, we are not at all.