SAHM or WOHM dilemma. Need help to decide!

[listeningtomyheartorhead]

Hi

I am currently on my maternity leave and have been wrestling with the question of whether I want to go back to work afterwards to the extent that it is sort of spoiling my maternity leave as I am thinking about it almost daily. I have two under 5. My eldest is 2.5 years and the baby is just 3 months. My problem is that I dont know whether to go with my heart or head and often they switch allegiances on the topic.

So right now my heart is telling me to stay at home with my babies. They will only be little for a short time. Childcare costs are very expensive (they wiped out 2/3rds of my salary for my elder child when I just had him and will probably be much higher with second one) and the idea of leaving my youngest baby with someone else makes me feel quite teary. Also I love children and the idea of paying someone to do something that I would love to do and would probably do a lot better (hopefully considering they are mine) doesnt make sense to me. I work as a teacher so the job is quite time consuming in that it spills over in to my home life so I will have to divert quite a bit of time away from my children in order to do my job properly to help other peoples children, which doesnt sit well with me considering how young my two are. I also dont really like my work and want to move out of teaching anyway so leaving my children to do something I hate also makes no sense to me. Also I am quite an anxious person by nature so get easily stressed out. I worked till the end of my second pregnancy and when I look back at how I was with my toddler I feel ashamed of how short tempered I was with him and I am worried that the pressure of working and caring for such young children is going to cause me to behave similarly or even worse now I have two. My DH works very long hours so is not around much to help out with them and even when he is around is not very helpful.

Which brings me on to my head's reasoning. I work part time. My eldest will turn 3 before I go back to work so will be getting his 15 hours at nursery which will help me with the childcare costs though I will probably have to top it off. I have a good friend nearby whom I trust who is also a childminder and she would probably charge me slightly less so I do have options with regards to childcare. I was even more pfb with my first child and I managed to put him in childcare and work so I could get over my feelings about that with younger child. The childcare costs will go down anyway in about a year as my toddler will be starting school in September 2016. It will only be the next two years (hopefully) in which it will be really stressful and expensive for me to work so I could just grit my teeth and get through it and keep my part time hours which is what I want anyway with two little ones as opposed to full time. I really love the place I work as in I like the school, my department and headteacher (its just the actual job I do which I hate). The biggest reason though is that my relationship with dh can be up and down. Sometimes I love him madly other times I hate his guts. He doesnt really help very much with kids in a regular way I can rely on as in daily does x, y or z or really help around the house except with covering most/all our living costs (apart from childcare) and doing the food shopping. In the past when I did SAH for about a year and a half when my youngest was little he was financially controlling and can at times be emotionally abusive (as can I) and when I started working again I had the ability to brush it off, ignore it better then when I was a SAHM. DH would be ecstatic if I stayed at home with kids and to a certain extent I am suspicious of that.

Anyway will leave it at that for now.

Thanks for reading.

He doesn't eat the food you cook

Go find the current thread on passive aggressive men, OP. Hang on, I'll find it for you.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/2275725-Anyone-else-end-up-as-an-angry-banshee-after-living-with-Mr-Nice-passive-irresponsible

Who knows, it may not ring bells. Who knows, it might.

This generous allowance he would give you. Can you save, hard, from it? secretly, in your own name. To some degree the risk of being out of paid work can be reduced by having savings that will cover childcare while you look for work, and living costs if you want to leave. But I would say you need 6 months' expenses put away, absolute minimum, and ideally a year.

Hello Listening

If you decide to be a SAHM for a couple of years can you work from home eg provide some extra out of school hours teaching for small group of pupils, Avon, something that generates your own income, child minding for another child etc ?

I would ask your husband to help more around the house & with the children. Surely your family should come first over the decision to do lots of volunteering ?

Or find a part time job job eg in evenings, so that your partner has to look after children, share the responsibility

Do some volunteering yourself ?

Do what makes you happy !

Good luck x

OP, do you love your husband and does he love you?

The more you write the more it seems like 2 adults occupying the same house, but only 1 of whom is viewing it as a family unit.

Do you feel like accessories to his running-along-quite-nicely lifestyle?

When you're weighing up what's the best option regarding work and your head & heart, also weigh up if you want to be with him as he is, forever.

Thank you for the responses. You have all given me food for thought but to be honest I still dont know what im going to do. At one point yesterday i felt like i was definitely going back and thats it but as the day goes on i start doubting myself. I dont have to work is it worth the inevitable stress it will cause me getting two really young dependant dcs ready on time? I cant even get them both ready to get to 10.00 mother and toddler groups on time can i get them ready to leave the house before 8 on my own? Also can i bear it to leave them at childminders crying and go to work? My older son was really clingy and even though i know he had a great time at nursery and childminders he always used to cry in the mornings and i had to leave the job of settling him to the carers otherwise i would be late and he wasnt as young as my second baby will be when i go back. Is it fair to them? Anyway i think i will be fluctuating between the two positions for a while longer.

In answer to some of your questions i have managed to save up my maternity pay so will have some savings though i will have to give some of it back if i dont return to work.

With regards to the not eating the food i cook im kind of over it now and dont take it personally. He rarely eats my mums cooking (who is a hundred times better at cooking than me) or even my mil so i think it just him.

Roar your question used to haunt me in the past. I used to wonder he really loves me or likes me and if he did why didnt he want to spend quality time with me. I now know he loves me I don't doubt that most of the time but he just expresses it differently. It upsets me more that he doesnt spend time with the kids and doesnt seem to want to. I think he is just very driven and focussed on being successful and achieving his goals. I have no doubt he will be successful in his life but its just whether we will be there alongside him that i question. He does respond to my concerns though which makes me want to keep trying rather than give up. This week he has been spending his evenings playing with dc after i had a go at him last weekend. I haven't been good at expressing myself in the past. I get caught up in side issues or self moderate as i dont want to hurt his feelings or i lose my temper/get emotional and with it the ability to make my points. I have been avoiding confronting the obvious issues we face as im just too exhausted to deal with the fall out but i think we will have to talk first before i can really make up my mind.

To me, your husband sounds very old-fashioned at best, a bit of a misogynist at worst. It sounds as though the current dynamic with him taking all the out of house time and wanting to control the family finances will only worsen if you give up work. I would also guess from what you say that if you did give up work, he's unlikely to be supportive of you returning to it. I have two small kids and have been back to work after my second for 6 months now. It is totally fine, but I too would like to make some changes (maybe work less or in something different - I'd never give up work) I personally think this is easier to do in the more 'me' focused space if being back at work than when home with the kids.

He is probably a bit of both crazy. His parents separated when he was young and his dad was pretty much nc and did not financially support them (but surprise surprise is desperate to know him now). His mum had to work very long hours to support him and his siblings so was rarely at home. I think that has probably impacted on him. He on the one hand loves and appreciates his mum for all her hard work to support and raise him but definitely also resents the fact she was not there when he got home from school couldnt go to parents evenings. He doesnt see his dad and i havent met him.

For me going back to work ideally what i would want is for him to deal with getting the kids ready in the morning and dropping them off and me doing pick ups and evening routines. Second best would be me getting them ready in the morning then leaving him to drop off one or both of them. Worst case scenario is me having to get them both ready dropping them off and doing the pick ups and evening routines. I can envisage option 3 happening (which is what puts me off going back) possibly option 2 but cant really imagine option 1, which is the fairest happening.

Go back, at least for aslomg as you won't have to pay back extra pay. See how it goes. Try and get him to share childcare drop offs. You should both be using childcare vouchers as it's tax efficient.

OP please please please read the thread I linked to above. I may be wrong. But have a look.

Not sure if he's abusive or not (although he does sound it, to my untrained ear) but he's surely a selfish, entitled twat at the very least.

You're supposed to be in a partnership but it sounds like you get to do all the hard bits while he gets to swan around doing what he likes and dipping in and out of family life when it suits him.

Sounds like you need to keep some money of your own coming in, whether it be through teaching or something else; part-time employment sounds like the best bet for balancing your conflicting feelings at the moment.

Financial independence is the fulcrum around which you can turn your life, in whichever direction you wish to go at any given point. If you stay with your H long-term, it will give you extra freedom to contribute to the family, spend on your H, kids and yourself. If you should separate from your H in future (when he would actually have to deal with the kids, by the way, when he had them) you would have greater financial flexibility to do so in the best way for yourself and your children.

I think, whatever you do re employment, you need a conversation with your H about equality in your relationship, putting fair levels of responsibility for the children and fair resources (time and money) for individual leisure time near the top of the list to discuss.