Please come talk to me if you're a married woman who feels she's raising those kids alone....

[Janni]

I've been married 12 years and have three children, 11, 8 and 3. The youngest is adopted and has particular emotional and medical needs. There is a lot of squabbling between her and the 8 year old, so looking after them is not a particularly easy task.

DH is a lawyer who is extremely successful at what he does, but is increasingly tired of it and would like to stop and do something different. He thinks he might be financially secure enough in a year's time to change direction, but also wavers because he could never hope to earn as much as he does in any other field. He is not a workaholic, but is keen to ensure we are financially stable before he changes direction.

I have never stood in his way, I have done practically all the childcare and housework.
I wouldn't even think of trying to do an evening class because his hours are so unpredictable. We moved to be within 10 minutes of his work but two or three times a year, plus before and after any holiday his work goes insane and he is in the office till the early hours. We're in one of those periods now. He had very little time at home over Easter, he has worked solidly for the past two weeks, including weekends, not getting home till very late. He is really stressed out.

I am completely and utterly sick of it. I am 42 and would like to be able to go back to work at some stage before I reach retirement age. Do you think I should INSIST he resigns
next year, as is his wish? He wavers because
if he stayed longer he could earn considerably more. I am quite a frugal person, I appreciate fincancial security but have no interest in money for its own sake, my tastes are very simple. We are quite mismatched there because he dreams of being able to retire and live a life of luxury!

I would appreciate your advice and opinions.

Janni, my DH is much the same as yours. He is away a lot, not his fault but if the work needs to be done, he needs to be there. He is the same as your DH in that he would like to be in a postion to take early retirement, but in a way it's to the detriment of our family life. He tries to be here as much as possible but is generally away Monday to Friday.

I've got used to it, but there are times when it is hard work. Like you, I can't do anything in the evenings and cannot work as his hours are too erratic. I'm a psychiatric nurse and do feel sometimes as though I have given up my career in order for him to get further in his. One day I'll go back....maybe.

well the problem is you don't want to do something either of you regret.

so i think you should state that you want to do more with your life, possibly study more / get a job and you both need to sit down and work out how you can achieve both aims.

i don't think it's impossible, but i also think if you don't make your feelings known now, then you can't blame him!

i'm not sure an ultimatum is necessary at this stage...

It doesn't sound as if what you both want is terribly far apart: you both want him to not work as hard and to be around more. But he wants to work another year to be able to do it financially. Do you really want to work or do you just want to be able to do something you want to do, i.e. which isn't childcare etc?

In which case short term could you pay for childcare while you do the evening class or whatever you want? Or could you consider paid childcare so you can go back to work? Will you earn good money if you go back? Or does that not matter? By which I mean that plenty of us work for reasons other than money, i.e update our skills, because we like it, because we don't want to be at home with children etc etc. Presumably the older 2 are at school and so your costs would be after/post school + the 3yo?

Can you think differently about it, i.e. is there anything you can do either to enable him to stop before the year is up or to make it less painful? like plan breaks where he absolutely will spend time iwth you all or downsize so he can stop sooner or sell some assets so he can stop sooner or he stops and you work. I think there could be lots of solutions but I don't think insisting he resigns is one of them tbh.

I think you should tell him you love him (assuming you do) but that you are frustrated because you never see him and you would like xyz to happen.

why does he need to resign for you to go back to work or have I read that bit wrong?

You could get a nanny and go back to work now so that when/if he takes a decision to give up next year you might be set up with something of your own?

Sometimes I think you just have to take the bull by the horns. It sounds like his salary would cover the cost of a nanny while you find your feet in work again.

My H is like yours, & I too sacrificed any chance to re train to better my employment chances or go back to work because his work is so unpredictable. H is a complete workaholic, who would, when not at work start (but never finish) numerous DIY projects. I was in effect a single mum to our kids.
Now he has decided he`s bored with his supportive wife & lovely dc, all of a sudden im labeled a lazy cow because I havent (in his eyes) contributed to the family.
The only advice I can offer is not to put all your eggs in one basket like I did. If you want to re train for the future or work do so. Im sure the kids will benefit from spending time with other kids at after school club, & you will be happier because you are doing something for you.

Sorry - I didn't make it clear in my first post. The 'ultimatum' would be 'one more year and then that's it'. He actually would have to give quite a lot of notice, so he needs to make the final decision soon.

Squirdle - I was a psychiatric nurse too.

(btw, dh and I both work ft oth but I'm the one who does stupid hours, he picks up most of the childcare/domestic stuff as a result, so am married woman but not raising my kids alone, not at all!)

'some time before retirement'. Would it help if you had a definite plan and timescale? What if you said that when your youngest goes to schoool, you will return to work and that is whan your DH could loook at re-shaping his career - fincancially cushioned by your return to work?

The thing is, you need to be careful about swapping one treadmill for another - two working parents causes other strains!

I can see that with 3 kids, your DH must feel an enormous responsibility to provide AND to do his job well.

Do you want to see more of HIM, or do you want a horizon other than your sahm life? Both are alluded to in the OP - and while you have 3 school-age children, it might be hard to have both at the same time.

Thanks for your messages, they're interesting.
I DO love him, but am feeling increasingly resentful of the imbalance in our life.

I think if we just had the older children I would be back at work in some capacity now, but our little one REALLY needs emotional security and is very attached to both of us. At the moment I'm trying to settle her into a nursery for a few afternoon sessions, so that I can have some time with her brothers where the 8 year old does not have to compete....But it is SO hard to get her to settle. It's been three weeks and we are still only at the stage of leaving her for an hour at a time. So at the moment, I don't think it's feasible to think of getting a nanny.

I would say though, the downside in both of you working in this sort of situation is that you never see each other. Dh and I now both work ftoh and the next day we both have together is Sunday 13th April lol (as he works weekends and other days and I work the traditional M-F).

Oh god FIS, that's depressing. At least Dh and I are both here at the weekends although we can be like ships passing sometimes during the week

Janni, hmm, it doesn't sound like you really want to work oth tbh, do you?

I can understand your frustration. Perhaps once the 3 year old is a bit more settled you might feel you have a bit more space to make a decision?

Is he very near a big promotion that would mean he had more control over his hours iyswim?

Blu - you're right, I want both. I definitly want to see more of him and for him not to be so worn out. I am not particularly ambitious, but I am reasonably intelligent and I could do something like re-train as a therapist or a teacher. The trouble is that because I've never actually pictured him working more normal hours, I haven't made any proper plan for my own life.

that sounds tough, the not having a plan for your own life, it sounds horribly as if you feel you have no control.

What does he want? Does he really want to stop in a year? Would six months be better as a compromise? Could he transfer his skills in some way, do some consultancy/public speaking/directorships/ anything that would mean some income but not ft hours?

Foxinsocks - that's hard for you, isn't it?
No there's no promotion on the horizon, h's pretty much as high as he can go, it's just that the money increases the longer he stays and it's VERY hard for him to ignore that..

BTW he just called to say he should be home before 1.30 a.m tonight

Janni - a nanny is completely different in terms of separation anxiety from a nursery, ime.

It may very well be worth trying to get a few hours of help a day one on one, in the home for your DD, and see how things go with that before making any firm decisions.

I may be barking completely up the wrong tree, but from your posts I strongly suspect that if you could get a little respite from the considerable needs of your DD each day, then your view of life as a SAHM might be very different

At the very least, that is something you can do straight away - rather than waiting too long. Being at home would help enormously too, as you could settle in the nanny gradually. You do get nannies who specialist in many kinds of special needs so you might be able to find someone with specific experience of your DD's needs.

can he move jobs? is he at partnership level?

I really do sympathise because I remember feeling incredibly similar. I think it's a frightening situation to be in because every decision is a big leap of faith isn't it.

This is an interesting thread. I suspect that dh and I will be in a similar situation in about 18 months. We are planning to move back to Dublin. He reckons that he will either sell the business here (he's part owner of a consultancy agency) or set up a Dublin office and work there. I suspect that he will commute to London Mon to Fri, or perhaps Mon to Thurs and I will man the homefront.

At the moment we are living in London but he is working in Amsterdam, so I'm having a taste of things to come. I have just given up my job because it was going to be too difficult to do the hours and do the drop off/pick up for ds and travel to Amsterdam for long weekends at least once month.

WWW - he definitely has transferable skills and could earn a decent amount of money doing eg consultancy. What I need to decide is do I give him the final push to go for it, or sit back and leave it to him to decide when the time is right? I've never said 'enough is enough' before and I'm reaching that stage.

I'm a bit 'rigid' in my thinking about work. I'm a very diligent person and would want to give my all to my job, so I would need to feel that their father was around enough to give them the stability they've had with me before I
could really throw myself into it.

I think you need to tell him you're reaching that stage (without starting a fight).

You can throw yourself into work and not do stupid hours ime.

Anf that's good about transferable skills, talk to him about it. It's hard when you're stuck in the depths of it to think laterally or creatively about solutions I think (she says, from bitter experience!)

FIS - he is at partnership level, but what HE wants is to downshift, not go to another big firm and do the same thing all over again.

Soapbox - I appreciate what you say about the nanny situation. Our DD has only been with us about 8 months now, so it doesn't seem right to bring in another person at this stage and what she REALLY needs, big time, is experience of relating to children her own age, so that's why we've gone down the nursery route. In fact, I think that when she does settle there, I will feel a considerable lifting of the weight on my shoulders, so I am going to put my energies into that.

WWW - What do you do?

I do sympathise, but I also think you are sounding a bit passive. I think you have to think about what YOU want to do to improve your life. I'm sure it can't be right to wait for your partner to make the decisions for you.

it is a big leap to work when you've been at home with the children - but I also think if you start taking tentative steps towards what you want, you will feel more in control of your life and slightly less as though everything is resting on his decisions.

And that can only be a good thing.

I don't think all firms are like this though Janni. We have quite a few friends who downsized at partner level by choosing a not so hectic firm, one of them moved out of London....I'm sure a lot of them are like this. Just trying to think of other solutions.

I think, though, that if he is not happy in his job, he may well be waiting for you to give him that go-ahead to give it up iyswim. Sometimes you are so stuck in a work rut that you need your partner to tell you how it is.