Childcare when you're a teacher and your partner is not or vice versa

[TheThinWhiteDutchess]

I'd love to hear experiences of couples where one of you is a teacher and one is not. How do you manage the school holidays? Does one of you end up doing childcare during the holidays when your partner works?

My DH is a teacher, I am not, I work in a 9-5 office job. So this means that he has the school holidays off at the same time as the kids. You'd think this would be wonderful for childcare costs but in reality it seems to cause so much tension in our relationship as his holidays are never 'his own'. This I feel is compounded by the fact that we don't have a lot of childcare help from family. It all feels a bit relentless sometimes.

Part of me feels massively guilty about it, but I genuinely do not have enough holiday to cover even half the school holidays. I just don't know what to do. It's making me so stressed and unhappy. I think I need to bite the bullet and pay for some holiday club so that DH gets some him time.

But then again, I am working and that work contributes to the household. Although I have the occasional day off to do something fun, the vast majority of my days off are with the kids. I try to cover any medical appointments they need as I can obviously take holiday when I want whereas it is more complicated for DH.

We've gone round in circles about it so many times that I have genuinely lost sight of what is reasonable and what is not. I know different things work for different people and families. I almost feel like we need some outside help to resolve all this tension.

Something that doesn't help is that we often don't get a lot of time together as a couple. I think we really need to try and get some more time together otherwise it just feels like we are co-parenting in parallel.

Apologies, that was long.

His holidays aren't his own because he's a father and he has responsibilities, like any other parent. Tell him to get a grip!

If he has days off and wants the kids to be taken care of by someone while he gets some time off, why can't he just sign them up for a club or hire a sitter or trade kid time with one of his fellow teachers? Why are you expected to manage his time off for him? I would tell him that you already don't get any real time off and you are already doing the missing work for kids thing, so he needs to figure out who will watch the kids while they are all off school because you are not going to use up any more holiday or work time. I really think he should look into the trading time with another teacher thing. There have to be tons of teachers at his school in the same boat as him.

Maybe the other teachers in his position have had quite enough of looking after other people’s children and just want to enjoy some time with their own though. I can’t speak for all teachers obviously, but it’s not a trade-off I’d be massively keen on.

I was a teacher & always did the holidays, wouldn't have occurred to me not to. If I wanted to do anything for myself/as a couple I paid a child minder. We didn't have any family support. Children would occasionally be away at cub camps.

How refreshing and reassuring to read a post where someone actually serms to enjoy relaxing with her dc's. This was me, not a teacher, but tried to get as much of my a/l in school holidays as I could. They're now in their 20's

Oh I’m sure there’ll come a day when it’s relaxing . At the current ages mine are it isn’t. That doesn’t mean we don’t all enjoy time together (we do have good fun), but I’m not going to pretend that there is much relaxing happening, I just hope there will be at some point in the future.

Just asked my DH about this in case it was a man vs woman view . His is the same as mine. When you have children your time is not your own. You make sacrifices and it is hard but your holidays are to look after them and have fun with them. How lucky is he to get all that time with his children - many people would cherish this as you only get 17 summers!
It is hard being a parent but he seems very selfish … it has nothing to do with I have to look after them more than you.., if one person has more holidays then they do the lion’s share Because that is the right thing to do for the family unit. It is called being a loving and loyal parent and partner.

I wonder whether by “relaxing” @Twentyfirstcenturymumma is thinking of the unparalleled joy of simply not having to get the kids up and dressed and out of the door with everything they need for the day by a certain time, with no obligation to be anywhere or do anything. That alone makes the holidays relaxing for me, whatever havoc my kids manage to cause for the rest of the day!

Maybe - but in that case it makes no difference whether I am on AL or not during school holidays because with a teacher husband we don’t need to get them out to holiday clubs, so whether I’m staying at home or going to work we still don’t need to get the children out the door with everything they need at a certain time

They would be trading, so he watches all their kids one day or two and they have a completely free day with zero kids and then they return the favor.

Partner isn't a teacher but does work in a school so has the usual school holidays off. It's never occurred to him not to look after the kids when he's off. It saves a huge amount of money on childcare.

I try to take my annual leave during the school holidays so that we can have time as a family and do things together. Sometimes his term dates are different to DDs so I have to use some annual leave to look after her. Neither of us get days off to ourselves, but we don't resent spending our holidays with our kids.

I get that - what I’m saying is that OP’s DH’s colleagues might not be so desperate to palm their own kids off onto a colleague that they’d be willing to look after someone else’s kids all day in return, what with having to do that for the rest of the year and it being exhausting and all.

I could see that. I think that someone probably would be up for it, but I suppose it could be the case that absolutely no one wants to.

I still work in a school (no longer teaching) & love the time I get spending time with my kids, wouldn't swap it for anything.

My husband is a teacher, we manage our time off by him doing mist of the school hilda7 childcare but me taking some time off in school holidays with a mix of family times and me and our child having mini breaks so he has sone time to uimself.

Why would you pay for holiday clubs?? Surely you and you DH can share this bill?

This 100%

my ex always considered his holidays as ‘days off’….
my days off were happily child days.

So stupid, teachers in large part get into the industry to spend the holidays with their own children. I don't get his reasoning sorry.
Perhaps come to a compromise. You take a day off work each per week and book them into a holiday program for the remaining

Sorry this sounds tricky. On the face of it I agree with the majority - he should definitely cover holidays. However, perhaps he is burnt out and asking for a lifeline? It is hard to find energy for empathy in a busy young family but if he is telling you what he needs then I would suggest having a serious talk about what is affordable and achievable in terms of childcare to give you both a break. I also think that prioritising some time together (a date night sort of thing) may give you space to discuss and come to a compromise. Good luck 😊

DH sounds very selfish. They're his kids too!
I went into teaching mostly to allow me to spend school holidays with our children. Whilst I was doing my teacher training, DH worked from home, freelance, so he could take our boys to nursery / school and collect them. He also attended all the special assemblies, events, sports day. Our income dropped hugely.
Once I was qualified we sorted things between us, and used some breakfast / after-school clubs. DH went back to being employed. But the holidays were naturally up to me!

Your husband should count himself lucky to have 13 weeks annual leave and no worries about childcare. His selfishness as a father and lack of intellect as a teacher is worrying. My DH is a paediatrician and he'd love 13 weeks off. I also work FT but thankfully I'm freelance. Our annual leave is for holidays abroad and the odd long weekend away. School holidays is mainly holiday clubs with the odd annual leave from me or DH because we like spending quality time with our 4 DCs. If your husband wants some 'quality' time I suggest looking into holiday clubs. Unfortunately when having children, it's time, energy and money that is the sacrifice!

I guess not - I was just trying to explain how the summer holidays could be more relaxing than term time even without particularly relishing the time with your kids.

But then I am really baffled by comments like “looking after my kids in the holidays is just swapping one job for another” and “my job is so much easier than looking after my kids” - I only put up with all the stuff I hate about my job because it gives me more time with my kids…

But loads of jobs are objectively easier than looking after (particularly small) children, whether you enjoy the time with them or not, I’m not sure how that’s baffling. I don’t feel like that about my job and children right now, but I did when I had a different job and they were younger. I still enjoyed being with them and maximised the amount of time I spent with them. Being with the children at that time was both more enjoyable and harder work than that particular job, these things can be true concurrently

I do see how it’s possible for something to be simultaneously hard work and enjoyable. As a teacher like OP’s DH, though, I not only find being with my kids a million times more enjoyable than teaching, but also about 50,000 times easier!

Depends so much on the child(ren).

I don't find looking after my own child easier. I enjoy it mostly now she's older but my God she was hard work at younger ages.

I have some authority with my students and a full range of behaviour management tools to deploy!