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.

Everyone's different! I would burn out if I never had a day without work or looking after my kids. I don't feel guilty about the odd day. But they are young and demanding. Probably it will be different when they're older.

I also don't angst about the time they spend in childcare - they are happy children who enjoy being in clubs. If they were unhappy about going, it might make me feel differently.

Thank goodness we're all different, eh?!

My most challenging time was when he was late Primary and didn't really want to be shuffled off to clubs but was equally too young to be left to his own devices all day every day.
There are 10 years between my sons so it's just me and my one lad, which also impacts his school holiday experience i.e. no siblings on hand to play with.
n.b. I also acknowledge that having siblings brings its own challenges (murdering each other!).

I have felt quite isolated at times, but he seems to be doing OK.

I can't believe this thread is still going! Thank you for all the opinions and experiences.

Honestly, I feel dizzy thinking about all of this. We haven't discussed it in a while but what DH wants seems to vary depending on his mood. I think he'd like a few days in a row occasionally to do what he wants. Reading all of these replies makes me feel better and less guilty about things. I don't know if we'll manage to ever resolve things but what I do know is that I'm fed up of feeling guilty.

My DCs are teens now thank goodness but I read so many posts about the balance of childcare … I wish I’d know of such a thing when mine were little! MN has been a retrospective education for me. Maybe I was naive as a SAHP but I shouldered it all… and my exH was a SAHP too! I never honestly considered what was fair or even that it should have been fair … even though I always felt that it wasn’t! Probably one of the many reasons he’s my ExH!