does your DH work long hours??

[auntyquated]

without the 'overtime' - just salaried so not entitled to overtime?

DH is bugging me as he never rings to give any indication of what time he will be leaving. we finish eating then usually one of the kids asks if we can ring him to find out how long he will be! tonight i am NOT ringing ... sometimes i do wonder if he would ever come home if we didn't ring and remind him of our exsistence...well tonight we will find out.

There is a bloke who Dh works with who cheerfully states that he deliberately works late so he misses bath & bed time and I bet a lot more do it for that reason than are admitting to it.

My ex MD hated holiday time with a passion because at home or abroad he wasn't the big I AM that he thought he was at work and had to revert to just being someones Daddy and husband.

I have felt the same myself at times. You kind of get more recognition at work. People are coming up to you saying how wonderful you are and although the chidlren do often do that lovely I love you mummy thing I don't think they are quite as thankful that you've fed them or made them brush their teeth as people you work with sometimes are.

I think this US/UK protestant work ethic is kind of from the Puritan age, Olver Cromwell, no fun, no music (bit like the Taleban nowadays), not Catholic fancy stuff in church and then they all went across to the US and took it with them and now we share this culture to some extent. Immigrants fom most places have it to for obvious reasons and the US and UK have always had a healthy flow of immigrants.

But is it bad? If we're enjoying work isn't that great?

(Agree about Sweden, I was there a year ago. Men expect children are as much their responsibility as women's. We need to ensure our children see that in our own lives and marriages and adopt if for ourselves - be pioneers - make sure work and home is shared 50/.50 with men, don't marry men who aren't like that etc. Stop the rot

I don't really think the UK and US share a work ethic. Being American, I find the UK work ethic... well... lacking, to be quite honest. I probably should avoid any opportunities to work on the continent. God only know what I would think of their work ethic, judging from comments on this thread.

Although, I do work with a fair number of Italians and they all seem to be very dedicated to the job... but then perhaps expats are a different breed. I suppose when your family lives in another country there is not much to rush home to so you might as well stay at work.

My dh is self-employed. When he is busy he has no choice but to stay until he has done what needs doing, as its just him!
He has been SE for almost 2 years now...he gets up and leaves for work at about 8.30 am and arives home anytime between 4pm and midnight...depending on how busy he is.

I have had several weeks of getting up with our 3 kids at 6am...then being on my own with them until they go to bed. It is very hard when he is gone for so long consecutively...I really do feel like I'm going mad somedays...

But I do know how hard he works...its a very physically tiring job so he is equally as knackered as I am at the end of the day!
When he isn't flat out, he is home for tea and helps with the bedtime routine.

Its damn hard for both of us at times but hopefully it will be worth it when his business gets going and he can employ people to help him.

Our only concerns are when he misses seeing the kids! I try to take them to visit him in the day, for lunch and a walk on the beach for half an hour or if he has to pass this way then he stops for lunch (we live about 15 miles away from where he works, so to travel everyday is not possible)

I do think there is an element of choice when it comes to working late. My dh tries to get home at 'normal time' three nights a week, but probably only manages 2. Normal time is 7.30 the dc's are up later than I think they should be by the time they've had a chat and story with him, but obviously more important that they see him. He is often away, last week he was in the US from Mon am to Fri.

He regularly says he's going to make more effort to come home and usually does for a week or two and then it slips again. I know he feels that he should be there as often the people working for him and working late and he feels it looks crap to leave. There are also times he calls to say he'll be late and gets half way through the call and then says no sod it, I'm coming home.

I would be much happier if he was here for no other reason then I love him and enjoy his company. However I used to do a similar job and understand the nature of it. Most importantly I know that he would much rather be here then at work and that is vital.

This is the problem Glassofwine. If everyone is working late, you feel like a cad for sloping off early. I'm sure many of us have to do it in order to pick kids up but we are women - how much harder for men in the kind of culture we have in the UK.

My dh has crap wages and because he has always chosen jobs with shift patterns I have never been able to do an evening or weekend job to ease the financial burden. At the moment his shift pattern should mean 3 days off but because we need to live, pay rent and council tax etc. he works overtime on one of his days off, a 12 hour shift.

So not only do we never have a family weekend as his shift is Fri-Mon his days off never really feel like it either. I get the guilt trip for ever feeling tired which I do, too often. I don't ask for help from him but sometimes it would be nice if he would just play with dts, that is all, not feed or bath them or any "jobs" but just to play with them.

Perhaps I'm in a better position being divorced then than having someone I hardly ever see....

uwila, I agree there is a big difference between US and UK work ethic. Most people in the UK choose to take all their annual leave for example. In the UK people are jealous of me. In the US people admire and aspire to be me ...sending myself up a bit here but it's how it often is. English person sees rich man and wants to abolish him and tax him at 99%. US citizen thinks - wow I could be like that. But I think there is a residual work ethic here in the UK more than in most of the rest of Europe from those puritan/Pilgrim fathers days and that UK tradition of working long (ish) hours.

It is very hard if home is difficult, children are screaming and you know if you hold off coming home it will be tidy, peaceful, children asleep and your meal read, to choose to come home regularly to do 2 hours of housework and childcare with a tired wife or house husband. You can understand people keeping away. That seems an unfair way to run a family life but it's the traditional way so seems to work for a lot of people - he earns the money and she admires him for his efforts and he is glad of her efforts at home.

My D.h leaves the house Mon-Fri at 5.30am as he has to commute to London & wants to miss the traffic.He then goes to the gym or swims for an hour.
Sometimes he makes it home for 7.45 ish to just kiss d.s goodnight.Three out of five days he doesn't though.
Saturdays he morphs into a wedding photographer and is gone all day till midnight or later sometimes.Sundays are spent on the computer sorting out all the photography(with a Sainsburys shop & a quick swim with d.s squeezed in somewhere)
He works so hard and I really appreciate it's to keep us all....but it's a lonely ol' life sometimes & d.s finds it very hard that daddy is ALWAYS working....grizzle,grumble,moan

doesnn't sound much fun lulla!

have you discussed this with him?

The fact is in this country salaried people are taken by their companies as mugs.
My contracted hours are 9am to 5pm. I do get in around 8.30 (just because the journey to work is a little easier if I set off earlier). But apart from certain exceptions when a problems has cropped up late on, I leave at 5pm. I always ring my dh if I'm running late, and he does the same for me. Some of the managers on my site don't leave until anything up to 8pm. If they are regularly having to do that and they are not slacking off during the day, then the implication is that they have too much work and that the company needs to hire more people. Of course that never happens. So I do think that there is the pressure there to work much later than you are supposed to, which has a knock on effect on family life.

DH is in the Navy, he has been away since sept 1st, he was home for xmas for 3 weeks. H eleft again on jan 1st and wont be home till feb 16th. It sucks, i am stuck with all 5 of them all day every day. We moved in August too so i have not established any kind of network of friends yet either. This is harder cos if one child needs the doctor then you have to take them all!

I also found out i was prg 2 weeks after he left in sept, he has barely seen me this prg. It's all a pay off though, in Feb he should be based at home for a couple of years with maybe a few short deployments of 12 weeks or so. Then the hours are good and we will see alot more of him.

It's hard not to rsent them being at work, aftre all they get a lunch break, dinner break, go for a wee on their own! Our job never finishes. I moan but equally i wouldnt want to leave the children.

yeah now & again when it's been a particularly long week of tantrums,potty training and had no adult company whatsoever[going slightly insane emoticon]but there's no solution really.
I feel another grizzle coming on.........

ll, I was about to right sounds like you need a lover but I'm sure that's not the right solution.
Not just employers taking advantage of people. It's men and women wanting to avoid the dross jobs at home and delaying coming home with the gym, pub, chatting etc and also all the self employed people on this thread who work the long hours too.

In fact I think we work much less than we did actually. In the 1800s most people worked 6 day working weeks. If you were a live in servant - hundreds of thousands of our ancestors would have been - you were lucky to get a day off a month. In some ways we don't know how good we have it now in terms of shorter working hours!

i wish i had a day off a month.
where can i get a job as a live in servant?

My boss expects me to work extra hours each week unpaid. I am paid for 22 hours and regularly work 28 or more including coming in on my day off more often than not. However my workload is still unmanageably high and my boss doesn't appreciate the extra hours - she thinks they are to be expected. Bosses do pressurise people and people are worried about the impact of not keeping their boss happy when their family income depends on it. It can be very difficult to stick to your contracted hours.

DP leaves here between 6/6.30am and is home between 7.30-9pm. DS is only 11wks old and I have had no friends or family around to help (I have just moved house) so it has been tough but DP has weekends off so at least we have that time with him.

My H was always like this from day one. So for the last 5yrs I have been in reality a single parent - now to 2 ds's. He was gone at 7am and back at 7pm everyday and nope I didn't manage to keep the boys up everyday to see their daddy. Tired daddy and fractious boys just didn't work.

My H was always like this from day one. So for the last 5yrs I have been in reality a single parent - now to 2 ds's. He was gone at 7am and back at 7pm everyday and nope I didn't manage to keep the boys up everyday to see their daddy. Tired daddy and fractious boys just didn't work.

Wow obviously annoyed me so much got posted twice

tribpot, Thats a really interesting point you mentioned, about when you worked in Sweden. About the fact that people (men and women) werent embarrassed to admit their commitment to their children, and in fact the working day accomodated families. Im reading a book at the moment that mentiones that anglo societies are particularly unfriendly towards children and intolerant of parent`s needs.

I live in Japan and the long working day is notorious here too, and it is because people are scared to go home before their boss, rather than because they are doing anything productive. SO if the boss hates his wife, youre in trouble because you will also end up working late every evening. But times are really changing here and men are very actively involved in childcare from what Ive seen, much more so than men in the UK. On a sunday its the men pushing the prams everywhere and they are starting to insist on coming home earlier to be with their kids. As an aside, Japan is a lovely place to be a mother.

Sorry, just re-read my post, and it sounds like Im saying that men tend to work late because they dont want to be with their families. I don`T think that in general (my husband works late and is away at weekends ) But I do think that companies could and should be more accomadating towards children. THere is no reason why they are so anti-kids, except for the "culture" that exists inside many companies. So I think if enough people insisted on not working late, then the culture would change, as it is having to in JApan.

I know this is going to sound awful-but do you know 100% that hes working......and not somewhere else?

My DH and I had a massive row about this about three years ago - his company wanted him to work away. I basically said if you do, don't come back. or words to that effect!

Anyway, he had a calm discussion about it with his boss and told them he would have to look for another job because it wasn't worth it to him anymore. THEY WERE ABSOLUTELY FINE ABOUT IT. He works for a big city company and three years later it is still fine - I guess most people just don't ask.

I know one man who definitely stays at work to avoid the kids bath time and stays in the office chatting and looking on the internet. He is not working. No idea if that is true of partners mentioned on here, but you never know.

Dh works from 8.30 (leaves the house at 8am but he gets the boys' breakfast and makes packed lunches before he goes!) and gets home around 6.45 (often goes to shop on the way home for any groceries we need).

It would be easy for him to work longer hours but he chooses not to - he would earn more but his salary is just fine and he doesn't want to sacrifice the time he does have with the boys. When he comes in he helps with whatever I'm doing - bath, milk/biscuit time, ds1's reading practice.

I'm a freelancer and at the moment I'm mega busy so today I've been working and he has had the boys. He's taken them all for haircuts, done a Tesco run, played in the garden with them and now he's cooking their dinner (I'm upstairs in the office so I know this!).

I don't know how I'd cope if he wasn't so hands on or if he worked longer hours. But then I guess you just have to deal with whatever you need to. You don't know how things will pan out when you initially get together do you? It must be very hard if your dh gets in so late he doesn't see the kids or if he travels a lot. I don't think I'd like that.