Truthfully, can you both have careers and have 3+ kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have four kids and two high stress jobs. For us, the key is having school, day care, work, activities all close to home and truly partnering together to juggle things. We keep our weekends and evenings as simple as possible. Our kids have early bed times and we can finish work and hang out with each other after 8 pm.

How old are your kids? This could work til they're about 7-8 but after that for most families the weekends will be packed w/ activities and play dates and bday parties etc. and the kids won't go to bed at 8pm forever.

No is a complete sentence. I have older kids (late tween and Teen) and we say no to birthday parties and play dates. The kids have lots of friends. You don’t have to pack weekends/ weeknights with practices and games. We value time with our kids (who love to play sports!) but they know we do one sport a kid now. One plays basketball, our DD plays golf and our youngest prefers to be involved in theater.

You don't let your kids go to birthday parties or have any friends over? Also, I "only" have 2 kids and they "only" do one activity each but by the time kids get to middle school if they are any good at their activity, it gets pretty time consuming. There is no way for my children do their chosen activity at their level and have it be less time consuming than it is.

I guess I’m lucky my children are unremarkable.

But again, OP’s kids might turn out to be different than yours, and it’s perfectly valid to point this out as a potential issue when she is juggling three kids and two time consuming careers. Like PP, my kids only do one thing but when you are high achieving and skilled at that one thing - whether orchestra, dance, a sport - it can become quite time consuming and logistically challenging in the older ages.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just had my second and my heart wants a third but my husband has a leadership role and I’m a physician. Our careers are important to us. We have some flexibility in our jobs but reading posts it sounds like 3 kids and two careers isn’t possible. Anyone who is making it work (esp without nanny or day to day family help)? How?

You can have 6 but can you still be a happy person, a hands on mom, a caring mom, a living daughter, a dedicated physician? Probably not. One can only stretch themselves and their spouse so much, too much stress will put strain on every relationship.

[Anonymous]

*a caring wife

[Anonymous]

*a loving daughter

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s possible. I have leaned way in after my first was born. My husband and I both have no ability to WFH. They are long days but make it work by utilizing every minute and being highly efficient. We use aftercare at school and cook easy meals. Kids play one sport per season (if at all).

Kids are 2,6 and 9.

You’re still at the easy ages for sports and activities. It’ll be much harder when your kids are 7, 11 and 14 if you allow them to continue playing sports or participate in extra curriculars. There will be more practices, more games and more conflicts.

I have 3 and the easiest time to be a two parent working family was when all of them were 9 and under. Sure we were tired and the days were long, but it was doable. The youngest didn’t have any commitments and the older two were minimal. Day care/school/after care covered most of the needs and then we’d have maybe one evening activity.

Now the 3 are active tweens/early teens. They all are in a sport now, but the practices/games are 4x a week, at different times and places. We don’t have any local family or paid help and even though I have a flexible schedule, I lean heavily on carpools and other families to get them to their activities.

I am curious if PP has girls. We have three boys, now 12, 13, and 15. There is more driving and carpooling so the schedule can look and feel hectic but for me it feels easier than the younger years when they were constantly getting into something, making messes, and less self-sufficient. The 24/7 management of them was actually more time-consuming and draining than all the driving around. Now, they are in charge of dishes and keeping their rooms clean, and importantly, they are much less naturally destructive than they once were.

I’m the above poster and have a mix of girls and boys. My tolerance was higher for little kid messes, so messy projects, toys out, etc didn’t bother me much. We also had time to clean it up together. You are right that there are a lot less of those messes now and they are responsible for cleaning them up.

DP. I do not have a super high tolerance for messes, so I’ve found that part of parenting challenging. I am totally fine with handling the “logistics” of parenting like figuring out schedules, carpools, meal planning based on who will be home when. I think because the latter is easier to control and organize. Whereas with young kids there’s always something hectic and unplanned seemingly happening (spills, fights, whining, messes). Like a PP, I also have boys and have found the little boy energy very tiring.

Drop offs sports practices and even managing a travel sport seem easy in comparison! I guess we all have different strengths, but either way, it is good for OP to think about what the next 18 years could look like at all stages.

[Anonymous]

OP, you sound very young and naive for a physician. Are you a resident or fellow?

Anyone with a child in daycare knows that kids get sick ALL the time. I may have missed what type of physician you are. Would you cancel and reschedule a full day of patients for a child home sick. Your kid(s) will be sick frequently for multiple days at a time.

DH is a surgeon and my kids used to get sick all the time. They would take turns getting one another sick and I took every sick day for the kids because DH would not cancel a day of clinic or cancel surgeries because our kid is home sick with a fever.

[Anonymous]

Pp here. We know many dual career families with 2-4 kids and they usually have a very good nanny.

I have heard some truly horrific nanny stories to just not good nanny stories but the parents seem to make it work.

[Anonymous]

If husband pitches in, nanny is reliable, grandparents are reliable back up, jobs are flexible, kids have no special needs, finances are plenty, its possible but a high need kid can throw in a wrench in your stable life so if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[Anonymous]

Don’t do it. It’s not good for your kids. Give attention and time (which will already be in short supply w 2 kids and parents w 2 demanding careers) to the family you already have.

-grew up in a big family w 2 working parents (including a mom who is a physician) and while I love my siblings, I wish my parents had been able to give us more time and attention that they just couldn’t bc they both worked and had too many kids and never enough time. I became a sahm myself and we had 2 kids precisely bc I wished my own mom had spent more time w me as a kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, you sound very young and naive for a physician. Are you a resident or fellow?

Anyone with a child in daycare knows that kids get sick ALL the time. I may have missed what type of physician you are. Would you cancel and reschedule a full day of patients for a child home sick. Your kid(s) will be sick frequently for multiple days at a time.

DH is a surgeon and my kids used to get sick all the time. They would take turns getting one another sick and I took every sick day for the kids because DH would not cancel a day of clinic or cancel surgeries because our kid is home sick with a fever.

NP.

What an unnecessarily condescending remark to lead off with. The type of remark one might expect from a coat tail riding spouse with no particular achievements of her own. You sound exactly like a surgeon’s *wife*…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don’t do it. It’s not good for your kids. Give attention and time (which will already be in short supply w 2 kids and parents w 2 demanding careers) to the family you already have.

-grew up in a big family w 2 working parents (including a mom who is a physician) and while I love my siblings, I wish my parents had been able to give us more time and attention that they just couldn’t bc they both worked and had too many kids and never enough time. I became a sahm myself and we had 2 kids precisely bc I wished my own mom had spent more time w me as a kid.

+1. CAN you do it? With a good nanny, sure. But consider how much time you'd actually be spending with your children versus the nanny, and think about whether that's a trade off you want to make. The post-pregnancy hormones can be strong for some of us, but that doesn't mean they should be acted on. My guess is that you're still in the very early years of parenting. IMO, the older they get the more important it is that YOU are the one spending time with them. It's not just running them to soccer, it's the conversations that happen in the car on the way to soccer. I know I couldn't personally do that to my own standards with three kids and a demanding career.

[Anonymous]

Yes. Worked full time with 3. I finally quit with the 4th. We built a great support system with a reliable nanny and other working families.

[Anonymous]

We have 3 kids, DH has the "big job" and I am mommy-tracked. I agree with the posters that older kids need you more. The older the kids are, the harder it is to outsource parenting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m curious how many of these responders have three kids. Everyone I know with three+ kids wouldn’t change it. It’s human nature to adapt. If you have a strong marriage, similar desire for more kids, and means - go for it.

I'm a previous responder, and I have three kids, and my husband and I both work. It's really hard, and I am at a breaking point at least 1-2 times a week, because I feel like I haven't had sufficient 1-1 interaction with my kids (much less my husband). We are generally just cars passing each other in the driveway as we drive the kids to all of their things (our kids are 14, 11, and 8).

Of course I wouldn't change my family - I can't imagine life without my kids! I love watching them grow and I love watching each and every sporting event (maybe not winter swim meets, but oh well!) But I also agree with a previous poster that you need to also think about your own happiness and mental health. There are days when I have basically no time for myself, and despite my husband (who works remotely full-time) pulling a ton of weight, if you're a mom, the likelihood is that you're still going to carry much more of the domestic and emotional load (even, if as in my case, you are the priority breadwinner.)

Again! Wouldn't change my 3 kids. But I worry about my stress and emotional health, and probably as a result of those two things, am prone to yelling when frustrated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, you sound very young and naive for a physician. Are you a resident or fellow?

Anyone with a child in daycare knows that kids get sick ALL the time. I may have missed what type of physician you are. Would you cancel and reschedule a full day of patients for a child home sick. Your kid(s) will be sick frequently for multiple days at a time.

DH is a surgeon and my kids used to get sick all the time. They would take turns getting one another sick and I took every sick day for the kids because DH would not cancel a day of clinic or cancel surgeries because our kid is home sick with a fever.

NP.

What an unnecessarily condescending remark to lead off with. The type of remark one might expect from a coat tail riding spouse with no particular achievements of her own. You sound exactly like a surgeon’s *wife*…

I earned more than DH when we got married. I do not identify as a surgeon’s wife.

I reread my post and it didn’t read well. I was not trying to be condescending. OP probably is a younger physician since she is still having kids. Half the people we socialize with are physicians. When my husband was in residency, we put our name on a wait list for the daycare at the hospital/med school. We never got off that wait list and I would not have known that my kids would always be sick going to daycare.

OP, you can make this work with a nanny and grandparents. I know one mom who has 4 kids and a non physician husband. The grandparents helped out a lot when kids were younger with a full time nanny. We know many dual physician, physician/lawyer, lawyer/banker type couples. Some have 2-3 nannies. One family we knew had 6. My ex had like a staff of 5. His dad worked a lot and traveled and his parents were divorced.