Honestly, how do you manage dual income marriage with kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you're both too impressed with your jobs where no one will remember you a week after you're gone.

+1000, especially since at around 200k per job, most of the prestige of their job is simply being able to say something like "I'm a professor of economics at GW" or "I'm the director at XYZ nonprofit." It's the kind of thing that will impress a certain population of people in DC and maybe some family and friends outside the area, but ultimately is not that big a deal. They aren't surgeons or entrepreneurs or some job where other people's lives or livelihoods depend on them showing up to work.

OP, many of us who had jobs like this ultimately realized this and adjusted our careers and lives to focus more on family. My DH shifted to a government job where he still does work he finds meaningful but only travels a couple times a year and has very standard hours. I moved to a 30 hour a week schedule where I don't travel at all, and rather than owning a few projects where I am the ultimate person responsible for them, I consult on a larger number of projects and am more of a specialist. We both still find our careers fulfilling, but making these shifts cost us about 50k a year in income but gained us a huge amount of flexibility and time. We now take real family vacations, we have regular date nights, we are both more relaxed and sleep better and eat better. Also, as our kids have gotten older we've come to see this transition as a kind of obvious precursor to retirement -- we see our lives more expansively and recognize work is one component of a fulfilling life but far from the only one.

I think one day you are going to wake up and look at your career and wonder why you gave up so much for so little.

I find the work that I do intellectually fascinating and the hours I put in beyond 40 have opened up so many opportunities I wouldn't have had otherwise. I'm not trying to impress anyone, I just really care about what I do. If that's not where you're coming from, of course it makes sense to prioritize being less stressed out. But if you do, it's a real loss to give up the potential for career advancement, which affects you not just now but for the years when your kids are off living their own lives. Being intentional about how you want to spend your time is great, but the answer isn't necessarily going to be working less.

Then don't have kids, or have kids with someone who will take up the slack so that you can work your extra hours. There is no scenario where all the adults pursue their intellectial passions >40 hours a week and the kids also get what they need.

My husband works about 40 hours a week. But what I was responding to said very little about the kids, it was about how it's so nice to be more relaxed and sleep and eat better, not about the kids, and how unless you're a surgeon your work just isn't that important and you're doing it to impress people. And that's just not my experience at all. I'm happy to trade off for more stress because I really like what I do.

I was in a similar situation with OP except my DH is a surgeon. Something had to give and it was my career. I had a demanding job and it was too hard to juggle and I did outsource as much as I could. I eventually cut down and then became a SAHM. I was surprised that it was much more difficult schedule wise when my oldest got to elementary. I thought i had made it since kids were older.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are similar. Truly there is no easy answer here. You just have to muddle through. We only have one child and she’s 12 now and it is finally like we can breathe again.

So she doesn’t do any travel sports? 12 is when life started getting super busy with our kid, but she plays sports.

Travel sports is a waste of time and money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Both DH and I are in highly intellectual jobs that come with a lot of intellectual stimulations, prestige, fun and stress, but don't pay that much. Think of academics, economist at international organizations, etc. We make about 400k in total, evenly distributed. So we are comfortable, but neither of us can afford to quit - we can't afford the same lifestyle with single salary, the sunk cost of PhDs, and all the fun and meaning come with our jobs.

The problem is, we work long hours and travel a lot for work. With two kids, despite a lot of help around the house, we still find ourselves increasingly arguing about who should take the kids, do the chores, etc. We complain about not spending enough time together, but we just can't make it because one of us is either traveling or recovering from the travel...

I'm afraid we are growing apart... I'm the woman and feel like that I already sacrifice a lot of my own time to support him. He just wants me to be the funny sexy available girlfriend whenever he has time. I often just want to take a nap, recover, catch up with work, because I just took the lion share of everything while he was away...

How do you manage dual income marriage? If either of us give up our job, are we destined to separate at some point? It is just so stressful...

WTF talks like this? You’re claiming your married PhD economist husband working at a multilateral bank or Fed job, and who has a couple kids, thinks like this?!?

Bizarre.

Trollishly bizarre Op. r u even married?

NP, and agree that this is trollishly bizarre. The OP appears to have ~zero~ self-awareness, and certainly has never heard of....an equal marriage. It's just striking that she would supposedly be this successful and this wealthy without any sort of understanding that she has to have a spine in her relationship.

Let's not get into two PhDs who can't grasp -- one of who is an economist? -- stating that they don't have enough income at $400k. It's an appalling lack of understanding of how to handle household finances.

I call troll post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you're both too impressed with your jobs where no one will remember you a week after you're gone.

+1000, especially since at around 200k per job, most of the prestige of their job is simply being able to say something like "I'm a professor of economics at GW" or "I'm the director at XYZ nonprofit." It's the kind of thing that will impress a certain population of people in DC and maybe some family and friends outside the area, but ultimately is not that big a deal. They aren't surgeons or entrepreneurs or some job where other people's lives or livelihoods depend on them showing up to work.

OP, many of us who had jobs like this ultimately realized this and adjusted our careers and lives to focus more on family. My DH shifted to a government job where he still does work he finds meaningful but only travels a couple times a year and has very standard hours. I moved to a 30 hour a week schedule where I don't travel at all, and rather than owning a few projects where I am the ultimate person responsible for them, I consult on a larger number of projects and am more of a specialist. We both still find our careers fulfilling, but making these shifts cost us about 50k a year in income but gained us a huge amount of flexibility and time. We now take real family vacations, we have regular date nights, we are both more relaxed and sleep better and eat better. Also, as our kids have gotten older we've come to see this transition as a kind of obvious precursor to retirement -- we see our lives more expansively and recognize work is one component of a fulfilling life but far from the only one.

I think one day you are going to wake up and look at your career and wonder why you gave up so much for so little.

I find the work that I do intellectually fascinating and the hours I put in beyond 40 have opened up so many opportunities I wouldn't have had otherwise. I'm not trying to impress anyone, I just really care about what I do. If that's not where you're coming from, of course it makes sense to prioritize being less stressed out. But if you do, it's a real loss to give up the potential for career advancement, which affects you not just now but for the years when your kids are off living their own lives. Being intentional about how you want to spend your time is great, but the answer isn't necessarily going to be working less.

Then don't have kids, or have kids with someone who will take up the slack so that you can work your extra hours. There is no scenario where all the adults pursue their intellectial passions >40 hours a week and the kids also get what they need.

My husband works about 40 hours a week. But what I was responding to said very little about the kids, it was about how it's so nice to be more relaxed and sleep and eat better, not about the kids, and how unless you're a surgeon your work just isn't that important and you're doing it to impress people. And that's just not my experience at all. I'm happy to trade off for more stress because I really like what I do.

No, I'm the one who wrote that and it's about all of it. Being more relaxed and eating/sleeping better is directly related to the kids, and the marriage. You only have so many hours in the day and you chose to have a family. So the trade off is not just about what YOU are willing to sacrifice for your job. When you carry that stress around because your job is so important to you, your family has to carry it too. Maybe with some jobs that weight feels worth it to the family. If you are saving lives or in a leadership role where you are having a huge impact, your spouse and kids might be able to feel like they are contributing to that with their sacrifice too, and that can make the family trade offs easier to bear. This is how many military families function.

But if it's just a job you personally find intellectually stimulation and enjoy doing, but where the social importance is more mundane, your spouse and kids are unlikely to feel like what they sacrifice for your career is worthwhile. They'll just resent it.

I'm not talking about being deployed for months at a time, we're talking about jobs where you work some evenings and parts of weekends and sometimes you travel. This is a completely normal thing for people with professional jobs to do -- particularly men -- and not especially difficult if it's just one spouse. Scaling back to to 30 hours, the primary beneficiary really is you, which is fine. And the point isn't just the intellectual stimulation, it's also the career and salary growth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You could both grow up. You're married, not a sexy bf and gf anymore. Also, 400k HHI is a lot of money, even in DC.

-1
You don’t have to lose the passion just because you are married, even if married a long time. Keeping up the spice is a good thing not something to be made embarrassed over.

[Anonymous]

Outsource the girlfriend part!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Both DH and I are in highly intellectual jobs that come with a lot of intellectual stimulations, prestige, fun and stress, but don't pay that much. Think of academics, economist at international organizations, etc. We make about 400k in total, evenly distributed. So we are comfortable, but neither of us can afford to quit - we can't afford the same lifestyle with single salary, the sunk cost of PhDs, and all the fun and meaning come with our jobs.

The problem is, we work long hours and travel a lot for work. With two kids, despite a lot of help around the house, we still find ourselves increasingly arguing about who should take the kids, do the chores, etc. We complain about not spending enough time together, but we just can't make it because one of us is either traveling or recovering from the travel...

I'm afraid we are growing apart... I'm the woman and feel like that I already sacrifice a lot of my own time to support him. He just wants me to be the funny sexy available girlfriend whenever he has time. I often just want to take a nap, recover, catch up with work, because I just took the lion share of everything while he was away...

How do you manage dual income marriage? If either of us give up our job, are we destined to separate at some point? It is just so stressful...

WTF talks like this? You’re claiming your married PhD economist husband working at a multilateral bank or Fed job, and who has a couple kids, thinks like this?!?

Bizarre.

Trollishly bizarre Op. r u even married?

This is OP. Yes my brilliant husband who’s always serious in front of colleagues playing authority just wants sex with me whenever he has time. That’s not too often ( maybe once a week), but it’s always inconvenient for me because I’m so stressed and tired! I can’t keep up with his sexual desires in this life! It only adds to my stress level…

If once a week is stressing you out this much, it’s not about your husband, it’s about the long hours and travels. You are blaming him for reasonable interest because the both of of you have an imbalanced life. Recognize that your reaction to his interest is a symptom not a cause of your stress.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you're both too impressed with your jobs where no one will remember you a week after you're gone.

+1000, especially since at around 200k per job, most of the prestige of their job is simply being able to say something like "I'm a professor of economics at GW" or "I'm the director at XYZ nonprofit." It's the kind of thing that will impress a certain population of people in DC and maybe some family and friends outside the area, but ultimately is not that big a deal. They aren't surgeons or entrepreneurs or some job where other people's lives or livelihoods depend on them showing up to work.

OP, many of us who had jobs like this ultimately realized this and adjusted our careers and lives to focus more on family. My DH shifted to a government job where he still does work he finds meaningful but only travels a couple times a year and has very standard hours. I moved to a 30 hour a week schedule where I don't travel at all, and rather than owning a few projects where I am the ultimate person responsible for them, I consult on a larger number of projects and am more of a specialist. We both still find our careers fulfilling, but making these shifts cost us about 50k a year in income but gained us a huge amount of flexibility and time. We now take real family vacations, we have regular date nights, we are both more relaxed and sleep better and eat better. Also, as our kids have gotten older we've come to see this transition as a kind of obvious precursor to retirement -- we see our lives more expansively and recognize work is one component of a fulfilling life but far from the only one.

I think one day you are going to wake up and look at your career and wonder why you gave up so much for so little.

I find the work that I do intellectually fascinating and the hours I put in beyond 40 have opened up so many opportunities I wouldn't have had otherwise. I'm not trying to impress anyone, I just really care about what I do. If that's not where you're coming from, of course it makes sense to prioritize being less stressed out. But if you do, it's a real loss to give up the potential for career advancement, which affects you not just now but for the years when your kids are off living their own lives. Being intentional about how you want to spend your time is great, but the answer isn't necessarily going to be working less.

Then don't have kids, or have kids with someone who will take up the slack so that you can work your extra hours. There is no scenario where all the adults pursue their intellectial passions >40 hours a week and the kids also get what they need.

My husband works about 40 hours a week. But what I was responding to said very little about the kids, it was about how it's so nice to be more relaxed and sleep and eat better, not about the kids, and how unless you're a surgeon your work just isn't that important and you're doing it to impress people. And that's just not my experience at all. I'm happy to trade off for more stress because I really like what I do.

No, I'm the one who wrote that and it's about all of it. Being more relaxed and eating/sleeping better is directly related to the kids, and the marriage. You only have so many hours in the day and you chose to have a family. So the trade off is not just about what YOU are willing to sacrifice for your job. When you carry that stress around because your job is so important to you, your family has to carry it too. Maybe with some jobs that weight feels worth it to the family. If you are saving lives or in a leadership role where you are having a huge impact, your spouse and kids might be able to feel like they are contributing to that with their sacrifice too, and that can make the family trade offs easier to bear. This is how many military families function.

But if it's just a job you personally find intellectually stimulation and enjoy doing, but where the social importance is more mundane, your spouse and kids are unlikely to feel like what they sacrifice for your career is worthwhile. They'll just resent it.

I'm not talking about being deployed for months at a time, we're talking about jobs where you work some evenings and parts of weekends and sometimes you travel. This is a completely normal thing for people with professional jobs to do -- particularly men -- and not especially difficult if it's just one spouse. Scaling back to to 30 hours, the primary beneficiary really is you, which is fine. And the point isn't just the intellectual stimulation, it's also the career and salary growth.

Is this OP? You seem obsessed with the idea that most professional jobs are like the ones you and your husband have, and are baffled that you are struggling to make it work with kids, and your marriage is struggling.

The answer is: no, not all professional jobs are like that, and other couples make career sacrifice cra to make the family/marriage stuff work. Scaling back to 30 hours is NOT just for you. It buys you breathing room to be more present for your kids, and makes certain family logistics easier. Shifting to a job without travel, or more minimal travel, dies the same. And voila, when you both have a bit more time in the margins, less overall stress, and the family stuff is humming more easily, you also tend to have a bit more to give to you marriage and intimacy. Do you give up some opportunity at work? Sure. Life is sometimes about tradeoffs. But it's not like you stop working or have no ambition, you just balance it against the other things you value (DO you value your family and marriage? it kind of sounds like you don't).

But in the same way that you've convinced yourself that 400k isn't very much money, you've also convinced yourself that there is no way to have a rewarding professional job unless you have the kind of job that requires frequent travel and working nights and weekends sometimes. It's just a very narrow, unworkable belief about how your life should be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You could both grow up. You're married, not a sexy bf and gf anymore. Also, 400k HHI is a lot of money, even in DC.

-1
You don’t have to lose the passion just because you are married, even if married a long time. Keeping up the spice is a good thing not something to be made embarrassed over.

I think you misunderstood. I don't think the PP is saying don't have sex or care about it (that actually is sort of what OP is arguing in favor of-- she wants her DH to leave her alone so she can focus on work and sleep). The point is that when you are married with kids, and both work, your sex life is going to look and feel a bit different from when you were just dating. "Grow up" means figure out how to "keep up the spice" without needing to pretend you are just some sexy girlfriend with nothing weighing her down. "Grow up" means stop pouting about how annoying it is that your spouse is still attracted to you and find a better work/life balance that actually makes room for your marriage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two working parents is very, very doable if you don’t choose to take these high travel/unpredictable hours types jobs. Sounds like you care too much about prestige.

DH’s travel is the killer. We have 2 kids with an age gap. The older one sometimes has sports late in the evenings when the younger one should be sleeping. They both push back on having a nanny put them to bed or take them to all their activities. It’s also hard to manage getting them both out the door in the mornings and myself to work. I wish we could get off the hamster wheel, but DH wants a bigger life than we can afford on just his income. I’m tired and have no time for myself.

How is this only your problem to solve? If the kid activity logistics only works for you if someone else has the mornings, the bedtimes or brings them and the kids are pushing back on the nanny helping then some of the options are that DH steps in to take one of these (changing his schedule or job) or you are a team in laying out the options to the kids that either the nanny brings them to the activity or handles x otherwise they can’t participate. I would keep it open ended asking how do WE handle this and make sure in working with spouse to come up with a solution you aren’t dictating someone else’s actions (i.e. telling your spouse they have to change their job or let you quit yours so Larlo can play travel soccer). Also, if it’s really not about kid activity logistics and solving this issue still would not make you happy, dig deep to figure out what is the actual issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP it seems like you want a life that is impossible to have and are super bummed you're not getting it.

You want a fun job that gives you a good lifestyle and is intellectually stimulating, meaningful, and fun. You want to have kids and want to give those kids adequate care. You want a functional household. You want time with your partner and time to decompress after one of you travels. And you want a relatively low-stress existence.

It might just be impossible to have a great job, great marriage, great family life, great mental health, and great home. For the vast majority of the world's population, it is impossible. Sometimes what we need isn't a workaround to get what we want, sometimes we need to accept reality for what it is and find a way to be content with that.

Sheesh.
"Don't bother, OP, in trying to live the good life"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Both DH and I are in highly intellectual jobs that come with a lot of intellectual stimulations, prestige, fun and stress, but don't pay that much. Think of academics, economist at international organizations, etc. We make about 400k in total, evenly distributed. So we are comfortable, but neither of us can afford to quit - we can't afford the same lifestyle with single salary, the sunk cost of PhDs, and all the fun and meaning come with our jobs.

The problem is, we work long hours and travel a lot for work. With two kids, despite a lot of help around the house, we still find ourselves increasingly arguing about who should take the kids, do the chores, etc. We complain about not spending enough time together, but we just can't make it because one of us is either traveling or recovering from the travel...

I'm afraid we are growing apart... I'm the woman and feel like that I already sacrifice a lot of my own time to support him. He just wants me to be the funny sexy available girlfriend whenever he has time. I often just want to take a nap, recover, catch up with work, because I just took the lion share of everything while he was away...

How do you manage dual income marriage? If either of us give up our job, are we destined to separate at some point? It is just so stressful...

You need to hire more help. The only reason to work two jobs is if you earn enough to pay for the domestic duties. You can afford a full time nanny/housekeeper, and you need one.

You also need to chose whether you want a "lifestyle" or a marriage. Women who choose "lifestyle" don't want to be married. Let your husband find someone who wants to be a romantic partner, if your "lifestyle" is more important than your vows.

[Anonymous]

OP is the example of how being educated doesn't make you intelligent.

[Anonymous]

I’m probably a decade ahead of OP’s family timeline. DH and I earned around the same, had demanding jobs and had two kids. I was drowning. I was the default parent. DH helped with household chores but I was alone with all the invisible kid duties whether it was buying diapers, sippy cups, car seats, clothing, shoes, making appointments, going to appointments, making play date plans, RSVPing to birthday parties, buying gifts for birthday parties, buying age appropriate books, puzzles, toys, etc etc etc. DH just did none of this planning or researching. He would help with dishes and bath and would take kids to sports practice or game if he was home. If he wasn’t home, it was on me. If he had a work event, he just went to the work event. It didn’t matter if it strained me.

Eventually I cut down and stopped working when I had the third child. The third child tipped us over. I originally planned to take a break and go back to work but then Covid happened. Now my kids are older but they seem to need me more than ever. Instead of an annual dentist appointment, we have to go to the orthodontist every month. My kid had braces, then a retainer and then Invisalign. My kids used to have one practice and one game for sports per week. Now that they are older, they have sports 5x per week. And now that my baby is no longer a baby, that third child is starting to have afternoon activities.

OP keeps mentioning her husband’s highly intellectual job. At some point, no one cares, especially the wife. My DH now earns seven figures, gets asked to chair conferences, join boards, constantly asked to do random crap for companies. What used to be prestigious now is just a nuisance to me and feels selfish to me as I want to go back to work. It is hard not to be resentful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m probably a decade ahead of OP’s family timeline. DH and I earned around the same, had demanding jobs and had two kids. I was drowning. I was the default parent. DH helped with household chores but I was alone with all the invisible kid duties whether it was buying diapers, sippy cups, car seats, clothing, shoes, making appointments, going to appointments, making play date plans, RSVPing to birthday parties, buying gifts for birthday parties, buying age appropriate books, puzzles, toys, etc etc etc. DH just did none of this planning or researching. He would help with dishes and bath and would take kids to sports practice or game if he was home. If he wasn’t home, it was on me. If he had a work event, he just went to the work event. It didn’t matter if it strained me.

Eventually I cut down and stopped working when I had the third child. The third child tipped us over. I originally planned to take a break and go back to work but then Covid happened. Now my kids are older but they seem to need me more than ever. Instead of an annual dentist appointment, we have to go to the orthodontist every month. My kid had braces, then a retainer and then Invisalign. My kids used to have one practice and one game for sports per week. Now that they are older, they have sports 5x per week. And now that my baby is no longer a baby, that third child is starting to have afternoon activities.

OP keeps mentioning her husband’s highly intellectual job. At some point, no one cares, especially the wife. My DH now earns seven figures, gets asked to chair conferences, join boards, constantly asked to do random crap for companies. What used to be prestigious now is just a nuisance to me and feels selfish to me as I want to go back to work. It is hard not to be resentful.

Have you ever actually TRIED to reset with your spouse? Have you bothered at all to say "this isn't working for me"? Do you ever make your needs known?

I am sort of appalled by the lack of self-esteem amongst highly motivated, intellectual, high-earning women in this thread.