Do you consider leaving work at 7pm “working late”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Or normal? Would you expect to receive notice from your spouse if they were staying at work until 7pm?

Anything more than the regular 8 hours is late. We need to normalize the concept of late and not be ashamed of it.

[Anonymous]

OP, your DH’s hours may be entirely normal for his job. Assuming this is so, what you really need to do is define what is normal and figure out how you, as a family, will manage what needs to be done, when and by whom. Communication between the two of you (not with DCUM) is key.

7 would be late for me to get home. But I am at work at 7am, home for dinner and after-dinner with the kids, then, many days, back “at work” in the home office.

[Anonymous]

Yes that is late.

[Anonymous]

If DH is a workaholic who works long office hours then at home you ought to be able to afford a dishwasher. Dirty dishes don't sit around. Then you can fight over unloading it but at least the stuff is clean.

[Anonymous]

I consider that normal. Once we stretch into 8 or 9 or beyond, that is "late." But I'm a lawyer and so is DH.

[Anonymous]

Before kids that was normal (lawyer).

After kids that became late.

[Anonymous]

That's late to me but my husband and I have always been early risers, mostly due to kids but even before that. I have a co-worker with no kids and I think she and her husband would say 7 is not late.

[Anonymous]

It would be late for us. Unless there was a special circumstance requiring it, I would be very unhappy with what you describe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Depends on the culture of the employer. That's not especially late for many law firms, consulting firms, venture capital and private equity firms, tech companies, hospitals, etc.

Yes it is late.

My MDs left for their central station or LIRR trains at 5pm and were back online after 8pm. 6-8pm was dinner or family time.

My PE bosses called all their own shots on call, travel, FaceTime in the office or not. They all got their work done and were response 24/7 but no one was at the office for dinner or later unless it was project driven/ imminent deadline and was not done.

[Anonymous]

It depends on if you have kids/plans/other obligations

[Anonymous]

Yes. It basically means that you can never plan to go anywhere or be anywhere on a weeknight unless you know in advance and schedule a babysitter who is able to drive kids to activities.
So, basically, you can never work late, go a a networking dinner, volunteer to coach a kids sport or lead one of their activities (if you have more than one kid), be involved in the PTA if they meet in the evening, join a book club, or do one of the myriad other normal activities that people do because you never know if your spouse is going to be home to take care of the kids.

[Anonymous]

Yes. Absolutely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. It’s nothing nefarious he’s just a workaholic. I often feel like I’m being gaslight that it’s a totally normal time for someone to work until and that it’s totally normal to just assume your spouse will make dinner and drive your children wherever they need to go.

If it’s not okay with you, then it’s not okay. Just like it isn’t okay to be a SAHP without the thumbs up from your spouse, it isn’t okay to work 60+ hours a week either. It’s not okay to unilaterally make decisions about your employment if they don’t work for your spouse.

Now, if you are being unreasonable and he actually needs to work these hours in order to put food on the table, then you need to deal. But if this job is making your household miserable, then he should look for a different job where this isn’t the culture.

[Anonymous]

Very late- I leave at 4.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. It’s nothing nefarious he’s just a workaholic. I often feel like I’m being gaslight that it’s a totally normal time for someone to work until and that it’s totally normal to just assume your spouse will make dinner and drive your children wherever they need to go.

I don’t see 7pm being an issue if it was already worked into agreed upon responsibilities. What have you discussed as each of your responsibilities in regard to dinner and driving the kids places? My DH was always on an early schedule from when we first met and liked getting in early to avoid traffic and leaving by 3:30-4. So he had dinner and school/aftercare pickup and I had getting the kids out in the morning. Any kid activities had to be agreed upon by both of us that we could commit to the logistics with our work schedule. Often that meant DH was on activity drop off and I had to be on activity pickup (meaning a firm work cutoff time) and I helped organize carpools. Since my work schedule was on the later end, it did come down to eating dinner with the family or not. I found it was easier to have days I planned to work later and get dinner on my own than trying to get everything done in 8 hours of work plus commute when I wasn’t starting work until 8:30am.

If your DH has agreed on certain things and work always seems to supersede, that’s a different issue. I think I read somewhere the advice that your family should be just as important as a work client. From that lens, he should be communicating and balancing. You can’t do everything to meet a deadline for one client and drop the ball and not communicate, or negotiate timelines with the other client. If a true work emergency has come up, he has to figure out what absolutely needs to be done I.e. what needs to be done before he leaves work and if there is any way to work around kid activities like work in the car/location while waiting or logging on later in the evening. Otherwise if he can’t cover what he agreed to do, he needs to ask you to cover and should be negotiating to offer something is exchange, like getting the kids out the next morning or taking over something you would do one the weekend.