Reply to Question for moms: did going part-time solve your work-life balance problem?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It's hard to make the math work. I work 20 hours a week, but the loss in income means we can't outsource as much. Not outsourcing childcare is the whole point, but that time with my kids is not conducive to getting housework or admin done, and we can't afford to just outsource this to housecleaners or others because my income is so much less.

I basically feel like I should be doing something at all times, it's hard for me to get downtime to do stuff like the gym or meet up with friends. Even in the evening, because that's when I wind up doing stuff like cleaning, organizing, dealing with paperwork.

I go through phases where I try to use the time between work and school pick up to do things for myself, and this is nice. But when I do that, the house devolves into messiness and disorganization, a lot of tasks get pushed off or not done (home repair projects, vacation planning, etc.). My husband is not a bum -- he cooks, he does pick up and drop of a couple days a week, he's an active and involved dad, he does laundry. It's not like he dumps everything on me. There's just so much, and I'm the one who is home more so a lot of it falls to me.

I sometimes think it would be logistically easier to go back to full time and just outsource more -- weekly cleaners and I don't clean at all in between, rely on meal prep services or take out more, outsource certain household tasks like organizing and planning. But outsourcing all that would eat up the entire difference between my current income and what I'd make full time. So there would be no financial benefit. It might be more personally satisfying. But it would mean less time with my kids, which I do currently find satisfying.

Families basically have four jobs that must be done: making money, caring for children, caring for the home, meeting adult needs (for socializing, intimacy, downtime, exercise etc.). Most parents I know just aren't giving that fourth one their all, we're all just scraping by there whether we work or not, full time or part time. The other three have to be allocated between two people but honestly, they are all full time jobs. And most families need more than one income so that one is more than full time.

The math just doesn't add up.[/quote]

I like the way you laid this out. I think one of my biggest problems is I struggle with outsourcing, which is really the only way to solve this is you have a spouse who works a lot. A big part of why I have continued to work is I feel like staying at home would result in my husband doing zero actual childcare (he would definitely still hang out with the kids when it was convenient but having even a few hours a week where it is actually him in charge because I’m totally gone is helpful in keeping him from being a Disney dad.

I really wish I could figure out how to outsource more of the house stuff. I find it so stressful to have people in my house doing a subpar job I don’t do much of it. [/quote]

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