Reply to I was so naive re marriage, career and kids

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It’s a sad state of affairs that we expect a couple to work 105 combined hours per week and have time to raise a kid. Work is the bigger problem here. [/quote]

OP exactly my point. The myth of the career woman is oversold. You can definitely either make it super big or have a good but not amazing career and have a good marriage.but a really good career usually works out if it’s the man. [/quote]

Not true for everyone, speak for yourself.

OP, as someone who had the career I wanted and has kids, I would encourage you to watch that Grey’s Anatomy episode where Bailey tells Mer to get a deeper bench. No matter what your child care situation is you need to build in layers of redundancy and be flexible. Treat this like a marathon, not a sprint. Otherwise you will burn out yourself and everyone around you.

Get more childcare. Figure out the division of tasks, adjusting as you go along. Understand that in five or ten years he will be broken in as a dad and adjust your expectations accordingly. I don’t know a single woman with a career who wasn’t disappointed at first with a husband’s lack of ability to do more, no matter how much he did. I don’t know a single woman who wasn’t happy to have kept her career once the kids got older. It only gets easier. You are really in the swamp when kids are too young to go to school, but this will pass in a couple short years. Once you’re more senior you can flex your hours. Keep the bigger picture in mind.[/quote]

OP: Thank you. Will do. And that’s helpful to hear.

I do flex my hours. Our daycare was closed last week due to COVID and I took on the bulk of childcare because I can flex my hours. My husband says he cannot work after 7pm because he’s too tired. I worked 8-midnight to make up for the lost time during the day. This is what’s driving me crazy. [/quote]

PP here. Just pace yourself. You can’t expect yourself to sprint like old times the first 2-3 years after having a baby.

This is temporary. Keep saying that to yourself. Once school kicks in, and their sleep stabilizes, there are new challenges but by and large it’s much less hands on. For one thing you don’t have this problem of always having to get a babysitter.

Think of your husband as an energy reserve. Yes he could deplete himself as you are doing, but would that help the family? You may crash and he may have to take over. Charge everyone’s battery as much as possible and get other batteries on board. I spent a week or two hiring each nanny and it was worth it. Also got help with cooking. Look into meal delivery services, outsource whatever you can. It gets much easier but you can’t be firing on all cylinders the whole time.[/quote]

One more thing — use your work skills to solve this. If you have a dud colleague at work, you’re not going to waste your time figuring out why he’s like that and how to change him. You go around him. And you don’t depend on him. Yes, it’s annoying, but you don’t have time to waste on this if your schedule is as described. Get your weekends covered to make more time for yourself and figure out how to work smarter not harder to save yourself time on non baby things. Detach and look at this as the logistical and practical issue it is. If over time the balance does not emerge in your favor then you deal with it. But I wouldn’t judge him or the marriage based on what it looks like in crisis mode, which is essentially what’s happening when you have young kids and two jobs to juggle.[/quote]

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