If you (OP or others) aren't home for dinner every night, how many hours/minutes do you see your kids every day?

I SAH, but DH eats breakfast with us in the morning, and is home for dinner every night. If he didn't get those two+ hours with the kids at night, he wouldn't even know them.... and I can't imagine that he'd feel all the work was worth it if he's MIA every night. That's how we live... but compared to some, we're practically impoverished at about $190K gross. Of course, we don't really feel like we live in poverty b/c our house and cars are paid off and we have $0 credit card or other debt.

I think it IS about choices... we choose not to be on a fast track b/c we like to have down time and be involved with our kids. BTW, I'm the lawyer in the family (the one who SAH -- so, yes, you can take the lower paying lawyer job if you want to... but that's a choice.)

Since people are posting HHI, we both work, ours is $250K, and we typically commute in together in that DH drops me at metro, and drives to downtown DC with kids, does daycare drop off, and we try to do the same thing on the way home. If need be I can walk to and from metro (and get some exercise in). We live reasonably close-in and usually get home at 6:45, all together.

It's hectic with two small children. We do have a healthy homecooked meal most nights (meal planning is key, and we depend on leftovers so we don't have to cook every night). We are usually eating together, though sometimes one of us is making dinner for the adults to eat after kids are in bed, and then we all have leftovers the next night. I will be glad when kids are old enough to be involved in dinner prep.

My dad rarely made it home for dinner when I was young (worked hard and traveled a lot), but my mom and sibling and I always ate together.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:dad here, lawyer at midsize firm. zero chance I am home in Vienna before 7:30pm. and a few times a month, or more, I have board meetings, business development, etc. When I was in biglaw it would have been impossible to get home before 9pm.

So let me know, and if the answer is what I expect, how do you explain to your family?

DH and I are both practicing lawyers, both working full time. We make it a family priority to eat dinner together as a family every night. We eat at 6:30. Coincidentally, we also live in Vienna, and my DH commutes to DC.

We do this by declining evening obligations as much as possible, going to work super early, working at home after dinner and being happy with secure but low to medium powered careers. Our HHI is over $300,000 though so not any financial sacrifice to do it this way.

this is the OP. getting to work early would not make a difference, unless I could change all of my co-workers and clients. I need to be there when they need me. and yes, if your combined HHI is $300K you are making a sacrifice. That is fine for you and I'm happy it works out, but my target in a few years is approx $350-400K or so myself. besides, it cuts my commute in half if I can get on 66.

NP here. You sound really defensive. I'm extremely envious of the PP you are snarking at - she has a great setup and she doesn't deserve to be sniped at just because she was kind enough to answer your question. And I say this as someone who makes much more than you but would happily make 300k to have dinner with the whole family every night.

Just something to think about: if you don't think you could live comfortably (and save heavily) on 300k, you might want to re-evaluate your priorities and see if you can find a way to spend more time with your kids, since you seem to care about that.

Yep, this. A thousand times this.

again, I've been in BigLaw and been laid off because of my practice area. There is no middle ground at the moment. It is literally bust my ass or make $50K at a title company.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:dad here, lawyer at midsize firm. zero chance I am home in Vienna before 7:30pm. and a few times a month, or more, I have board meetings, business development, etc. When I was in biglaw it would have been impossible to get home before 9pm.

So let me know, and if the answer is what I expect, how do you explain to your family?

DH and I are both practicing lawyers, both working full time. We make it a family priority to eat dinner together as a family every night. We eat at 6:30. Coincidentally, we also live in Vienna, and my DH commutes to DC.

We do this by declining evening obligations as much as possible, going to work super early, working at home after dinner and being happy with secure but low to medium powered careers. Our HHI is over $300,000 though so not any financial sacrifice to do it this way.

this is the OP. getting to work early would not make a difference, unless I could change all of my co-workers and clients. I need to be there when they need me. and yes, if your combined HHI is $300K you are making a sacrifice. That is fine for you and I'm happy it works out, but my target in a few years is approx $350-400K or so myself. besides, it cuts my commute in half if I can get on 66.

NP here. You sound really defensive. I'm extremely envious of the PP you are snarking at - she has a great setup and she doesn't deserve to be sniped at just because she was kind enough to answer your question. And I say this as someone who makes much more than you but would happily make 300k to have dinner with the whole family every night.

Just something to think about: if you don't think you could live comfortably (and save heavily) on 300k, you might want to re-evaluate your priorities and see if you can find a way to spend more time with your kids, since you seem to care about that.

Yep, this. A thousand times this.

In house lawyer here, eat dinner w fam at six each night.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:dad here, lawyer at midsize firm. zero chance I am home in Vienna before 7:30pm. and a few times a month, or more, I have board meetings, business development, etc. When I was in biglaw it would have been impossible to get home before 9pm.

So let me know, and if the answer is what I expect, how do you explain to your family?

DH and I are both practicing lawyers, both working full time. We make it a family priority to eat dinner together as a family every night. We eat at 6:30. Coincidentally, we also live in Vienna, and my DH commutes to DC.

We do this by declining evening obligations as much as possible, going to work super early, working at home after dinner and being happy with secure but low to medium powered careers. Our HHI is over $300,000 though so not any financial sacrifice to do it this way.

this is the OP. getting to work early would not make a difference, unless I could change all of my co-workers and clients. I need to be there when they need me. and yes, if your combined HHI is $300K you are making a sacrifice. That is fine for you and I'm happy it works out, but my target in a few years is approx $350-400K or so myself. besides, it cuts my commute in half if I can get on 66.

This was your question originally:

So let me know, and if the answer is what I expect, how do you explain to your family?

Here is what you do: Look your kids in the eye and let them know that money is more important to you than them and then carry on with your conference call.

lol. when I was literally 3 days from being unemployed, going on COBRA with kids with health issues and staring at a big fat NOVA mtg, I landed this job. Welcome to 2012 asshole.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:dad here, lawyer at midsize firm. zero chance I am home in Vienna before 7:30pm. and a few times a month, or more, I have board meetings, business development, etc. When I was in biglaw it would have been impossible to get home before 9pm.

So let me know, and if the answer is what I expect, how do you explain to your family?

DH and I are both practicing lawyers, both working full time. We make it a family priority to eat dinner together as a family every night. We eat at 6:30. Coincidentally, we also live in Vienna, and my DH commutes to DC.

We do this by declining evening obligations as much as possible, going to work super early, working at home after dinner and being happy with secure but low to medium powered careers. Our HHI is over $300,000 though so not any financial sacrifice to do it this way.

this is the OP. getting to work early would not make a difference, unless I could change all of my co-workers and clients. I need to be there when they need me. and yes, if your combined HHI is $300K you are making a sacrifice. That is fine for you and I'm happy it works out, but my target in a few years is approx $350-400K or so myself. besides, it cuts my commute in half if I can get on 66.

Hey OP, I'm sorry to be judgmental since you are obviously trying to make more family time but $300K HHI is not a "sacrifice." If you want to pursue your career goals of making $350k-400k, then unless you are in charge of your own schedule, in most jobs, clearly you are not making it home for family dinner at 6pm. I am the PP who is a 2 lawyer family who has dinner at 6pm nearly every night. Our HHI is probably $250k. We own a house in DC, have 30 minute commutes via metro and have zero financial stress. I would not trade in our comfortable life (including family dinners) to make an extra $150k. But you do. You can't have it all.

OP here, and I will catch up on the rest of this thread - but wanted to respond to this one. for my career, there is not much middle ground possible. I would KILL for an in-house $200K type job. I've tried and tried, but I cannot get one. The market is impossible for people with my skillset and credentials (transactional, finance, corporate, real estate type stuff). I will continue to try. So for now, I can either advance (small firm) or get canned, not much in between. Not too many non-equity types at my firm. Besides, its not that hard to make equity where I am, and they don't work hard at all, and do make $400Kish. That would be the ideal life for my family. Comfortable good place to work and very family friendly. I can get there. But I've been laid off before and would rather not take that risk again. It is a real risk.

and yes, if your combined HHI is $300K you are making a sacrifice. That is fine for you and I'm happy it works out, but my target in a few years is approx $350-400K or so myself.

You sound like a total ass. Your kids may be better off having dinner without you.

It gets harder in the years where there are sports practices , music, tutoring, homework etc but still need early bedtimes. It's a lot to do alone and then think about someone else's dinner

I work from home and shut down when school ends, so I'm here almost every night. I have evening meetings on occasion; this can be as seldom as once every month, but I've had weeks in the past where I've had three evening meetings in a week.

DH is home between 6 and 7:30 75% of the time. So we eat together about 75% of the time. The thing is, he almost never knows when he'll get home. He's pretty much the primary for what he does, so if something comes up at 5pm, it's on him and it's on him without much warning. I'm still trying to squelch the annoyance of never knowing whether I should cook a nice/big dinner, because if he's not here, it's just me and DC and DC is too young and picky to appreciate it. But clearly, I have it better than many of you, and I'm thankful for that!

Our kids are young and eat dinner early, sometimes before 6 pm. I sit down and eat with them. DH travels a lot and when he is in town is seldom home before 7 during the week. He is almost always home by 6:30 on Fridays, so the kids have healthy afternoon snacks so that we can all eat together. Then we sit down together for most weekend meals- breakfast, lunch and dinner. Those are great, unhurried meals with lots of laughing and deep discussions- they more than make up for the weekday dinners when DH can't join us.

Re above when dh is home it's 730 or 8 and my kids go to bed at 730/8 so timing is tough

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:dad here, lawyer at midsize firm. zero chance I am home in Vienna before 7:30pm. and a few times a month, or more, I have board meetings, business development, etc. When I was in biglaw it would have been impossible to get home before 9pm.

So let me know, and if the answer is what I expect, how do you explain to your family?

DH and I are both practicing lawyers, both working full time. We make it a family priority to eat dinner together as a family every night. We eat at 6:30. Coincidentally, we also live in Vienna, and my DH commutes to DC.

We do this by declining evening obligations as much as possible, going to work super early, working at home after dinner and being happy with secure but low to medium powered careers. Our HHI is over $300,000 though so not any financial sacrifice to do it this way.

this is the OP. getting to work early would not make a difference, unless I could change all of my co-workers and clients. I need to be there when they need me. and yes, if your combined HHI is $300K you are making a sacrifice. That is fine for you and I'm happy it works out, but my target in a few years is approx $350-400K or so myself. besides, it cuts my commute in half if I can get on 66.

This was your question originally:

So let me know, and if the answer is what I expect, how do you explain to your family?

Here is what you do: Look your kids in the eye and let them know that money is more important to you than them and then carry on with your conference call.

The best parent is the one who forgoes all work in order to consume all meals with his/her children. Thank heavens for soup kitchens.

Yes, because it sure it tough to "make the ends meet" on a measly 300K/yr. I think that might even be a qualifies for free lunch and 8A housing.

I SAH and eat with kids at about 5, depending on sports practices. My kids are 6 and 9. We do half homework usually before dinner and half after. Then bath and Jammie's and they get in bed and read. On nights my husband is home ( he travels a lot and has other evening work obligations) he's home maybe 2-3 at most many weeks very little but home most weekends. I half the time make him a nice home cooked meal which is a bit rough with managing bedtime etc and half the time I get take out or the equivalent. It's not totally ideal but it is our normal. Sometimes I feel like I do it all at home but to be fair he does it all right now re work snd supporting the family financially.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:dad here, lawyer at midsize firm. zero chance I am home in Vienna before 7:30pm. and a few times a month, or more, I have board meetings, business development, etc. When I was in biglaw it would have been impossible to get home before 9pm.

So let me know, and if the answer is what I expect, how do you explain to your family?

DH and I are both practicing lawyers, both working full time. We make it a family priority to eat dinner together as a family every night. We eat at 6:30. Coincidentally, we also live in Vienna, and my DH commutes to DC.

We do this by declining evening obligations as much as possible, going to work super early, working at home after dinner and being happy with secure but low to medium powered careers. Our HHI is over $300,000 though so not any financial sacrifice to do it this way.

this is the OP. getting to work early would not make a difference, unless I could change all of my co-workers and clients. I need to be there when they need me. and yes, if your combined HHI is $300K you are making a sacrifice. That is fine for you and I'm happy it works out, but my target in a few years is approx $350-400K or so myself. besides, it cuts my commute in half if I can get on 66.

This was your question originally:

So let me know, and if the answer is what I expect, how do you explain to your family?

Here is what you do: Look your kids in the eye and let them know that money is more important to you than them and then carry on with your conference call.

The best parent is the one who forgoes all work in order to consume all meals with his/her children. Thank heavens for soup kitchens.