Working with a young family

Scorpio33

Hi,

Since having a child, I have found it more and more difficult to juggle the demands of having a family life and having a job. It seems to me that increasingly I have to choose between having a job or seeing my child.

As a baby, she goes to bed at 6:30, asleep by 7 and I would love to see her from 5pm every day so I have a good relationship with her and am not just a weekend dad. But increasingly, it seems I am being expected to work past 5pm and not get home until 6:30/7, which means I miss out on seeing my daughter.

I can see a lot of the policies are geared up to help working mums, but as a dad I find I am frowned upon or seen as weak if I request help for having time to spend with my family. In my profession (Accountancy) it is almost impossible to be able to leave at a time in order to see my family, and I get the impression that most employers of accountants would have the same view. My thoughts have always been that if someone wants me to choose between work & home, then my homelife will always win. Practically though I need a job to be able to pay bills, so this is easier said than done. This has got me thinking of maybe changing careers to a more family friendly one, but then I would have to take a big pay drop which is something we as a family can't afford. Plus I have no idea what career I can get into which is family friendly, let alone being able to get into it.


Does anyone have any wise words?
Has anyone else been in this situation and what did you do?
Any help / comments welcome!

Gigglepig

I will be following this thread with interest, as I am pregnant and my husband might soon find himself in the same situation as you. He also thinks it would be frowned upon if he took additional paternity leave.

Would your employer offer flexible hrs, i.e. If you started earlier some days and left earlier, and vice versa? So you could have either the morning or evening with your child?

betti911

Can you adjust your routine to put your little one to bed later? My hubby works similar hours and our baby goes to bed at 9ish to allow daddy to help with the bath etc

Scorpio33

I have spoken to my employers about my hours and whilst they were willing to help where possible, the answer was that I was required to complete whatever hours needed to complete the job. So they could not guarantee what time I could be home by or even what time I was required to be there in the morning. From what I see, there is a long hours culture where if you leave before 6, you are seen to not have enough work. The ideal solution would be to find an employer who is more open to someone with a family, but every agency I speak to say that those jobs simply do not exist.

With changing baby's routine I am not sure it is a good idea. All the advice I read about bringing up babies is that they should have a settled routine with set hours - I would hate to change the routine, have her going to bed later and then being grumpy all day long or not developing as she should. Plus when I do work later, I am too tired to give any proper attention to my daughter.

The more a think about it, the more depressing it gets as I see women in general have a glass ceiling that employers assume they want kids and so are not promoted or given extra work, but on the flip side, employers (generally) assume that men want to have good careers and so make no provisions for people like me who generally could not give a stuff about a career and just want a job and enough time to spend with the family.

liney

Baby going to bed at 6.30pm is very, very early. Most office hours finish at 5pm or 5.30pm, and then there is the commute home. I feel the sensible option is to adjust the bedtime routine.

Also look at your workload objectively. Why are you constantly being asked to complete tasks by the end of the day at short notice?

You are posting here at nearly 9am. Can you not start work earlier in the mornings?

duchy

I don't think 6 is early bedtime. That was my sons bedtime up to the age of five. He'd sleep twelve hours or more solidly so obviously needed it and seemed happier and healthier than friends kids the same age who were still going strong at 11pm lol. My husband often had to work late and just made up for it at weekends with lots of time with our son.

If the OP works til 9 on a regular basis then rolling bedtime back by an hour isn't going to help anyway. The OP maybe needs to look at how he schedules his work and maybe start earlier so everything else is done so a late notice assignment isn't a total disaster and late nights at work decrease. May not be able to lose them completely but to a degree that's the price we all pay for a job that gives a good standard of living to our children.

I don't think the issue is a gender one more the sort of company he's employed by. Some companies genuinely believe in a life work balance and offer more family friendly work practices like flexitime . Maybe finding a job with a company with a better attitude is the long term solution........ Or even self employment.

Scorpio33

duchy wrote: »

...

I don't think the issue is a gender one more the sort of company he's employed by. Some companies genuinely believe in a life work balance and offer more family friendly work practices like flexitime . Maybe finding a job with a company with a better attitude is the long term solution........ Or even self employment.

Agree with this, but where can you find a company that beleive in work life balance or offer family friendly working? That is what I struggle with and people I ask say those employers do not exist.

peachyprice

Employers like that do exist, have you looked at small private accountancy firms?

One of my relatives is an accountant with his own small practice, 4-5 employees, he's a family man himself who likes to spend time with his children and doesn't work past 5pm unless absolutely necessary, and will stay himself rather than make one of his employees stay.

It might mean a drop in wages if your getting a large corporate salary but with more time at home and less commuting it sounds just what you need.

Scorpio33

peachyprice wrote: »

Employers like that do exist, have you looked at small private accountancy firms?

One of my relatives is an accountant with his own small practice, 4-5 employees, he's a family man himself who likes to spend time with his children and doesn't work past 5pm unless absolutely necessary, and will stay himself rather than make one of his employees stay.

It might mean a drop in wages if your getting a large corporate salary but with more time at home and less commuting it sounds just what you need.

Thanks - will look into this. I am happy to take a drop in wages etc if needs be.

and for anyone that is asking, I am posting from work (been here since 8am).

I guess apart from seeing my family the big issue is the long hours culture - people are expected to be seen to be working, even if they have little to do. So people stretch out work to last betweeen 8am and 6/7pm even when it could get completed between 9am and 5pm. That is a reflection of the attitude of senior management - we expect overtime unpaid to reduce the costs of labour, and sod the happiness of our employees.

Anyone have any other examples of where family and work CAN be balanced?

iammumtoone

What time does your baby wake? Would it be possible for you to get up earlier and spend time with her then?

If you are getting home just before her bedtime, I don't think it would hurt her routine too much if she waited till you get home so you could bath her and put her to bed, story etc. Yes you would have to do this as soon as you walked in the door but it would mean you got some special time with her every evening and give your wife a little break if you took on this responsibility.

Remember as well once she gets older she will be staying up later.

GwylimT

I'm a mechanic and so my hours tended be 8-6 and then the garage I worked for also offered calls out, as part of my role I worked with apprentices. At this time my youngest was five, I took a year off when he came to me (adopted), as he was at school this solved a lot of childcare issues financially, but generally in the week when he was awake I was at work.

Things needed to change but I couldn't afford to work part time as I was a single parent, when my son had been in year 1 for about three weeks we had two more apprentices and so three days a week I was purely working with apprentices and teaching them various aspects of mechanics etc. It then became a bit mundane to be working on cars just to solve problems, so I started looking into whether or not it was possible to teach vehicle mechanics full time and it was.

I had a good look around and did some research, I also approached the college who supplied our apprentices and spoke to them to see if they could aid me with the options available, then nothing happened for a few weeks. I then had a phone call from the college as they intended to run a vehicle mechanics course where students would attend college for 2.5 days and a garage for 2.5 days. Despite having no formal qualifications in education my experience in the subject and working with apprentices for the previous three years led to me eventually gaining employment with them and during my first year they funded my training so I am now also qualified to teach.

While still fairly long hours this gave me the luxury of leaving college at 4pm to pick my son up from school, play with him, do homework, bath etc and then when he was in bed I could continue with my work. This is a role I am still in, however I now teach at a school with a sixth form, this is part time at the moment but I will be full time in September, so I still have the luxury of being able to do a lot of work in my own time when my daughter is in bed, our youngest is quite poorly and in hospital and as he is mainly sleeping sometimes I even do work while I'm with him.