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Happy week! Stay positive.. 👍
Restlessness has overgrown me 🙄
Rising Star
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Kind of why I’m a DINK, I feel for parents it’s tough. I have pets and feel like I’m not doing enough for them.
Thank you. Kids are out of the cards for many reasons and I’d rather regret not having kids than having them. There are so many trade offs and it is a hard job and I can see how people burn out. I wish you all the best and hope you’re also prioritizing self care
My wife left her job to stay home with our kids while they’re young. It was a really hard decision because her job was prestigious and meant a lot to her, and we were in financial hot water for two years until my income grew enough to sustain our growing family. Now I work from home full time, and my wife stays home with our three children. It feels like I won the lottery getting to see them so much each day. Not to mention avoiding the daycare shuffle… I seriously don’t think there’s an amount of money you could pay us to go back to being dual income.
That said, I’m really not trying to push anyone toward choosing this path over another. It comes with substantial financial sacrifices, and obviously both spouses need to be on board with it. I just want to share my story so that folks know it’s still an option in 2026 if you’re willing to sacrifice financially and be weird (especially if you live in the northeast or west coast).
Rising Star
My group/firm allows people to work on reduced schedules. Most common is 80% but I’ve also seen 60%.
I went 50% at a major law firm. Satellite office. Great for when the kids are too small for school.
Rising Star
You need to have the talk ASAP because the terms of the partnership need to adjust.
Who has the better earning potential taking into consideration the hours required to earn it? Someone’s job gets prioritized (“breadwinner”) and the other person will need to take a step back. Doesn’t mean reduced hours per se, but means that in event of an emergency the non-breadwinner will handle by default. (And doesn’t mean there won’t be times the breadwinner will need to be on call for emergencies when the non-breadwinner can’t be available.)
Doesn’t need to be forever. And it doesn’t exempt the breadwinner from everything else that goes into making a household run. And depending on how you do your finances, it might require breadwinner to chip in more for joint expenses, or to pony up from their discretionary fund for new household expenditures (cleaners, nanny, grocery delivery).
TLDR- someone’s singing lead and someone’s playing the tambourine.
Rising Star
My wife and I both work full time. We’re prioritizing her career (non-law) because she has higher earning potential for fewer hours worked. That means I’m in-house, do pick up and drop off, leave work by 3 and go back online when the kids are down. If there’s an emergency, I’m the default. There are times where I absolutely cannot leave early or handle pickup and she moves things around or we have the sitter do it. Yes we outsource as well because we’d rather spend our limited time doing fun things instead of chores. My point was there’s an assigned default and it’s made things far easier.
My wife and I are in this situation. I just do my OT from 10-2am most nights
My husband’s (non-law) job doesn’t do reduced hours, so I went reduced hours for a few years even though I’m the primary earner. Just went back FT, I’m just adjusting hours around as needed and working more weekend time to make sure it gets done, since I’m still primary caretaker on everything kid related
At our firm, folks can reduce their schedule and comp to a percentage of 1.0 FTE, but that still doesn’t really make sense for exempt roles who have to work till the job is done. One solution that worked for a parent on our team was to shift to a collections-based model over salary, so she brings home 50% of what she collects. When and how much she works is now exclusively her decision based on how much she wants to earn, and we don’t have to manage her hours anymore
My husband’s job allows reduced hours if we wanted to go that route (most common is 80% and a lot of parents at his firm do that), but my job is flexible enough — I am OT exempt but I have no strict hours target and I have earned enough autonomy to structure my time how I want — so for now my husband is still full time. He still attends doctor’s appointments and stuff like that, and makes up for it by signing back on after the kid goes to bed. I do most of the backup childcare though
We just made due. You either look to family support, paid help or one of you finds a job that’s flexible so you know if you need to stay home you can. This was me. No one cared how or when I did my work as long as it got done. I also did most of the pick up and drop offs bc my husband traveled. So sucked for me to work nights or weekends or whatever, but it works for us. I was underpaid bc of it, but I had flexibility and it was worth it. Now we take turns depending on schedules but still skewed a bit towards me. I’m also in-house now, which helps. But there are reduced hour positions at firms.
Rising Star
It truly depends. Some are leanly staffed sweatshops where 5pm emergencies are the norm. Others are behemoths with countless niches and so long as no one complains about you, you’re golden. Most are in-between.
It’s hard to find a new in-house role specifically to be the “default parent” ducking out early. But there might be some hallmarks:
A role that has hybrid/RTO, but isn’t strict on which days or how many hours;
If the hiring manager and the team have young children;
If they emphasize they only care that the work gets done, treat everyone like adults, and expect you to manage your work and escalate when needed (rather than hold your hand and preemptively inquire).
We have just done the best we can to make do. There are definitely times when it is less than ideal. But overall, my husband and I function well as a team and get through it somehow.
I just work in the night hours and on the weekend and have a nanny.
A lot of firms will let people reduce their hours and comp. There is also contract work where you can limit how many hours a week you do. One of you could also go solo. I suggest you figure out which spouse is ok with taking that step back and sacrificing their career.
We have babysitters (two main ones and two back ups), house cleaners, pool cleaner, gardener. My husband does drop offs, because I sleep in. Whoever of us is available or the babysitter do the pick ups. I am still able to take my kids to sports practice and spend time with them which is important to me. I work late nights 10:00 am - 2:00/3:00 am sometimes. I am fortunate that my partners do not care when I work as long as I get it done. One of my partners even jokes that I only work nights.
Firms let you reduce hours if you’re in good standing usually. Also, a lot of help. We have a full time nanny, house cleaners 2x a month, and I’m not a biller anymore (in house), so that helps too. With two kids now, I would’ve gone crazy with billable stress and firm life at full hours, but I know many people who manage it one way or another (family, hired help, etc).
Im at 90% and hybrid and my husband is in-house. Thats how we make it work