Why Our Family Swapped Roles: Choosing Beyond 'Normal' Taught by Our Son's School Refusal

Our family changed the way we work starting this July.

We used to be a dual-income household where both my husband and I worked as full-time employees, but after our son began refusing to go to school in his early elementary years, I gave up my full-time job.
After all, I couldn't leave a young child alone all day.

As a result, we settled into a style where my husband worked full-time and I worked part-time.
Incidentally, because my husband works early morning shifts, he leaves the house before 6:00 AM and returns home late.

In the end, the morning solo parenting didn't change, but this is likely a common scene in modern nuclear families.

Overlapping changes and a single decision

Several years have passed since then, and our family's situation has changed.
Our son, who refused to go to school for five years, has started attending junior high school at his own pace, and our younger daughter has become a second grader in elementary school.

At the same time, the expiration date for the 'request to defer transfer' that my husband had submitted to his company when our son first started refusing school had arrived.

Furthermore, a feeling began to well up within me: 'I want to work to my heart's content full-time.'

With these changes overlapping, we held repeated discussions in our family, and as a result, we decided that I would work full-time and my husband would work part-time.

Thankfully, I have a pharmacist's license.
Since pharmacists at local pharmacies are well-compensated, I chose to return to full-time work to satisfy my desire to work hard, and my husband, who was a retail company employee, chose the path of working part-time.

In terms of household income, it barely changes even if we swap our roles.

From the perspective of society at large, this might be a choice that surprises people.
However, I believe this is a path we were able to decide on smoothly precisely because we are a couple who experienced our son's school refusal and began to question the concept of 'normal'.

What is needed for child-rearing, beyond money

Now that the children have grown, there might have been an option for my husband to remain a full-time employee and live away from home for work while I also worked full-time.
In fact, there must be many families who manage to do that.

Even so, there is a clear reason why our family did not choose that path.

It is true that money is necessary for raising children.

However, by experiencing our son's school refusal, we were made aware of the 'important things other than money' in child-rearing.

Those are 'human support,' 'time,' and 'breathing room.'

These are all things that are
truly necessary for raising children.



However, in today's busy nuclear family society,
they are all too easy to lose sight of.

The manpower, time, and mental space
to listen to what children have to say.

The manpower, time, and mental space
to watch over children.

The manpower, time, and mental space
to avoid depriving children of
the opportunity to think and decide for themselves.

Coming home from work,
rushing through dinner,
getting the kids into the bath,
and putting them to bed while worrying about the next morning's wake-up time.

In a life without that kind of mental breathing room,
it is difficult to listen carefully to children
or watch over them quietly.

Let alone finding the time to wait
for the child to think and decide for themselves.

A new family form gifted by the experience of school non-attendance

What is truly important in raising children is
the experience of children thinking for themselves, deciding for themselves,
and seeing it through.

This is an important lesson we realized firsthand
precisely because of the steady, day-to-day reality
of our son's school non-attendance.

To protect and nurture that important thing,
our family dared to choose
a new way of working that doesn't fit into societal molds.

I intend to write down
the new form of our family life that is beginning now
little by little here.

#SchoolNonAttendance #ParentingWorries #WorkStyleChoices #FamilyForm #DiverseWaysOfLiving #MyCareer