Maybe you've started doing the maths. One day less a week. Finishing earlier. A nine-day fortnight. Four days instead of five. Or simply saying no to some of the hours that have gradually become normal.
Because something keeps bothering you.
My children are only this age once.
Or:
I'm barely there during the week.
Or:
By the time I get home, there's nothing left.
Or perhaps:
Why am I earning more money if I don't have enough life left to enjoy what it's for?
Working less can sound like the obvious answer. Sometimes it may be.
But fewer hours create a trade-off too. Less income. Potential career consequences. A different division at home. Possibly less of work you genuinely enjoy.
And importantly:
fewer working hours don't automatically solve every problem that feels like a work problem.
So before asking:
Should I work less?
ask:
What am I hoping working less will change?
That's where the decision becomes useful.
1. Start with the problem, not the solution
Suppose you want to reduce from five days to four. Why?
Maybe:
I want more time with my children.
Clear.
Or:
I'm exhausted.
Different.
My partner is carrying too much.
Different.
I hate missing Wednesday afternoon.
Different.
My job is taking over my life.
Different.
I don't care about career progression as much anymore.
Different again.
The same intervention — working less — could help some of these problems much more than others.
For example: if your main problem is a toxic relationship with your manager, one fewer day may leave you with the same problem four days a week. If the problem is an exhausting commute, one day less may help substantially. If the problem is that you want ordinary time alone with your children, a weekday off could change exactly that.
So:
Don't decide whether fewer hours are good. Decide whether fewer hours address your actual friction.
2. More time with your children can be a real gain
Let's not overcomplicate the obvious benefit.
Working less can give you: time.
Not abstract “quality time.” Actual ordinary time.
Breakfast. School drop-off. Walking somewhere. Making lunch. Being bored together. Appointments. Picking them up. Knowing their routines. Being there for things that otherwise happen while you're at work.
Those ordinary repetitions can matter because relationships aren't built only through special activities.
And for some fathers, the answer really is:
I want more of this part of my life.
You don't need a stronger justification than that.
But it still helps to know what kind of time you're trying to create.
3. Be specific about what the extra time would become
Imagine you reduce your hours. Friday is now free.
What happens on Friday?
You spend it with your child? Household work? Appointments? Recovering? Exercising? Your partner increases their working hours? Childcare reduces? You start doing the jobs that were previously squeezed into weekends?
All of these may be valuable. But they are different outcomes.
A “day off” with a two-year-old is also not necessarily recovery.
And a day spent doing groceries, laundry, appointments and childcare may reduce enormous pressure on the household without feeling remotely like leisure.
So ask:
What would the time actually be for?
Not because every hour needs a purpose.
Because otherwise you may make a significant work decision based on an imagined version of the time it creates.
4. Working less can change more than your calendar
Work can provide more than money.
It may give you: competence; challenge; identity; adult conversation; social connection; progress; autonomy; purpose; or: something that belongs to you outside family life.
Reducing work can affect those things too.
Perhaps positively. Maybe you're relieved.
Perhaps unexpectedly. Maybe you miss part of yourself.
Neither reaction means you made the wrong choice.
It means:
work has a place in identity as well as in the schedule.
Fatherhood doesn't require you to minimise that part of yourself.
The question is what place you want it to have now.
5. Calculate the financial cost properly
This is one place where vague reflection isn't enough.
If you're seriously considering fewer hours, calculate it.
What happens to: take-home income? Pension? Bonus? Childcare costs? Commuting? Tax? Benefits? Savings? Mortgage capacity? Long-term earning potential?
The net effect may be smaller than the headline salary reduction. Or larger. Depending on your country and situation.
Don't decide from:
I'd lose 20% of my salary.
Find out what would actually change in your household.
Then ask:
What would that financial change mean for us?
Less saving? Less travel? More financial pressure? Completely manageable?
Money is not the enemy of family life. Financial security can be part of caring for a family too.
6. Provider pressure can make reducing work feel bigger than it is
You may intellectually know:
We can afford it.
And still feel uncomfortable.
Because somewhere underneath sits:
Shouldn't I be providing as much as I can?
For some fathers, earning is strongly connected to responsibility. Reducing income can therefore feel like reducing what you contribute. Even when you're deliberately increasing contribution somewhere else.
That deserves examination rather than ridicule.
Later, The Pressure to Provide as a Father will explore this properly.
For now:
Providing is one way of contributing to family life. It isn't the only one.
And:
earning less isn't automatically contributing more either.
The decision still depends on the whole picture.
7. Don't assume fathers naturally reduce work after children arrive
Interestingly, the evidence suggests otherwise.
A 2024 study used longitudinal Dutch register data to examine what happened to men's working hours after the birth of their first child.
Even in the Netherlands — a country known for high levels of part-time employment — men's working hours showed substantial stability.
The large majority of fathers continued working full-time. (DOI)
The researchers also found variation. Fathers who earned relatively less than their partner before the birth were more likely to reduce their hours, and organisational context was associated with whether fathers scaled down work. (DOI)
That tells us something important.
Work decisions after fatherhood aren't made purely from personal preference.
They happen inside: household economics; workplace norms; available options; career structures; and expectations about who changes work when children arrive.
So if reducing work feels strangely difficult even when you want to:
the decision may contain more than your personal preference.
8. Workplace culture matters
Officially:
Yes, part-time work is possible.
Practically: the important meetings happen on your day off. Senior colleagues all work full-time. Promotion quietly assumes availability. Messages keep arriving anyway. Clients still expect five-day coverage.
Now you're paid for four days while mentally carrying five.
That is not the same as genuinely reducing work.
Father-specific research supports the importance of working conditions here. In a large Australian cohort of fathers with infants, long and inflexible hours, night work, job insecurity and low autonomy were associated with greater work-family conflict. Job security and autonomy were among the characteristics associated with greater work-family enrichment and better mental health. (PubMed)
More recent qualitative research with Australian fathers likewise describes workplace flexibility and family-friendly or unfriendly workplace cultures as important parts of fathers' experience of combining work and family. (Springer)
So before reducing contractual hours ask:
Will the work actually reduce too?
That's crucial.
9. You may not need an entire day
Suppose what hurts is:
I never see my children before bedtime.
Going from five days to four is one solution.
But perhaps: finishing at 16:00 twice a week solves more of the actual problem.
Or: starting later one morning. Working from home one day. Compressing hours. Protecting school pickup. Changing travel. Reducing overtime. Taking parental leave temporarily.
The smallest change is not automatically best.
But:
don't make a larger sacrifice than the problem requires.
Especially when income or career consequences are significant.
10. Fewer hours don't automatically mean less work-family conflict
Hours matter. But they aren't the whole work-family interface.
A father working fewer hours can still have: low autonomy; unpredictable schedules; night work; high emotional demands; constant availability; or: a job that follows him home mentally.
Long and inflexible hours have been associated with greater work-family conflict among fathers, but other job characteristics such as insecurity and autonomy also matter. (PubMed)
Likewise, longitudinal Australian evidence suggests nonstandard schedules can relate differently to work-family conflict and relationship quality, with father-specific patterns appearing in the data. (PubMed Central (PMC))
So:
I need fewer hours
may eventually become:
I need more predictable hours.
Or:
I need work to stop when work stops.
Or:
I need more control.
That's why identifying the actual problem comes first.
11. Talk about what changes at home too
Suppose you reduce to four days.
Your partner may think:
Great. Then you can do appointments, laundry and groceries on Friday.
You may think:
Great. I'll finally get more time with the kids and some recovery.
Both are understandable. They are also two completely different Fridays.
Don't wait until afterwards to discover that.
Ask:
What would working less change in our division at home?
Perhaps taking more household ownership is part of why the decision makes sense. Perhaps childcare changes. Perhaps your partner can increase their work. Perhaps the day is deliberately protected for father-child time. Perhaps it is mixed.
There is no correct answer.
But the time you create exists inside shared family life.
12. Your partner's career belongs in the decision too
This matters.
Imagine you both work full-time. Family life needs more capacity.
The automatic question becomes:
Should one of us reduce hours?
Who?
Higher earner? More flexible career? Person who wants to? Person already doing more childcare? Person whose employer supports it?
These criteria can point in different directions.
And seemingly practical choices can gradually create long-term differences in: income; pension; career progression; professional identity; and dependency.
BRTLS doesn't prescribe who should reduce.
But:
don't treat one person's career as fixed and the other's as the adjustable part without examining why.
The family decision has two careers in it.
13. More time at home may reveal work you weren't seeing
There is another possibility.
You reduce work. And suddenly realise how much happens at home during the hours you previously weren't there.
Appointments. Food. Planning. Childcare. Transitions. Cleaning. Remembering.
Maybe the extra day doesn't feel spacious at all.
That doesn't mean reducing work failed.
Perhaps you've shifted labour from your partner. Perhaps weekends become easier. Perhaps your relationship benefits. Perhaps you understand the household differently.
The benefit may appear somewhere other than where you expected it.
That's why it deserves review after the change.
14. More time does not guarantee more presence
You can work four days and spend Friday: checking Slack; thinking about Monday; scrolling; doing household administration; or mentally recovering from four compressed days.
More available hours create opportunity. They don't automatically create connection.
Likewise, a father who works five days can still be deeply involved.
So avoid the equation:
fewer work hours = better father.
There is no BRTLS ideal number of working hours.
The question is:
What becomes possible with the time — and does that matter in your life?
15. Be careful with compressed hoursA four-day week sounds like:
One whole day back.
But if forty hours become four ten-hour days, the trade-off changes.
Perhaps Friday becomes wonderful.
But Monday to Thursday: you miss dinner; have less energy; see your children less; need more recovery.
That may still be worth it. Or not.
Again:
Don't only count the time gained. Look at where the cost moves.
This is classic work-family fit.
16. Consider reversibility
Some decisions are easy to test.
One day parental leave for six months. Temporary reduction. A trial with your employer. A fixed period of adjusted hours.
Others are harder to reverse.
Leaving a role. Stepping off a career track. Closing a business. Making a large permanent income change.
When uncertainty is high, a reversible experiment can be useful.
Can I test part of the answer before making the entire decision?
Not every employer or career allows that.
But where possible, it turns speculation into experience.
17. Decide when you will review the decision
Imagine you reduce work.
Six months later: What would tell you it helped?
Not:
Was it the correct decision?
Ask:
Do I have more of the time I wanted?
Has family life become more workable?
How has our financial situation felt?
What happened to my energy?
What happened to my relationship with work?
What happened to my partner's load?
Do I want to continue?
This is exactly why BRTLS treats development as adaptive.
A choice produces experience. Experience becomes new information.
You are allowed to learn from it.
TRY THIS
Before reducing your hours, answer these seven questions
1 — WHAT PROBLEM AM I TRYING TO SOLVE?
Be specific.
Not:
balance.
What actually isn't working?
2 — WHAT DO I EXPECT FEWER HOURS TO CHANGE?
Time? Energy? Childcare? Connection? Household load? Stress? Something else?
3 — WHAT WILL THE TIME ACTUALLY BECOME?
Father-child time? Household work? Recovery? Partner capacity? A mixture?
4 — WHAT WILL IT COST?
Calculate the real financial effect.
Then consider career, identity and opportunity too.
5 — WHO ELSE IS AFFECTED?
Partner. Children. Employer. Household.
What changes for them?
6 — IS THERE A SMALLER CHANGE THAT SOLVES THE SAME PROBLEM?
Different start/finish? One protected afternoon? Remote work? Less overtime? More predictability?
Maybe yes. Maybe no.
7 — CAN I TEST IT?
If possible: try a defined period.
Then review what actually happened. Not what you predicted would happen.
When working less probably deserves serious consideration
There is no checklist that can make the decision for you.
But reducing work may deserve closer consideration when:
you repeatedly miss parts of family life that matter deeply to you;
work regularly leaves too little capacity for the rest of life;
your household needs more practical capacity and you have room to provide it;
your current income allows a reduction without creating unacceptable financial strain;
your priorities have genuinely changed;
the arrangement has stopped fitting a new stage of family life;
or:
you simply want more ordinary life outside work and are comfortable with the trade-off.
That last reason counts too.
You don't need to be in crisis before changing how much you work.
When working less may not solve the main problem
Be more cautious if:
the central problem is one toxic relationship at work;
you would be expected to complete the same workload in fewer paid hours;
the financial loss would create more strain than the time solves;
the main issue is persistent fatigue that may have another cause;
you mainly need predictability rather than fewer hours;
or:
you're making a permanent career decision in response to a very temporary period.
None means:
don't do it.
They mean:
look closer before assuming hours are the lever.
YOU DON'T HAVE TO MAXIMISE EITHER CAREER OR FATHERHOOD
This is where the decision can become unnecessarily difficult.
As though there are only two versions of you. The ambitious man who works. And the involved father who reduces work.
Real life doesn't divide that cleanly.
You can care deeply about your career and choose fewer hours. You can work full-time and be deeply involved with your children. You can reduce work for three years and increase it later. You can choose work now because of financial reality. You can choose time now because it matters more to you.
The point isn't to find the morally correct number of hours.
It's to understand the trade-off well enough to choose deliberately.
So instead of:
Should fathers work less after having children?
the better question may be:
Would working less improve the fit of the life we're actually living — enough to make what it costs worthwhile?
Sometimes the answer will be:
Yes.
Sometimes:
Not now.
Sometimes:
I don't need less work. I need different work.
And sometimes:
I thought work was the problem. It isn't.
All four answers can move you forward.
EXPLORE THE WIDER PICTURE
Work-Life Balance for Fathers: A Better Question Than Balance
If you're still trying to understand the overall fit between work and family:
→ Read: Work-Life Balance for Fathers
How Do I Balance Work and Being a Dad?
If you want to improve the current week before making a structural change:
→ Read: How Do I Balance Work and Being a Dad?
What If My Job Takes Everything Out of Me?
If you're wondering whether the job itself — rather than simply the hours — is the main problem:
→ Read: What If My Job Takes Everything Out of Me?
Work
How does my work fit the life I want to build?
Partner
What kind of relationship are we building?
Identity
How does fatherhood fit into who I am becoming?
Explore Identity in the BRTLS Framework.
Universal Transitions
If the arrangement used to work but no longer does:
