Can you count the times or the percentage you had to put work before family?

If you are counting holidays it’s more than I can count. I worked retail. I worked most holidays during the year. I worked every Black Friday for around 20 years, maybe 15 of which were during my marriage, then about 3 of the years when I was a teenager still living at home with my parents.

I worked every Christmas Eve day I think. Working until around 7:00, so getting home or to where dinner was 7:30/8:00ish. I’m not Christian so I volunteered to work the closing shift, but my husband and exboyfriend are/were Catholic and their families celebrate Christmas Eve, so I went from working all day to Christmas dinner and gift giving.

Worked a few Yom Kippurs. Worked many many July 4, Halloween, Labor Day, Memorial Day, and on and on.

My anniversary, birthday, everything.

I busted my butt to put family first. As a single Mom with NO back up it was not easy. My finances suffered as a result. Not sure if I regret that or not.

^^^ Amend that to to “my kids,” rather than my “family.” It was just me and them against the world. No grandparents, no cousins, no nobody but me and them.

I have worked hard to put family first but sometimes that meant missing out on family activities in order to stay employed. I would estimate that no more than 12% of my work time has ever negatively effected my family interactions.

There were a few major times but it was never for things like getting a project done by a certain deadline. Probably the worst was about four years ago and I had to run out Christmas morning when a critical system went down, I was back by lunch. It was usually like that, something big blew up or was about to blow up with real consequences. I have had to cut vacation short or work on something remotely on vacation a few times. As a general rule I don’t work overtime and I take my holidays.

I even didn’t plan my honeymoon immediately after my wedding, because I felt like I couldn’t ask during “season.” I chose my wedding date because I thought it would be a good time of year for family and friends coming in from out of town, but it was a hard time for me.

I regret not doing the honeymoon right away and worrying about work. Regret is really too strong a word, but I think I was an idiot for worrying about work like that. I didn’t even ask.

I don’t get the dichotomy.
I think people who work, and also have a family, work on account of the family. Otherwise you couldn’t afford to have a family.

It means working when you can actually say “No,” but you really like your job so you say “Yes” anyway and miss out on an event that is important to your child, when you could have been there.