My husband does drop offs and I do pick ups. However, he does have to travel every few weeks for work, which essentially leaves me as a single parent that week. Those weeks are hard.
My partner is a chef so works leaves the house at 7.30am and gets home 11pm. He does the mornings, so he spends some time with the kids before work then the rest is down to me. On his days off we share the load but he still does the mornings and bath time.
My husband is military so his hours very, but a normal day he is gone before our daughter and I wake up (5-ish) and is home between 5 and 6pm (her bedtime is 8). On these days he does all he can for us while he is home (cook/clean/take the toddler on a walk, outing or handle playtime). He is very helpful and involved despite longer than normal hours and usually gets her ready for bed and reads her stories then I put her to sleep. We take turns on weekends (each getting a day to sleep in) and have lots of family time together and I get a bit of me time. He sometimes has field training for days/weeks at a time where I have to do everything. The longest besides a dreaded deployment was a month long JRTC training out of state. The hardest part was trying to explain to a 2yr old why Dad's not home for so long.
So for our family, we all get up together because we have 1 car. We drop dad off at work & come home to get ready for school (pre-k). After school, we pick dad up & he makes dinner. Then we spend about 3.5 hours doing family stuff per day, even if it’s just shopping or watching a movie. He then put our little one down for bed so we can spend an hour or 2 together. Overall though, work schedules can be very different & as long as he’s putting in the time/effort to be present around work hours, that’s nice. Is there an option for him so switch locations or hours so he is home every night?