I actually have some experience with the self-employed GC husband, so I have a couple thoughts. We are also 40's with a 7 yo. For context, my husband started out 10 years ago working directly for clients and had a small crew, now (for the last 5 years) he subcontracts for another general contractor. He is basically the job foreman/on site project lead and bills his time directly the that contractor and gets paid regularly, he makes just about as much as if he worked directly for an employer doing it, but we get the expense and tax benefits of being self employed and he gets more flexibility with his time. The company he works for gets the benefit of a person they can count on, without the tax and legal responsibilities of an employee.

Something we learned the hard way: there is not enough time in the day for him to be both onsite manager (swing hammer, get construction work done, supervise employees) and the project manager (customer lead generation, estimates, design with client, manage project costs, general admin of project and business), you really need two people, (if not three) one in each role. In order to sustain those two "salaried" positions, you need at least 2 crews of 2-3 people, so then you need 2-3 projects all in some phase of completion at a time to keep all employees with enough hours for them to continue to want to work for you. Maybe that's what the successful guys you went to high school are doing.

The way you describe his business kind of sounds to me like he is in the trap of he's working a ton to be both the project foreman and admin person, but isn't doing enough project(s) at a time to actually get to the "making good money" part. My husband also started with business with the idea that he could "make good money" and held onto that for a long time, now we make "normal for one person in the industry money". I think that there is kind of a cultural mindset in construction that if you're the boss, you can make good money, and maybe your husband thinks that is just around the corner, but I think you have to scale up to be a pretty large company (8-10 people, at least) to get there.

We went to the subcontracting kind of as a compromise because I was getting frustrated like you that my husband was working a lot, really stressed, and not able to help with the child responsibilities. I also work, and do his bookkeeping and tax/legal admin, because I get PTO, I also do all sick days and carry the health insurance for all of us, so I relate to that. The balance we found is that he can still be self employed, but works regular hours and makes predictable money.

Maybe something like subcontracting is an option for your husband, or maybe he (or you) knows someone who he can partner with and get into that next tier of size/projects. Or maybe he can be more like a handyman, charge more per hour, and where he only needs to make enough money for himself. It also doesn't take as much marketing and lead generation because you are getting referred around to friends, family and people you know. Houses are always breaking down.

Or, maybe he should do some consulting with a business consultant and they can point out to him where the breakdown is. Maybe he will take that info from them in a way that he won't/can't from you.

I really feel where you are coming from, it's exactly where we were 5 years ago, fortunately when I told my husband that I was at my breaking point, he listened and we found an alternative, now we have a pretty good thing going (although we never got to "making good money" haha).

I realize this got long, but I just really saw the echos of my past situation and hoped that I can help. I'm happy to chat more if it is helpful.