To think that there are no well paid family friendly careers?

I just want to add, you need to think of chilcare costs as a shared cost. If anything, you should mentally attribute more of the costs to your DH as his inflexible role means you are needing to be flexible.

Realistically, there aren't going to be many sectors which pay trainees £50k while also allowing flexibility.

Are you willing to accept lower pay in the early years while you're getting trained and building up some experience?

I don’t know any £50k entry level jobs but just coming here to say stop plugging teaching on this poor woman! Loads of women LEAVE teaching after having kids for a reason!

With the Send reforms there will.be a need for about 5 x the amount of educational psychologists and occupational therapists and it is a national shortage with requirement all across the UK. It is specialised and really nothing like PR but you could be training up for it now and doing qualifications and e.g. learning support assistant work in schools around your children's school hours, with a view to becoming qualified in a few years in time to take advantage of job opportunities. However it's the sort of thing where you would need to have real skill and interest as well as academic chops so it might not be what you're looking for.

I mention it as it's an example of one "long game" you could play.

Have you thought about adjacent fields such as a Fundraising roles for charities?

You cant start at a high salary, but if you are looking to change careers, you will have to play the long game.

There are also 'returner programs' specifically for those who have had a career break, if you are open to returning to PR, you cpuld look into this.

Accountancy:
You might struggle to find an accounting firm to pay for your exams if you only want part time work. You need a certain amount of hours experience to qualify so it would take a while (normal training contracts are 3 years). Pay isn't great pre qualifying. There are less prestigious routes with management accounts etc which you could look at. Either way exams are tough when you have kids and have been out of exam mode for a while.

What about supply teaching? Then you could dabble in and out which might be helpful with your husband.

I used to work in the internal legal team for a local authority. I was in the children team and the cases could be awful. There are other teams though. The solicitors earn decent money and the hours are absolutely fixed, they were not doing a minute of overtime so 5:30 finish so could pick up from ASC if all local. Local authorities generally good on flexi arrangements too. I was only a junior but the work the solicitors were doing seemed really easy and repetitive. You’d need a legal qualification but you could do that alongside paralegaling or work experience. They always seemed to need new people with a decent work ethic and more than average number of brain cells.

I mean this politely but do you have the academic ability and base level qualifications to look at the fields you’re throwing out like it’s easy to just do? Law and accountancy exams and training as an example are absolutely brutal!

It would be helpful if you set out what qualifications you actually have so you get some realistic options.

Remote outsourced bookkeeping is something which pays very well for what it actually is. It’s also very flexible.

There's a substantial shortfall in electricians in the UK.

It's also a trade that won't be replaced by AI any time soon.

Tutoring can be very family-unfriendly, as it inevitably takes place outside school hours (unless you can pick adults or home-ed kids). Similarly with swimming, unless you're only teaching pre-schoolers.

You could also have it in the Big4/Mid tier. I’ve got plenty of colleagues and contacts who have roles like the OP describes.

Of course you would. It’s transferable skills. Whether you want to is a different matter.

Didn’t the BBC move up to Salford anyway? Like this one: not saying it’s the right level but it is part time and you mentioned Manchester, so might be worth keeping an eye on other BBC comms vacancies.

https://careers.bbc.co.uk/job/Senior-Press-&-Communications-Officer/44471-enGB/

So surely the easier place to start is to research this in your current industry and experience rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water?
I used to recruit in these area and I agree with the PP you’ve quoted, there are lots of flexi roles out there and many are really exciting! Why not talk to a few recruiters and start researching possible companies and agencies in your area. There are a lot of large agencies outside of London. ChatGPT can be a good research tool and place to start with this.

You have a long list of requirements and may start retraining only to find you don’t like it or it takes a long time to build up to where you want to be. Logic says start in your area of expertise, network on LinkedIn, start to know the local market, put proactive feelers out with companies and agencies. That will take a lot less time energy and money than retraining!

I fully work from home in a COO role which is basically a very high end EA type role with more influence/decision making. It’s a small company but a high paying industry (pharma) and is very flexible, I earn £71K. It is possible, but it’s not easy at all to find.

I have had a relatively high paid role in education for almost all my career, but I worked full time for many years before having children and was able to negotiate part time working. Plus my DH runs his own business - initially elsewhere, but he moved to working from home when our children were young. Even so we used some wrap around care when they were in primary.

I work in digital, I don’t come from a digital background, I got in with my previous skillset and ended up taking a side stepped role and adding to my qualifications before then getting further promotions.

I work in cybersecurity, 99.9% from home with a couple of days a year in-person meetings/travel, I set my own hours as long as I get the job done and can attend any important meetings. Sometimes I have to work late or weekends if there’s an emergency or an important deadline but I can always figure that out around school pick up and drop off times or appointments. Tech and tech adjacent roles are generally pretty flexible.

If the government are serious about following through on their SEN reforms we are about to need a lot more educational psychologists. It can be flexible and they're often also doing private work. You'd need to start the retraining path now. Masters conversion course in psychology to get GBR from the British psychological society then specialist training post that.

I worked in PR and was freelance when dc were little just to keep my hand in with 3 clients (local council, big energy company specific campaign and local theatre). I now work in nhs comms on £56k. I wfh 3 days a week and can work completely flexibly around dc. PR is probably one of the more flexible fields out there Ime.

Go freelance doing PR

I just think of it differently I guess if teaching was something you really wanted to do.

I’m a comms director in the Midlands. There is plenty of PR and marketing in the regions. In-house roles in all sorts of organisations, public and private sectors. Agencies.

I’ve had working mums and part-time roles in teams I’ve run. Everyone works hybrid these days. I’ve never needed to work in London since my first job in the 90s - and I’ve never found it dull. If you’ve been doing luxury retail PR in London then yeah, financial services, construction, or public sector may not compete. But you wouldn’t be starting at entry level, so what matters most right now for you?

I’m saying look at the big employers in your area and connect with their comms people on LinkedIn. Look up agencies - they might take you on freelance to give them reach in your region, or they might have account manager vacancies.