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

There is loads of consultancy / freelance work in PR. There are Facebook pages etc dedicated to it.

I went freelance after having kids and it’s now evolved into me having my own agency. I work the hours I want and am very present for my kids.

if you don’t want to go down that route you’ll need to retrain and suck up the lower salary for a while

You mentioned financial adviser. I am one and think it's a very family friendly option if you're self employed. Will take some time to obtain the required qualifications but it's common to earn while you learn, so building up soft skills at the same time as technical knowledge.

You could also look at paraplanning, which is the technical/admin side supporting financial advice. As you'd not need to be client-facing then it's even more flexible to work around family hours.

I'm an accountant in the civil service. Earn £65k, 2 days in the office, 3 from home. For the most part, I dictate my hours, and my departments flexi runs between 7am and 7pm.

But I didn't walk into that. Started as an EO on £24k 9 years ago. It took me 5 years to get to the region of £50k. The next promotion (which I'm hoping to start looking at in 18 - 24 months), would be a salary of circa £76k.

Have you looked at local govt? Obviously pay is low but often very flexible and wfh. There’s lots of roles where previous PR skills may be relevant and opportunities to progress and undertake qualifications. If you are in an area going through local government reorganisation then I’m seeing lots of roles advertised.

Why did you agree to this tedious provincial life of poverty in the first place?

I’m also surprised there is no consultancy in PR - it’s a sector I’d have thought was perfect to be a consultant in.

I’m in law but consultancy rather than private practice. It’s been very good and flexible when my kids were small and pays in accordance with your requirements

I would advise against becoming a therapist. It is a tough expensive training, not that flexible (because clients need to be seen at the same time every week), and quite hard to make a high wage because of the risk of burn out if you see too many clients. It’s a wonderful job but doesn’t meet your criteria.

Civil Service seems like a good shout but you would have to work your way up.

So you want family friendly AND exciting and dynamic? Should have said…. Because the obvious answer is to do dull PR given that’s what you’ve experience in and what is available locally.

Why not teaching though? Secondary would be able to achieve £50k fairly easily.

I retrained as a lawyer when my children were small. I now earn a good six figure salary. It’s absolutely possible to have flexibility and to do a certain amount of wfh.

Would it need to be part time from the get go?

I think a lot more would open up for you if you could work full time for the first couple of years. With wraparound now available at most schools, is that out of the question? Or even a nanny for a couple of years?

If you're not interested in full time, I think self employment is your best bet - but depends on what you're interested in and what there's a market for around you

Where we are (London) - lots of services people will pay for, decluttering/organising, therapy, gardening, batch cooking, and much of it pays very well

Speech therapy is a very difficult job to become well paid in now

Everyone has to juggle workload, travel and career moves around family. I’m a single parent and have made sure I have robust childcare in place so I can work full time. As your DH clearly isn’t going to do any childcare, you just need to get childcare sorted so you can work. It sounds like money isn’t an issue, so you could possibly get a nanny.

if you want a job that offers flexibility and working from home, just use that in your search criteria. Look on job boards such as Flexa which specialises in helping people find the companies that offer the benefits they’re looking for (working from home, flexible working, extended mat leave, whatever).

Once you find the companies you’d consider working for, then you can decide which roles you could apply for. But a word of advice, if you’re going to label any PR job outside of London as ‘dull’ it might take you a while to find something. Good luck OP, the job market is extremely tough at the moment.

I mean, if there were an abundance of high paid jobs with flexibility around dc that you could walk into with no training, don't you think other people would have taken them? I'm not honestly sure you're being realistic.

I think you both need to look at what you consider "well paid" (I'm not sure a teaching wage is beneath you if you don't have any particular professional qualifications) and what you consider "family friendly" (because I imagine you'll need to use childcare).

Marketing, sales, database management, public sector administration - not all will pay you £50k from the off but there’s probably a route to it.
Up-skill in AI as it will affect how many jobs are done and if you can talk about it with confidence it may help in interviews.

It will depend on the firm and how part time you mean? Also which department. An audit training contract will usually require you to attend client sites, whereas outsourcing/accountancy/tax won't so much. Flexibility would be easier with the latter departments.

Also, the department or specialism will influence what kind of skills you need and what your role looks like. E.g. tax is law adjacent so a career in tax would mean becoming conversant with tax law. You could get to do technical/legal research type activities and write advisory reports etc. (I mention this because you said you'd considered law.) https://www.tax.org.uk/careers-in-tax

To offer your services to the public on a self-employed basis you would need a certain level of experience, qualification and potentially a practising certificate (unless you just mean bookkeeping). Lots of people become sole practitioners but it can be more stressful having the full weight on you and without anyone to turn to for a second opinion.

I think this is a bit unrealistic.

There are lots of jobs like you describe for people with experience behind them and the skills to make them attractive enough to employers to balance out their need for flexibility. But retraining is going to put you at entry level, and you will be competing with grads who can offer total commitment.

I think you will need to accept that to completely change careers, and progress, you need to be able to give it the same as you would have done in your 20s.

I think the options are:

• take a job with low expectations of commitment (e.g. with fixed hours around school or at the weekend), but accept that this is going to be lower pay than you want
• find something you do have experience in, to get back into the workplace more easily
• find a self employment route
• get better childcare, and give your all to retraining in something you are passionate about

If you have a degree you can do a one year law conversion degree.

You could specialise in eg legal book keeping. I know someone who does that. You’d have to build up a client base.

Accountancy is good but hard work. I know a qualified accountants working at a firm out of London but I knew another who worked in tax dept of a large firm and she left before she finished her exams. Company were annoyed as they sponsored her/paid for training. If you’re a partner it’s brutal and my boss retired at 50. Women still get discriminated against too at that level in some old school firms but hopefully that’s changed now.

Teaching is not flexible at all, although for me, having school holidays off with DD balanced out the other inconveniences. I was teaching pre her so that helped. However, you may not earn much when you start, but I earn considerably more than £50k now.

Accounting trainees also usually have pay rises every 6 months until they qualify. (Unless they're performing badly obviously.)

I know plenty of women in well paid flexible roles. They absolutely exist in the law, in medicine, accountancy, actuarial, design. But the difference is that they’ve worked their way up before having children and stuck at it with small children. And it’s a slog to get to that stage- a well paid, flexible role is the reward for that, I guess. It is a little much to expect this in any qualified career from the get-go. I think all careers take building up.

Friends who’ve stayed at home with small children and then not wish to return to their own careers have not managed to make a move into another highly paid profession. Most do things like school admin, counselling, admin for small businesses etc.

Speech Therapy?
Clinical Psychology