How do working parents manage childcare?

[MinnieAnonyMouse]

DH and I are planning to start TTC later this year and are currently discussing how we would manage everything.

One thing that I'm really unsure about is childcare. We both have responsible jobs and work quite long hours. DH leaves home at about 7.15am and returns about 7pm 4 days a week. Pre-covid, I left by 6.30am and didn't get home until generally after 7pm (sometimes 6.30pm if I was lucky, sometimes later) 5 days a week. I can probably swing wfh a day or 2 a week (post covid, currently all from home) in which case the hours are more like 8.30am - 5.30 or 6pm.

It just seems like on that timetable, we'd never see a baby outside of the weekend and the hours are so long! Surely other people have had this? How did you manage / what do you do? It can't be that everyone went part time??

We have a nanny. Also flex work so we can finish at 5pm and then do a couple of hours after bedtime.

So we're in for core hours most of the time (9-5) and then do the rest of the job from home in an evening.

Not sure if that's feasible?

If you are returning to your pre-covid hours and will need childcare from 7am until 7pm at least 4 days a week, you may struggle to find a nursery nearby that does those hours.

Could you afford a nanny? I have no idea what nannies get paid but I’m sure someone might be able to advise. Whereabouts in the country are you?

Yes that sounds pretty tough to be honest as there’s little flexibility and no space around your careers for the baby! Time for one or both of you to be radically realistic about how much space the baby will actually need to take up in your lives! (And try and imagine how much you will want it to take up that space too..)

I know it’s not for everyone, but my DH retrained before having kids and I went part time, before kids were school age. Didn’t regret it for a minute.

Good luck, it’s hard doing it before the baby’s here, but also very important.

@MinnieAnonyMouse

Thanks both. My commute is long (minimum 1.5 hours each way) - potential to reduce to about 1 hour but that's about as low as it will go. DH has a much shorter commute (20 mins) but works condensed hours so full time but only 4 days.

I'm definitely not crazy about the amount of time but will have to go back to work no questions asked. Moving isn't an option and the work I do means I have to work where I do - nothing closer to home

I'm definitely not crazy about the amount of time but will have to go back to work no questions asked. Moving isn't an option and the work I do means I have to work where I do - nothing closer to home To be blunt, either something gives, you reduce your expectations, downgrade or change job. Otherwise, in all honesty, why bother having a child at this time time if you are not wiling or able to make changes and compromises. These are the easiest parts of parenting. How are you going to feel when you have to make real sacrifices?

Yes, you only see them at bedtime and weekends. One does drop off and the other does pickup from nursery which are open 8 til 6. If there are two of you you only need to be flexible at one side of the day. We haven't changed our working day length and do have a commute. Make the most of weekends and enjoy the extra income you have from two salaries.

We were really lucky both reduced hours & juggled days around.
Paid for nurserys.
Found it harder when we were tied to school with limited wraparound care.

DH and I both work full time demanding jobs and have a 19 month old. We've sacrificed on space to have shorter commutes. I felt like DS needed us to be around more rather than needed a big house with a garden and loads of space a long commute from our offices. We live in a 2 bed, 2 bath garden flat in a city center directly between our two offices and it's perfect.

We also both took a day or two per week to work from home, so we could clock off on time to go and pick him up from daycare (we're in the US).

It never occurred to me to work part time or not go back to work TBH, I spent long, exhausting years paying my dues and climbing the ladder, so I'd earned some leeway and flexibility by the time I had a baby. I couldn't face doing all of that again, when I'm older and more tired.

We use a nursery close to us, drop DD off for 730am and we get her for about 5.15, same since 6 months old. We both work full time but have slightly adapted our hours so that there is one of us to do drop off / pick up.

Dd wakes at half 5 so we take turns to get up so we get some decent time with her, there is about half an hour with her when she gets home but we are used to it. Weekends are precious!

(Dd is 17 months old now)

Honestly, what I did was lose my job because I was pregnant. Illegally. Good job, good reputation, no reason for termination of employment other than my pregnancy,

Tried to take them to court and it got very complicated. Ended up without maternity pay or leave - let alone a job to go back to. Tried to get another job when heavily pregnant, very difficult to do. Ended up taking the baby to court multiple times in their first weeks of life as I struggled to take my ex employer to court and keep my home too as we couldn’t pay the mortgage. DH worked as much overtime as physically possible with a new baby at home, including straight through any potential paternity leave he might have had.

Struggled to find any jobs I could physically interview for as most would not allow me to bring a breastfed newborn. Those that did, I didn’t get the job, probably because of the newborn and the danger that I might need to care for it beyond infancy - or might even have another and then where would we be? Eventually managed to get a job working evenings on 1/3 on my previous pay. My ex employer was ruled against but never paid a penny of my owed pay/leave. We did manage to keep the house, thankfully. I worked 6 evenings a week leaving my baby with my DH so rarely got to do bedtimes or weekends. He worked days so I didn’t see him much either - good news for my employer as I wasn’t in danger of having another. Used the daytimes to retrain in a different profession. Became self employed and took my baby (and my subsequent babies) to work with me every day from days old.

The world span on its axis in a way I could never have predicted before I became pregnant, the world told me I was just as good as a man and we were equal and then showed me in no uncertain terms that it’s all an illusion. The best laid plans on pregnancy timing, and the laws on maternity leave meant nothing at all in the end.

So I guess my answer is, fuck knows how working parents manage. And that you should read shattered: modern motherhood and the illusion of equality before you get pregnant.

Very best of luck to you.

I think it's maybe worth looking at nurseries around you, ours is 7-6 but not all do such long hours. Likewise speak to child minders.

I think a lot of people either change their hours or make arrangements to work from home. I dropped a day and work from home more often, otherwise its just not feasible particularly financially

With DS1 I halved my hours from full time to 2.5 days. Did 2 days nursery and 1/2 day my mum had him. Then I had DS2. I've not worked full time for nearly 8 years.

Gradually worked up to the 4 days per week I'm doing now but now DS2 is 4 and in his last year of nursery, I might finally go back to full time when he's in school in September (pandemic allowing).

Nursery is so expensive it's like a second mortgage!

It's difficult but some jobs just have no flexibility and I think some people do find that hard to believe.

DH works shifts (4 on, 4 off) with set hours - day/night. There is no way he can do anything different than those hours, take a half day, etc. Interestingly, there are no women in his workplace of 75+ 🤔

We manage as he's the higher earner and luckily my job is flexible and I can make up any lost hours.

I dropped to 30 hours so do 4 standard days (8.30-4.30) and husband compressed full time hours in to 4 days so we cover a day each and then 3 days in nursery (£800/month). I did consider staying full time compressed to 4 days (I did this before mat leave) but with getting to and from work if one of us didn’t get away on time we would have missed nursery pick up and at the time my other half’s employer couldn’t change his hours. I wouldn’t recommend trying to work from home with a baby not in childcare we have been put in that position over lockdowns with bubbles bursting etc and it’s a nightmare no one wins!

Definitely not working from home and doing childcare! More from a point of view of being able to do drop off/ pick up at a reasonable hour

Also, you just have to be much stricter about working hours. It didn't matter how busy I was or what pressures there were, I had to walk out of the door at 4pm if I was going to catch the train in time to get home for pick up.

This is essential. When I was young and childless I occasionally got a lift from a colleague who had 4 dc under 6 including twins and a child with significant physically disabilities. His wife also had a very full on career. I adjectival him once how they managed it all. He said it was easy, you always knew what your priorities were. He would walk out of afternoon they overran after 5pm, leave early in bad traffic or bad weather and didn’t tolerate anybody wasting his time. He was promoted to Tech Director just after his 4th child’s 1st birthday. He was clearly doing something right!

Just one other thing to throw into the mix. Think about whether you'll be having another child (I know, you're only talking about TTC your first!!) But certainty if you're in a good job with a good salary, if you plan to have a 2nd child quite quickly, it might be worth sucking up the cost of a nanny, keeping your FT hours whilst you return to work between your 1st and child. That way, when you go off for your 2nd maternity leave, you'll still get mat pay based on your FT salary rather a PT salary. You can always change to PT hours after that.

(I had twins so all planning about timing of Baby 1 followed by Baby 2 went out of the window but it was something I was thinking about until that little surprise!)

Pick a nursery that is near to your work (or at least on the way) rather than close to home.

Still tricky though, and when they reach school age your childcare options shrink somewhat as you need wraparound care that will pick up from your local school.

You’re right, people do manage, but only because they come to the realisation that you’ve come to (luckily before TTC) - which is that things do have to be juggled and changed. Potentially quite significantly.

Do you have a spare room? Obviously this is all COVID dependent, but if you’re paying through the nose for full time nursery, then what about a live-in Mother's Help or au pair?

This is what we did, back before reducing my hours wasn’t an option.

People love to slate MHs / au pairs on here, but our experience was amazing. We had six girls live with our family for a year at a time. They were God sends. We had no family support, both worked full time and DH travelled a lot. This was the perfect solution for us.

When my eldest turned 6 or 7, I was able to change my hours so that I left the office in time to do the school pick up, and then WFH around that in the afternoons.

You will figure something out - but you’re definitely right to be thinking about it now.

Is it not possible to relocate closer to your job? Being 1.5hrs away from your child is not ideal, you never know what's going to happen.

To be honest it seems as though you are gone a lot of hours and you'd have hardly any time left to spend with the baby. Plus could you still do all that work on next to no sleep?

I worked full time from my DS being 2 and a half. He went to kindergarten from 8 until 6 and I was completely office based from 9 until 5. One summer i only worked mornings which was wonderful!

As he got older it was a combination of after school club until 6, I worked from home and picked up hours so I could collect him directly from school a couple of times a month and holiday clubs. Also I would have one of his friends one day if I was off and he would go to them another day.

It was so hard but i had to do it as i was a single parent.

You need to factor in what you’re going to do when the child is sick, both from staying off work but also when they suddenly get a temperature after you’ve left them at nursery. The nursery mine went to you had to sign an agreement saying someone would collect a child within a set time frame (30 minutes I seem to remember) from when they called you to say come and collect them. If you’re 90 minutes away who will that be?

Honestly, reduce your hours or look at a nanny or probably both.

I'd have been miserable not seeing my child all week, as mentioned in your opening post. Luckily I was able to go part time. Can either of you do that? I also found a childminder close to work, not home, so my child did 8-4 there 4 days a week initially, until dc2 came along and I cut my hours more.

One option is a nanny

For us

Both FT yet can flex hours more from the sounds of it, and we live closer in so max 1 hour commute

We did one pick / one drop combined with 4 days nursery, can’t remember the hours but have a feeling it was 7-7 at one point, and so usually dropped and picked within 8-6 but had the leeway if something went wrong with transport

Transitioned to childminder for the youngest when elder was in school, and we had someone come in the morning 7-9 to help get them up, fed, ready and dropped off when I was travelling 2-3 days a week as it was a lot for DH to do both drop and pick whilst I was out of the country - could be similar to your lengthy commute situation

@TheDinosaurTrain Oh god, you make such a good point. If DS is poorly, we have to be there to get him in 30 minutes and I think that's pretty standard.

Also second being much stricter on working hours. I had a hard stop at 5 (now 4:30 because of Covid hours) then could always log back on later if I needed too. When I was with DS, I made sure it was 100%, although that went out the window a bit when there wasn't any childcare because of the pandemic.

Pre-Covid when I was still at the office and DS was about 8 months old, I had a call to tell me to get him immediately because he was throwing up everywhere and I remember running down the corridor (in a pencil dress and heels) yelling at my boss "babysickgottagoprobablynotheretomorrowbyeeee" before laddering my tights getting in a taxi and . Then when I got him home he projectile vomited agonizingly pumped breastmilk down my vintage cashmere cardigan. After he'd done that he went completely back to normal, but I still couldn't take him back to daycare for 36 hours.

Anyway, just thought I'd share that anecdote from working motherhood . I have plenty more where that came from...