Full time working parents…. Is it that rare?

[Workingtoohardmummy]

I live in the midlands and just came back from my first parents consultation for my daughter who started reception, and I’m absolutely floored to find out that out of the 22 kids in the class, only three attend the after school club full time!! Which means that the majority of the kids have at least one parent who works part time/ doesn’t work. I’m absolutely shocked when the teacher told me because I didn’t think having two parents work full time is that rare, especially in this economy.

So I just want to find out… is it really that rare to have two full time working parents? I’m feeling awful about being one of the very few full time working mums in my village, as my daughter is missing the opportunity for play dates and park dates after school.

How have you found that out? They could go to any other type of setting / family / whatever.

You'd be surprised at how many people have a lot of family help too. From our friendship group we were the only ones who didn't get any family help - either financially or with their actual time.

In my primary age child’s class, I can’t think of any parents who aren’t there at pick up. Except his class teacher, who sends her 2 home with grandparents. The afterschool club maybe has at most 15 per day, in a school of 90.

So yes, the vast majority do collect their children at home time or a family member does. It doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t work FT though. We’ve never used ASC even when I was working FT. I work very flexible hours and Dh is self-employed, so they were always with us. Even if one or both of us had to work in the afternoon or evening.

Our first primary had no ASC at all and breakfast club was invite only. ASC is not the only option for parents.

I live in a fairly expensive area in the SE and around me most families don't have two parents working FT. I would say most common is the father working FT and mother working 3 or 4 days (or equivalent spread over 5).

Also, with other after school sports clubs etc, grandparent care, working flexibly and working from home many parents don't need childcare everyday that they work.

At our primary, most families had one parent working part time around school runs until juniors when lots of them (including me) went full time.

DH starts and finishes work ridiculously early, so is able to pick DS up from school. Sometimes DD drops him to school so he doesn’t always go to breakfast club either. We both work at least 40 hours a week.

I don’t think there’s any in our reception class that use the wraparound every day. I don’t know anyone that has both parents working full time, and most work flexibly. For example I work 4 days a week and only use the after school club one day.

Fair enough. I stand corrected.

I guess being a military family we just have to use full time wrap around care as we have no support around and my husband often goes away, so some weeks it is only me doing it all. I was just feeling so sad for my little girl when the teacher told us that

I don't think you can make that assumption based on an after school club. I work full time but have a local childminder or I sometimes finish early and pick DD up. She loves her childminder. Lots of her friends go there and she's an amazing cook, she wants me to pick her up later from there tomorrow so she can have hot chocolate and treats!

Dh does shift work so either is free all the day or not at all but I work full time. We do use wrap around care but not the full five days as I have flexitime so can work longer days to work shorter days when I need to but my mum collects them a couple of times a week too. Some of dcs classmates are picked up by grandparents everyday, a couple by older siblings and two mums share pick ups around their work.

Most couples I know both work full time.

Some of them use childminders or grandparents so the kids are picked up normal time.

Others have flexible working hours. Some take time out of the day to do school runs and make it up later. Others skip lunch breaks. Others stagger their working hours with their partner so one starts early and one starts late. Working from home has made those flexible hours more possible as you're not factoring in a commute. If he was commuting, my husband would have to do 10-6 if he did the morning drop off. Whereas when working from home he can do 9:05-5:05 instead. Likewise I could work 7-3pm and still make pickup at 3:20.

We are full time. One year we had a nanny pick up twice a week. This year someone picks them up one day, the grandparents another day, I pick them up two days, one I take them home for piano lessons, and the other I take an hour out of my work day and take them to ones sport.

DH and I both work full time, but we compress our hours and work flexibly (early morning/late evening) so we can drop off and collect DS without using wrap-around care (he doesn't like going). It's a PITA tbh, it'll be loads easier once he's at secondary school!

The parents I know have family help, work flexibly and WFH. I don’t know many children in FT wraparound care.

The majority of women in the UK don't work full time hours. It's also rarer after they hit mid to late 20s onwards (i.e. typically have kids and then look after old parents).

I saw some data on it that was released a couple of years ago.

Depressing really.

Turns out you can't have it all. Or maybe you can, if you have a woman doing the other stuff for you.

"out of the 22 kids in the class, only three attend the after school club full time!! Which means that the majority of the kids have at least one parent who works part time/ doesn’t work."

No it doesn't. It means most of the kids don't go to afterschool club. Some will be picked up by parents. Some will go to a childminder (maybe one that they went to for days before they went to school). Some will be looked after by grandparents or other relatives. Some may go to afterschool provision in the nursery that they used to go to, as some nurseries do school pick-ups.

DH and I worked 60+ hours a week between us but had a flexible working agreement that meant that, by the time DC started school, we didn’t need any childcare at all. We never saw each other, which was another matter 😑but each of us saw a lot of the DC 😁

Rare at dds school.
Teacher was firstly overjoyed dd lived with both parents.
She was absolutely gobsmacked we both worked.
There were less than a dozen parents in reception/ yr 1in the same position.

I work FT as does DH.... i do majority of school drop and pickups as i work from home full time.

DD has only had to go breakfast club a couple times when I was traveling for work

We both work full time and use breakfast club at school then a childminder after school as she can keep DS a bit longer if travel is disrupted on those unfortunate occasions when trains aren't running properly or traffic is awful! We have used grandparents before or he has gone to a friends for tea.

Just because people aren't at ASC every day doesn't mean there's not full time workers out there, just means they might have alternative options than you...

I am really surprised at the number of people saying they work full time but then adding things like they work flexibly and are able to do school pick up every day, or working from home but able to do the school run. I'm not judging anyone, I'm just genuinely surprised that there's so many people who have jobs with a level of flexibility that enables them to take their children to school and pick them up even some days never mind all of them. In my mind the norm was people go to work, do a full day, come home, dropping and picking kids up on the way, but it looks like that has changed, maybe since COVID. If this is the case it's no surprise that there's a massive recruitment crisis in education which must be now one of the least flexible jobs despite the school holidays. The cost of before and after school club is phenomenal and it's a bit depressing that it's probably the lowest paid jobs with the least flexibility who are also having to pay out these costs plus the potential guilt if your kid doesn't want to go.

There will be more that both work full-time but one parent WFH and takes a late lunch to get the kids or a grandparent collects, or they have a childminder, both parents compress hours and pick up one day each etc.

It's not that we work less, I work late into the evening to make up the time on those days. But yes the flexibility is good.

I work full time but do shifts so no need for after school clubs.

Very presumptuous