To think that many sahms don't consider the long-term implications when deciding to give up work? ***this is not a sahm vs wohm debate***

[wannaBe]

This is not a thread criticizing anyone or their decisions...

When I decided to give up work to bring up DS, I did so in the knowledge that for me, staying at home with my dc was the best thing. We were fortunate as well in that financially we could afford for me to stay at home.

Back then, I had in mind that we would have two children, so realistically would have at least eight years at home until the youngest started school, and even then, going back to work wouldn't necessarily be something I would consider as would want to be there for after school/holidays etc, and finding a job that fits in with the above is almost impossible.

So, fast forward nine years and the two children we'd planned to have turned out to only be one, and I've been a sahm for that long, although I have done volunteering in that time (reading/helping in school/chair of governors/PTA etc...) so haven't been sat on my arse as such (although the amount of time I've spent on mn does contradict that statement somewhat, )

Now I'm in a position where I want to go back to work. Actually, I've been in that position for about the past 1.5/2 years but due to circumstances such as moving areas etc have only just been able to start exploring the possibility seriously.

And I've come to a realization which, although I guess I knew deep down, I never contemplated until now. Even if you take the fact that there are very few jobs for far too many applicants in the current climate, the one thing that employers seem to want above anything else is experience, and current experience at that.

And if you haven't worked for a number of years then the reality is that they will take the person who has worked more recently, every time. And as employers currently have the pick of applicants (regardless of who you are) the chances of getting a job in the current climate if you've been bringing up your children for the past however many years is minimal.

So what I've basically realized is that being a sahm has made me unemployable.

I don't regret my decision for a second. You can't ever get that time with your children again and I'm glad that I had that opportunity and took it.

But in retrospect I do wonder whether I should have sought even a part time work opportunity sooner - even if it was something minimal.

And equally I realize that you can't tell someone who is just choosing to give up work to be with their children that they may find that they're unemployable ten years down the line when the kids are at school and they want to go back to work again without seeming like you're criticizing their decision/lifestyle.

When we make decisions we often do so in the here and now, not necessarily with the future in mind - not for ourselves anyway.

I think employmentwise anyone who is currently out of work for any reason has it extremely hard anyway.

The thought of never working again for the next 30 years is frankly rather depressing...

wannaBe its a real shame as the main employers who operated positive recruitment policies and had the structure in place to help those with disabilities such as yours were the public sector, which is now being cut heavily. You're right that it is tough out there.

Well I guess you never know what the future holds
I never thought I would only be able to have one child
I never thought my husband would turn out to be so resentful of me staying at home
I never thought he would turn into such a wanker
I never thought I would be turned down for supermarket jobs
I never thought I would be unemployable
I never thought that a good career, colleagues, nice flat in London at 30, would turn into nothing by 40

Yes, I would advise a back up plan!

I

DoddleAlley I'm in the same position as you. I think is a stronger postion as (e.g.) my company is not taking on new hires at the moment and certainly wouldnt' consider someone with no recent experience even if they were. However, if I decided tomorrow to up my hours to full time they would be happy to have me, and I'd be back in the position of being treated seriously, being able to progress my career etc.

doodle I suspect there is no perfect solution and that the best any of us can do is analyse the situation and act accordingly to keep as many options open for ourselves as possible.

On the subject of risk, I do try to minimise risk by doing freelance/consulting work. I am also building a much riskier career that I can't guarantee will continue to be successful.

It is harder to do, especially getting adhoc childcare. But as the children get older it will get easier and better.

So yes I'd say good idea to consider long-term implications, if doing some work in the future is important to you.

yes. I worked in the public sector as a finance manager before I had DS and thy do indeed operate very good and equal opportunities policies.

But you're right they are being cut so much now with so many having recruitment freezes that it's almost impossible to get back in.

I would never lie on a CV. I think you can embellish slightly i.e. for my last job I told them that I had a "good working knowledge of excel" which I erm sort of did but not to any high degree iyswim. But when I got the job I spent the next four weeks learning excel inside out and by the time I went to work there I had excellent excel skills. but I wouldn't embellish anything on a cv/application that I couldn't do something with - there's no benefit in lying if you're going to get caught out, and if you lie hard enough you will eventually get caught.

It would be nice to see companies acknowledge that 5 (ish) years off doesn't mean you have lost all the skills and knowledge that you worked for in the previous 5-15 years and that you could actually be a candidate worth investing in. Some do - I know Sainsbury's operates a system for women (maybe men too I don't know) who've taken time off. I suppose it saves them the expense of recruiting and retraining.

I think perhaps it's also worth thinking about how your feelings about work in general change over the lifespan with differing domestic circumstances.

I loved my job before I had my son, I was super-committed to it. I still am, on many levels.. but some of the energy required to really excel at it/fight the fights that need to be fought has dissipated. I am p/t now (24 hours a week) and I find that some of what I found fresh and exciting about my career three years ago is terribly stale and dull and I feel very much trapped into a role that I don't think is developing my skills and is even, in some ways, deskilling me. I've worked hard to try to avoid this, I am completing an MSc p/t as well as working but I feel quite... directionless. I am pregnant with dc2 (14 weeks) and I find pregnancy difficult on many levels so my heart is not completely in work right now, and in 5 months I will be off work again for 9-12 months, maybe even a year, so I can't really fully commit myself to what I'm doing at work for another year when in the current climate the work context may have radically changed by then. Everything feels so loose, I feel so rudderless..

What I want is to have a magic want and to be able to translocate, work as I did before 5 days a week BUT ALSO be available for the same amount of time to my child/future children. It is opportunity cost. I think none of us really know how our choices wil work out. If they do, we look back and say "I did the right thing", if not we say "it was the biggest mistake I ever made". Realistically, a lof of it is half-chance. Hindsight is 20:20 vision...

marsha I am exactly the same.

I have moved from law into writing and am very aware that after this contract I could be dropped by my house like the proverbial potato. And without a new novel on release will the journo work dry up? The lecturing? The conference speaking?

It feels precarious. Which is why I have always kept my hand in the law, albeit in a small way. It would be enough to get me a job if I needed one I think.

I don't understand your problem, OP (at the distinct risk of sounding unsympathetic). By your own admission, you do not need to return to work for financial reasons. Thus the world is your oyster so to speak. You can return to full time education, do some training, work part time, do a job you love that brings in peanuts but it doesnt matter because you can afford to do it, you can volunteer... Yes, you might not be able to walk straight into the top-management, megabucks job that you would like in an ideal world but since when do any of us live in an ideal world.

I would love to be in your position, I really would.

DD is 15 months, DC2 will be born next year. I'm a SAHM mum but I run a small business on etsy.com. My etsy shop is in the same field that my career was in, at the moment I am just letting it tick over as I don't have a lot of time for it, but the plan is to expand when I have more time (i.e. DCs in school).
This way I won't have any gaps in my cv, I can continue paying NI and receiving everything that entitles me to.
So ... the plan is I'll have options if I ever want to be an employee again. That's the plan anyway!

What would your perfect job be?

I think alot of mums don't think beyond the pre school years.

Lots of people say oh i'll work when they go to school but don't consider the practicialities of this - there simply aren't lots of jobs out there with family friendly hours. Particularly for people with a 5 year plus gap on their cv.

My experience has been that you earn the right to flexible working/part time hours my being a decent full time employee - in my field you never see part time positions advertised.

I worked 3 days when DD was small and changed to school hours once she started school.

Lots of mums say to me oh you are lucky to work near home/have those hours. But it's not luck.

If I had left and had time at home I would have been faced with applying for full time jobs. Opportunities in my small town are rare so i'd be looking at an 1hr plus commute each way aswell.

I feel DD needs more input from me now - homework, ferrying to after school activities, attending school events etc.

Also parental leave rights don't kick in until you have 1 years continuous employment - DD is disabled so I have the right to take unpaid leave until she is 18 which helps in terms of appointments etc.

Wise words, OP. I'm sure people don't consider all the implications, but then, if we plan these things, no-one would ever have children! Anyway, here's my story:

I had quite a successful career when I decided to start a family, and at the time earned around double the amount that DH did.

But I was starting to find the long hours, office politics, constant travel, and full-on pace a bit too much, and I was delighted to have an "excuse" to step off the career ladder for a while. But deep in my heart, I knew I would never be able to step back on it.

I had three DCs, and took a total of 6.5 years out of the workplace. During that time, I did keep busy, however. I started a Phoenix Cards direct selling business, which really took off and fitted around the kids. I also served on a couple of local committees (NCT etc), all of which kept my CV ticking over to a small extent.

Then, within a couple of weeks of DD2 starting full-time school I landed my current job - mainly through networking at the school gate, asking questions, and so on. A friend of a friend knew someone......It was part time, school hours, and in a completely different field to where I was before. It obviously paid a lot less than I was previously used to, but luckily DH has been busy working his way up, and now earns a good salary. Four years on, the job has really developed, and I have found myself looking after the marketing for the company; ironically a career I considered while at university, but I never managed to find anything at the time. And I still get to do the school run.

Anyway, what I found most valuable is being open to any opportunity that comes your way, whether it's speaking to your fellow mums, asking friends/family if they have any ideas, looking at franchises, new business ideas - anything.

It was pointed out to me that I had spent a total of 11 years in the workplace before children, but had 25-odd years ahead of me when I returned to work, so it is foolish to regard those years as some sort of career twilight. The opportunities for a change in direction/retraining/starting again are pretty limitless.

Obviously it depends somewhat on your personal circumstances (and you do have certain challenges which I don't, OP), but abandon the mindset that you have to go back to where you were before children - the sky's the limit.

Yes me too Wordfactory. I am very lucky to have moved into strategy.

The other career is very much like your writing. Hugely enjoyable, can be financially rewarding and critically lovely. But only 5% get to do it really and I know it could stop. Weirdly it also helps me concentrate. As now I have children I need to feel secure not just totally risky.

tryharder I never said I wanted to walk into a top management job.

The fact is that right now I can't walk into any job because the fact I have been out of paid employment for the past nine years discounts me from the pool.

And yes, I have done volunteering and have included that on my cv, governing (includes interview skills/recruitment of head teacher/staff/involved in the setting up of a surestart centre attached to the school and the associated recruitment that went on there/part of the ofsted process that took the school up a level and the governors up two levels), I was chair so this is all relevant to me specifically. Have helped out in school (so communication skills in previous customer-based jobs, plus communication with individuals in meetings in governor capasity, building relationship with head/staff etc as governor and my involvement in schools with young children means I am able to communicate with people on all levels...

And with tuition fees education is going to become less of an option for many people. Have you seen what the OU are doing to their fees for instance? My sister is doing a course which she paid £180 for which will be over £3000 next year, so many people wanting to go back into education will have been priced out of that as well.

We can afford for me to not work or to volunteer (for the record I gave up the governors etc due to house move) but we can't afford the additional cost for me to go back into education esp with the childcare costs that would also involve...

I had roughly 5 years off work with two young children (I did do bits of freelancing to keep my hand in, but I wasn't exactly raking in the cash and there were no pension contributions made in that time).

Being a SAHM didnt effect my career terribly because I career changed anyway, so in a way, being a SAHM inspired me to change to a better, more enjoyable, family-friendly and (hopefully!) more lucrative career in the long run. It didn't always feel that way, though!

Before I re-trained I felt very much that I had committed career suicide by leaving my job (staff journalist with large corp) to stay at home, but I really had very little choice, as DS has autism and we could not find adequate childcare to support his needs. I remember sitting at home when my second baby came along crying to my mum about the loss of my career

Fast forward 4 years and I am now properly self employed - started in August this year and it is going brilliantly so far - and finally have a work-life balance (work 4 days a week) and earning more than I ever have before in my life...BUT being self employed is precarious. I am going to have to start paying in to my shitty, practically non-existent pension and I have no idea what will become of me if work dries up

Its very hard on women in prticular, I think, and although I would love to agree with the Xenias of this world who say 'Go back to work immediately, get a nanny, stop feeling guilty about work-life balance', it just isn't as easy as that for many, many women. And without pulling the old SN sympathy card, there are a lot of people in this country coping with children with complex needs for whom it CERTAINLY isnt easy.

Good OP, and quite true!

I am in the same situation. My children are now 9 and 6.

The reality is, that many of my friends who are mums, and have a good education (Uni) are now:

• dinner ladies
• TA's
• Starbucks employee
• Playgroup helper.

All minimum wage jobs (around 6-7 pounds an hour). These are the jobs that realistically fit in with school hours.

Quite a few are still SAHMs.

Thing is, most people I know are quite happy. Everybody makes cuts somewhere, but it seems to work for the family if one parent is at home.

And also, interestingly, most of my friends (and myself) don't regret the decisions we have made.

Still, it would be nice to work part time, and it has been crap that I have even been rejected for volunteer work at charities, as there are too many applicants...

For me the decision to give up my job/career when we had DC's was easy as I didn't enjoy it anyway, even though I trained for 6 years to qualify.

I've now been a SAHM for 8+ years and am starting to think about returning to work on a part time basis. I don't want to go back to my old profession but would like to use my skills.

I did go through a very panicky/worried/stressed time when I first started thinking about work again, due to the state of the job market and my lack of current experience.

But I now seem to have a sense of optimism and confidence about my future, maybe it's unfounded, but I feel sure that when I actually put my mind to finding a job, I'll get one.

YANBU

Even as someone who never made a conscious choice (carer) I am well aware of the reality for my CV and have been studying in that timeframe as best I can manage, and have acquired a degree and a goodly part of an MA.

Still will be hellish no doubt when I start looking for a PT job next year but better than nothing recent.

wannbe You're right and you're wrong. I've been a SAHM for about the same time as you, and loved it. I've also been job seeking for about 12 months with no joy. But I am not unemployable. I'm simply not competitive.

So I am volunteering where I can, offering to do work experience, looking at what employers want and seeing if there's a college course that would give me a direct qualification so that even with a gap on my CV I can prove that I have invested time into making myself employable again.

You can't go from no employment into a grand job really, it takes preparation.

The work I can do has changed over time, I can't (due to DH's eractic career) work evenings or weekends, so I can write off certain jobs straight away without investing soul destroying time into applications.

Luckily I'm in no major rush, but I'd like to be in a position by Sept 2012 where the most current things on my CV are the things that employers might see as a positive. Maybe it will be massively hard for me to get into a traditional hamster wheel job, but that doesn't make me unemployable and I'm not sure I want that anyway.... I'm looking less at 'getting a job' and more into 'making money anyway I can' and suddenly there are a lot more options open to me.

There's a mum at school who's inspired me, when someone asks what she does, she hasn't time to list everything, she fully supports her family financially, she is the book lady, the craft lady, the betterware and Avon lady, she part time cares for an agency, and imports/exports anything she can make a profit on, everything she does makes a little cash, cumulatively she's on a good income!

YANBU, but we knew this when we stayed at home, that's the sacrifice you make. But its not all doom and gloom.

My experience has been that you earn the right to flexible working/part time hours my being a decent full time employee - in my field you never see part time positions advertised.

Totally agree. And the reason SAHMs don't consider this is because it isn't widely known. Why is that?

I think working part time is the ideal but I'm very aware that your field of work and location are critical factors in whether this is feasible.

I work in fundraising, and actually am much more senior now than I was before having children - I've not worked full time since I had DS1, they are now 5 and 2 and I do 3.5 days - but I am lucky to work in a sector which I have found to be family friendly and flexible, and where there are good part time roles, and where you can have a role made part time if you have a good enough track record - for example, in my current role, which was advertised as full time, I was able to negotiate less hours, and got the job out of around 20 candidates from the final shortlist (this is not to blow my own trumpet, but to say you shouldn't be afraid to ask for fewer hours if you can show you can do the job well in those hours!) I do have to be flexible, and work over my hours occasionally, travel for meetings, for training, etc - but broadly speaking, the balance is excellent.

Also, now I work with a child in school, it is MUCH harder than a pre schooler, and I don't really understand why people think it will bea easier to leave your children when they are at school - DS1 certainly wants me around much more than he ever did, and there are so many school related activities which take place on weekdays, and I can't participate in.

My experience has been that you earn the right to flexible working/part time hours my being a decent full time employee - in my field you never see part time positions advertised

I know this is true for some people but just doesn't apply in many industries/companies where part time work is unheard of. Sometimes for good reasons and sometimes because of the attitude "no one has ever done part time".