To ask if anyone has quit their good, highly paid stressful job for a smaller one?

[joanneg36]

I am seriously struggling with the 'having it all' at the moment and interested in others' experiences. Has anyone ever quit their 'brilliant' (on paper) job for work/life balance reasons and how did you manage/what did you do next?

I work four days a week in a senior-ish job. London and well paid but not law/city type money. Husband works too and earns similar. My 'four days', like many people, is in reality 7 days work squeezed into 4 and I am on email all hours. Kids are 5 and 1 and I just feel exhausted and as though I can't go on like this.

We could cope financially with me earning less, we'd have to cut back but it would be sacrifices of the meals out/foreign holidays type rather than not being able to pay bills etc. My bigger fear is about risk to my future earning potential and just general fear of unknown. I don't know how easy it would be to find a 'smaller' more part-time job in my industry but I feel I could at least try....

Interested in all thoughts - feel free to tell me to stop moaning and get on with it!

Quite right duck, I have these thoughts regularly about my ' having it all', DH not so much (i.e. Never).

People always trot out the line about nobody on their deathbed wishing they'd worked harder. I'm told that's not true of academics, though! I should imagine there are probably quite a few people who wish they'd achieved greater success in their chosen careers. I don't think I'll look back with regret at going part time, I hope not. DH and I have both chosen to reduce our hours and are willing to make sacrifices for this, and my career is better now than it was when I was full time. We'd like it to be a long term thing rather than something we just do while we have younger kids. But you never know. It might all be a terrible mistake.

Also, I've got a designer-ish handbag. It was £19.73 off Ebay. I would like some shares soon too.

I think fusionconfusion you have made some really interesting points in a novel way and I completely agree with you. I support the idea that so much of our decision making hangs on society's expectations of women, and then more narrowly, our loved ones expectations of us.

Yes, it is a male and female issue which is why I want us all to use the term working father more at work. Ask men are you a "working father"?

"We ALL live in a context that makes it quite likely that we might respond to comments like this as though they were personally aimed at us, because ALL women's choices are subject to this analysis."

wow, food for thought there...thank you for posting.

That's very true. We don't get to make our choices in a vacuum, we're always subject to being seen as representative of other women, being a good or bad example to other women, or judging other women or whatever. The same is true for oppressed groups generally. We're not allowed to make our choices just based on what we think is best for us and leave it at that.

For me, the grass isn't always greener anyway. I am in a low paid menial job. While I don't hate it, I share others' frustrations with not fully using my skills and having someone less qualified and far younger telling me what to do. It is also a physical job and, even though it's not mentally stressful (well, this stress is more immediate in terms of time pressure), it is not impacting massively on my physical health and I am more or less having to force myself to look at other options and coming up with exactly zero.

That said, I can't underestimate the importance (for me) of the flexibility around the children. Having to juggle childcare, school holidays, sports days, concerts, school runs, sickness with work would send me over the edge. I really don't know how full time working parents cope but they clearly do otherwise no one would do it. This in turn makes if feel like a massive failing on my part. I never really had the mental energy to give me all to a job. My previous job was more related to my skills but it wasn't high powered and I wasn't on call once I left the office. I wouldn't have liked that back then pre-children never mind now so I guess it is down to personality, too.

However, I would like to do something that is more me rather than something that works in a practical sense and escape the bonkers-ness of the school playground and meet people other than fellow parents. Even many of those I meet at work are parents. Well, either parents or students.

I have found this discussion fascinating and I have to say I have actually gone through a lot of the comments that have been made before.

• The issue of how we value our job as women and what if I was a man, what would it do, what would I find normal etc...
• Is it all worth it, the stress, the communte, the travels vs more at time at home but less money
• Actually is it really less money? When you look at how much you earn and then substract the costs of communting, clothes, childcare (eg have a nanny because you are back home very late vs back home at 5.30pm and can use the school after school club), how much more do you actually have?

I don't think there is any one fits all answers.

I have to say, my experience is telling me that what Deo is probably right. The best is a job where you can work for yourself to get the flexibility you need, one that allows you to be your best (use your gift, do what you really enjoy, whatever way you want to put it).
When I did my career change, a well known poster at the time was going on and on about the fact that it was essential for women to aim for jobs that are payng at least £100 per hour. I thought it was ridiculous at the time. Not anymore.
The reality is that the job I do now (which pays very well per hour even though not that amount of money!) allows me to still have a wage working very little hours per week. I have to do that because of ill health (not by choice!) so keeping that better paid job rather than chosing the lower paid one has also protected me in ill health. Of course, if I had had the choice, it would also allow me the CHOOSE my lifestyle and make it fit what I want, which is the point isn't it?

Yes, my parents' advice was pick careers which give you choices in life and I want that for my children. That tends to mean higher paid work.

If you are good at what you do you can earn more on your own. I left my previous job as an employee when in holidays I was earning the same as my then salary - in other words I had doubled my income so knew it was likely I would do find without the crutch of employment but it is a risk and a lot of these issues come down to personality and needs and what works for each person. I can self start every day and go out there battling to find customers. Not everyone wants to do that. I like working without a boss around me and the days I work from home (children are at school) I love that. Others would miss colleagues. I don't get things like sick pay, holiday pay, SMP, work pension as I am self employed. There are pros and cons to everything.

I do think choices women make at the most difficult times of their life as parents when children are under 5 when if they waited until the youngest child was 5 things would be easier can affect them for life so don't burn bridges too early on. Whether you are home all the time, part time or a full time worker and probably whether you are male or female no stage of your life will ever be as hard as having a few under 5s (unless you get sick which is obviously even harder). Same with relationships and divorce - I think if you can wait and bide your time before deciding important life decisions until you are getting enough sleep, rest and have time to think properly when children are bit older you make better decisions. And if in doubt and if someone in a couple has to earn pin money if it's that much fun to earn hardly anything let the men rush to do it. You can always have a period of earning hardly anything if you think you'd like it when the children are older or have left home or you've a grand child.

The thing that is linked to too is our relationship with money. Why do you work?

I come from a culture where working part time isn't thinkable. You are seen as lazy, taking it easy, doing nothing all day long so needless to say that I felt very bad as SAHM or even nowdays working part time.
It was also a done thing to work long hours, because that's what you do when you have a business and you want to make it sucessful, again a situation that I've happily reproduced wo even questioning it.
And then you have the idea of being sucessful. What does it mean? A lot of money? A flashy car? I have business that is working so well I have to tell potential customers to go away as I can't see them. That's sucessful ins't it? For some yes it is. For others (me), it's not because again, I'm not full time so I could potentially build it up much more.

All this to say that our ideas around money and success and our role within the society/family are ideas that very entrentched and usually well hidden. If you chose a career path that looks perfect on paper but doesn't follow your ideas of what being sucessful/having enough money means then you are going to feel pretty miserable about your choice.

I'm finding this thread fascinating.

I was working 4 days a week after having children, left one job for a more lucrative one, which only lasted a year before ending the year before last. At the time I merrily thought I'd be able to step into another job but a variety of factors made it more difficult:

I didn't want to work FT
DD1 had just started school and was struggling
Geopolitical factors meant people in my industry were freezing hiring

By last summer, I'd given up looking as all I was seeing were FT jobs at less than I was earning working PT. Luckily DH earns a decent salary so we could manage but I really miss having my own income and the stimulation and satisfaction of a job.

Now I think I do need to start working again as we're starting to struggle a bit financially, dd2 starts school this year and we need to remortgage next year.

But I'm still a bit stuck - I want to be able to pick up the children at least twice a week. My industry is still not doing well, I don't think I'll ever earn at the level I was again. I'm thinking of looking at public sector jobs as they give more flexibility but am also a bit intimidated by starting again in my 40s.

Basically my main point is there are not enough part time or flexible jobs out there to accommodate all of us who want them. On the Mumsnet jobs site, i think there are 9 flexible jobs - all civil service - and 17 part time, out of some 700 jobs.

Fusion, I think you are right, but it did occur to me that this may be less the case for the very highest earners.

I know a nice woman in her late 30s. She and her husband worked, I believe, for a small hedge fund, became partners and then the fund was sold, making them an enormous sum of money. Until the sale of the firm, they had worked all the hours God sent, barely went home to sleep, were always on their blackberries, etc. Like lots of city jobs, I suppose. She has now officially retired, along with her husband, who is the same age. I don't think anyone thinks that she is lazy - they think she worked very hard for years and is reaping the benefits of it.

She doesn't have any kids, but it's a bit disconcerting to think that:

1. staying at home because you want to and are burnt out and have earned enough money to make that possible and want to have a life where you get to go for a run and read a book is completely understandable after years of not being able to do that; whereas

2.if she had said that she was going to give up her job and stay at home to be with children, where she would rarely have had the chance to go for said run or read said book, and might have worked very hard indeed, albeit in a different way, there might have been raised eyebrows.

When I have discussed this with friends, in my experience it does tend to be (not always, but mostly) mostly other women who are raising the eyebrows. Which is sad. (The tired and snappy and stressed part of me wants to retort that if they think they locate a b**y part time job in my field for me to do then I would happily do it. Hell, I would bite their arm off. Congratulations to them for having the foresight at the age of 17 to have chosen a career where part time roles were an option. But I try to remind myself that sleep deprivation is not an excuse to behave in public like a mad woman and so I try hard to bite my lip :)).

They are very fundamental issue. It was Jesus who said the rather silly words about remembering the lilies of the field who neither sow nor reap and yet are provided for (if we all took that attitude we'd be starving or on benefits); others will think a totally enclosed religious order praying all day is the best of lives doing most good; others will be the traditional English aristocrat - above the professionals like doctors even who never worked, just let others work for them and lived on interest on interest; and some religious groups regard it morally wrong for women to work outside the home anyway as her job is to serve her head of the household - her husband etc. [Not my views of course]

Psychologically many people are happier with family and work. My father a psychiatrist found a lot of people who stopped work were depressed. They lost that daily focus and discipline and turned to the bottle, drugs or just general depression as we might think we hate the routine of work but it does tend for some people to give them a kind of place in life although we could argue that is silly of them and sitting meditating at a white wall can be just as happiness inducing.

Deo, it's interesting, in my wanders around the world, I've known a significant number of people who've come from families with proper money, but who didn't 'fit' that world, didn't want to go into banking/the brewery business etc. A lot of them very clearly struggled with life, whereas the 'real' broke hippies who had to get out there and find a labouring job or they wouldn't eat didn't have the same issues at all.

Having said that I do know others who have either repudiated the money entirely, given it away or who use it for their own pet project and who are just fine. I think it is that thing of needing a genuine reason to get up in the morning.

(Of course, it could be complicated by the fact that the mentally robust people didn't get kicked out of Eton for taking too many drugs and happily went into the family business so I never met them!)

stokey, why not seek a FT job or contract work in your old field and look to reduce hours once you have your foot in the door again?

Is your DH similarly concerned with "being there" for the DC?

If not (grrr) and you both need to work FT for a while getting the best possible childcare for your budget can help IMO.

Hmm,

have just spent this evening doing a well paid highly stressful bit of work.

I'd forgotten how bad it is, and how it makes you snap at the kids.

Hmmm..........

This thread has been really interesting. It's also made me much happier - I've realised that I really am content with my working pattern now.

I'm senior enough to have high autonomy and some flexibility; I'm paid well (six figures) for 4 days a week; I enjoy what I do and laugh a lot at work; it's near home so no commute and there's probably some progression if I want it. I have been working for a long time though and it's a result of putting in a lot of slog over the years - had I not I wouldn't have had the experience and skill set to get this job in the first place. It is true that seniority helps. Nobody is ever going to ask me where I've been if I take a 2 hour lunch because it's all about delivery, not presenteeism.

wickedwaterwitch! I would like your set-up and salary please, but with a magic wand and without the years of hard graft first

Particularly relevant re the equal pay stuff in the news. Am very that companies will be "named and shamed" for unequal pay. Why not prosecuted?!

DH and I seem to have a different mindset (or have the wrong jobs!) we both really wanted to be the SAHM. We have moved and DH taken a lower paid job to enable him to be around more. If he didnt need to work he would be off without a backward glance. He also doesn't care about the "status" of his work.

Do envy people who adore their work - met a couple last weekend (in politics worked in think tanks) who were passionate about their jobs. Most people we know work to live rather than live to work. Guess its hard to feel passionate about corporate law so doing something you love is great. Just that often jobs that are enjoyable are badly paid (photography, writing, etc) Oh for a child that got pleasure out of tax law!

Wickedwaterwitch - exactly. Autonomy and seniority are crucial when kids enter their teenage years - otherwise things would be much harder than they were when they were little. It's rare for a day to go by without me thanking my lucky stars that I didn't take a career break or slack off (much) when my 3 were little - because hard as it was then, it would be much much harder now had I not stuck at it.

1. I agree with the hard slog. I am in year 33 of full time work. I have put in the hours (and with the children). We tend to reap what we sow unless we win the lottery.

1. Any job can be wonderful. My work is not too different from corporate law and I adore it - so much I'd rather do it than housework, watching TV and most other things. I am lucky that I find it so fascinating but I like the fact I now work for myself. I could work less if I wanted particularly once the youngest children leave school and leave university (assuming they even get into university). i suspect I won't let up though as I like the work and I will instead feel freer - every morning I start looking at work emails around 6l.30. i have to break off to wake up the boys. I then have to break off again to do about an hour's school run. That is my best time to work (morning not evening person). So once they leave for university I will probably get more not less work done (and there will certainly be a lot less washing to do)

I just want everyone male and female to make informed choices. Looking at my sixth form sons and their friends do teenagers really know what careers are out there? They had a good talk from chartered surveyors recently (a career one of mine thought might suit him). He came back saying it was too "capitalist" for him.... (whatever that means to him... laughing as I type.. is he planning to work in North Korea or sleep rough whilst volunteering for Greenpeace? Not that there is anything wrong with that but certainly I am concerned that younger people and younger mothers and fathers can sometimes take irrevocable career decisions from which they never recover thinking they could easily in 5 years get back into XYZ very well paid career (totally different if you've no qualifications and work for the minimum wage of course))

I thiunk it's extremely hard to ask teenagers to decide what they want to be doing in life so young. I mean, what they are taking as GCSE, let alone Alevels and Uni, can have an effect over their life time.

In the mean time, the society we are living in has and is changing rapidly. Very few of us will have the same job from leaving Uni to be retired. Partly because some jobs will just disappear all together.
But more importantly, we, as people, are changing as we are getting older, I am not who I was at 20yo. My interest (and my stroing points!) aren't the same.
I would expect more and more people to do 'some career change' and I believe that it is increasingly happening. The trick, imo, is not to equate a career change with low paid employment.

I agree and if you get yourself a good start - balanced series of good not mickey mouse GCSEs and A levels and go to a good university that never does you any harm either.

You do need steering - I was convinced I wanted to do home economics a level but was firmly steered away from it - thank god the magic circle law firm I ended up in would not have been impressed, especially as everyone else public school /Oxbridge and I was comp / red brick. Home ec would have been bridge too far!

I agree very much about the 'person I am now is not who I was then' and choosing wise segueways to new work. I am not concerned with status and high-end earning potential but intellectual stimulation is very important to me personally. One of my difficulties post-kids was that I simply didn't find the demands of my job and raising kids combined well to allow me space to learn new things. I was just treading water and feeling like my horizons were narrowing and the broader context of what I wanted my WHOLE life to be about was being lost.

So I took a leaf from Maya Angelou's book:

"Each of us has the right and the responsibility to assess the roads which lie ahead, and those over which we have traveled, and if the future road looms ominous or unpromising, and the roads back uninviting, then we need to gather our resolve and, carrying only the necessary baggage, step off that road into another direction. If the new choice is also unpalatable, without embarrassment, we must be ready to change that as well"

We made radical changes. Relocated country to live in a small rural town by the sea closer (but not smotheringly so) to family yet within commuting distance of a major city, I gave up my cosy term-time only health professional managerial post and committed savings to a very specialist training course, related to the broader area of health and social care administration, making myself available for free lance consultancy work in communications in the healthcare context to keep the CV alive. Then I segued into the broader field of organisational psychology and from there I am looking into designing web-based training and now I do Skype based consultancy worldwide in a niche area and have access to some of the best minds in my field through online professiobal fora and am writing a book... it isn't really huge money but I get what I need in terms of my own intellectual life and I pick the kids up from school every day and am on the Board of Governors and all that jazz too.

Practically though I suppose I would say it did help I didn't 'leave work' or launch my new self until my youngest was at nursery age, as I got through a lot of tough years without a gap in my CV and then the training components saw me through to school age. Not sure if I personally could have kept going if I hadn't slogged through the very early years.