To ask how having children affected your career?

[Fluffysparks]

Just that really. Were you employed before having the DC, how much time did you take out and do you think it affected your career? I’ve just realised that it probably has with me, in more ways than one, and I’ve been quite lucky as well...

It hasn’t! Did my nursing degree, DChild was only 8 months old and that built amazing stress tolerance. 14 months since I qualified and I’m now band 6 with my own aesthetics business. I do have a partner that works office hours though so childcare fits around him...

Ime the expectation of childcare doesn’t routinely fall to men.as a society we see it as wimmin work, and that’s habitually reinforced consciously and unconsciously. A mum at school asked if I was going to an event, replied no I was working. She tutted her disapproval, I asked was her dp attending? Gosh no, he’s v busy at work she told me. Ahh same as me I began to explain.she interrupted to say no he was really busy so her man not attending is indicative of his busy schedule. My non attendance is seen as indicative of poor mothering

Mine seems to be going pretty well. I got a promotion right before I went on maternity leave with my 2nd and I'm fairly senior in my field now. My husband however has agreed not to look for anything more ambitious for the time being as my job requires some travel and his current role is fairly office based so he can organise childcare better. If I got another promotion I'm fairly sure he'd want to go part time which I'd be happy with

Reading these stories makes me feel very fortunate in my NHS career. I was on band 7 before I had DD and when she was 4 I applied for a band 8a post and got it ( it did mean moving house and all that malarkey!) but the new job is very flexible and I can do things like work from home during inset days. Occasionally I have to lean on support when I’m in London but that’s not very often.

So, to answer your question OP - having DD hasn’t impacted on my career but I do find wrap around care ( and holiday clubs) very expensive, and I have to eke outta annual leave and attempt to be really organised (I’m so not!!)

That said - I’m not interested in moving any higher - might go sideways but actually the job I have now really works well for me.

Shared parental leave could be a great thing, if employers offer the same package as for maternity leave.

Why are employers OK with seeing mothers leave or their skills underutilised? Do they think they have enough good enough people (men and women without DC) for the jobs without us?

Eyeballpaul, same for us.we share, but when dp picks up etc he gets the ahhhh head tilt,and I get told how great he is. As if he’s going the extra mile.

Treading water working PT in a professional job.

The problem is that I can't see how I can move jobs without going FT and I can't see how I can go FT when after-school club finishes at 5.30 and school holiday childcare is similarly problematic with timings (and just been having nightmare finding somewhere that takes 4 year olds, though at least that is a temporary problem). Basically there just aren't that many childcare options out there. DH's company won't let people go PT so that isn't an option either.

I have a friend that doesn't want to have dc for these very reasons. She once told me she'd rather spend 4 hours waiting for a delayed flight than in a&e for a feverish toddler, it was all in good humour at the time but reading this thread I think she might have been on to something. She's now head of EMEA region for a global company.

Hahaha

Sorry... well... truth is that prior to having children I was successfully working at a senior-ish level and studying.

10 years and 2 children with HFA later I'm barely able to perform my now self-employed and very part/time job. Studying is now just a dream but I can handle that.

But women can and do have career & children.its achievable with planning
If your friend doesn’t want children, fair enough, but wobbles about career and kids she doesn’t have isn’t a wholly well formed reason. Kids come and you plan their childcare

LipstickHandbagCoffee I'm not sure if it ever can be a "wholly well formed reason" in view of the fact you can't really change (having) children like you can a career.

I've found it's largely down to the employer/line managers - I work in the public sector and my previous line manager was amazing when DC was born, I was allowed flexible working which meant I could stay working full time and as long as I did my hours and the work was good he was happy. When I became a single parent it made no difference regarding my work and that helped through a difficult time. I was a good performer at work.

Cue newish line manager who has made my life hell since he started. All of a sudden nothing I do is good enough. Implication is I should be working longer hours and weekends (like he does). I work FT as it is and the demands are leaving me tired and with even less time to spend with DC and do the necessary chores of life like even tidying and cleaning. He gets critical when he wants me to go to courses for 9am some 3 hrs drive away or to work weekends and I can't as I'm alone. I completed a major qualification last year and have been told there's no intention to promote or reward me. This year he's been putting me under increased pressure to make me leave (in my opinion). The job hasn't changed, the expectation has. As it stands, my job is becoming impossible for a working parent (especially a single parent), and there's absolutely no reason why. It's a 9-5 job.

I've stayed working full time all my career, I work hard, I'm well qualified and experienced, and I feel hobbled because I'm a single parent. If I hadn't had a child, or even if my marriage hadn't broken down, I would be earning probably almost double I do now.

However job prospects in my sector are sparse and seem to increasingly involve regular travel and unsociable hours. I'd be overqualified for a step down in my sector and not only is part-time work rare, it's also too low in wages for us to survive. The job market is changing and not in a way that promotes flexible working and all the other family-friendly policies I'm seeing hailed on national news/tv. I see it going the other way.

It’s a wholly what if scenario,she won’t have kids because of anticipated difficulties. Like most other folk she will need to plan & pay for childcare

Hasn't affected me too much. Kids now 9 and 12. Took a years maternity leave for each and worked 4days a week till youngest was at school. I'm sure I could have progressed a little faster but it's on proportion to the hours I have worked if you see what I mean.

Like some others I think that having to work turned out to be for the best. Friends who had the financial luxury of extending their maternity leave have struggled to get back into the workplace.

My DP on the other hand has struggled with his career. MH problems not childcare related. Again that has increased my drive to have a good career as he isn't always working.

I too couldn't have used childcare for my children, it didn't bear thinking about, that was my role as their mother.
I wanted to spend as much time with them as possible and couldn't imagine handing them over to someone else. I chose a man who agreed with me and who actually when it came down to it preferred it too.
He's done/does more than his fair share domestically, and as a parent.He treats me as an equal and values me, so I'm happy the way things turned out.

It's just one choice you might have when you have children, some people have no choice either way, and others choose to work.

I can understand why others don't like the whole sahp thing and I imagine it's a full time job juggling everything. I'm too laid back and hate routine, couldn't do same job for years.

Lipstick But unlike most other folk that just go ahead and do it and hope for the best she's thought ahead.

How many threads on here do you read from women wondering how they'll manage it all?

How many threads have you read where women are wondering about allocated nursery hours and childcare costs?

How many threads do you read on here with women carrying the 'mental load' despite having a working/functioning husband?

How many women just go ahead and just hope for the best? How many women give it all up just to walk away with the clothes on their backs in an acrimonious divorce?
And indeed how many women on here have to leave their jobs because the cost of childcare is not worth them working? In ode to your pay for childcare sentiment?

I commend her forward planning and outlook. Yes, no-one knows what will happen in the future but I'd personally rather adopt an approach in which I felt somewhat 'in the know' that just having dc and seeing what happens. I think she's in a perfect position to have dc right now - but I'm not her and can't control her womb.
And do tell, what happens to those women that had dc with the assumption that their partners would parent equally, or indeed that they could even afford childcare?
If someone is having children on the basis that 'it will all be fine in the end' then I do worry for them.

I have found this thread so sad to read but also I take some comfort in the fact the feelings I have of frustration and resentment as to my dead career are shared by others.

Have gone back PT after having DS2. What I have found is part time actually means full time just crammed into fewer hours with less money!!

In order for me to progress I need to go full time which I cannot do easily due to a whole host of issues around timings, drop offs, pickups etc etc. I currently have a 3 hour round trip with 2 stops for the kids and am usually late for work. My DH is in a high pressured (albeit it high salaried) job with lots of travel. I cover all sickness and school holidays. I feel like I do a shit job at work and a shit job at home.

After having a frank conversation about this thread, my frustration in my career and how we are literally clinging on right now, we have decided together I will quit and spend some time at home. It may be short term, it may be long term.

I feel like I am grieving for the career I know I could have had had I not had children and I feel terribly conflicted by that.

I'm one of the lucky ones - though I only have one child, and I did well partly by changing jobs to avoid negativity hanging around from my maternity leave: I changed organisations when DD was 10 months old, and again when she was 6. But DH is at home so I've had flexibility to travel, do late meetings at the last minute, work late if there's a panic, support my team if something horrendous is happening.

I couldn't do what I do without DH being at home. We don't have space for a live-in nanny or an au pair (London, we barely have space for the three of us even though I earn well), and both sets of grandparents are hundreds of miles away. Wrap-around care from 7.30 a.m to 6 pm wouldn't be nearly enough if we were both doing similar jobs. And I don't think it would be good for DD if she hardly saw either parent during the week.

I think you can manage two full-time jobs if they're 9-5 with a moderate commute, or if there's a lot of flexibility about where and when you do the work: anything more demanding / inflexible than that gets really hard. And of course we can only have the model of one person giving everything they've got to the office if the other person is picking up the slack at home. I'm very conscious that I'm perpetuating that model in a way that perhaps isn't helpful to other women.

I had my son at 19. I didn’t really have a ‘profession’. Then went on very quickly to have my 2 daughters. When my youngest was 6 months old I got a Saturday job. When she started school I was an assistant manager of a fish and chip shop, in between going to college to learn accountancy as my partner is self employed. I then got a job on the nurse bank at my local hospital. Low tier band 2. Nearly 13 years later I have made my way to top band 3. I have done numerous courses and qualifications. I have just applied for a band 5 position in admin , this is my aim to go higher administration and governance. I have no interest in doing my nursing unless they bring back the bursary , but that’s another thread. I spent 9 years on permanent nights as I struggled with child care , even with my partner.
It just seems harsh that women end up sacrificing their careers , and the men don’t.

Not sure if I can say it affected my 'career' as I was just doing admin work, but it's definitely put a stop to any foreseeable progression.
I got pregnant at 21, was on the cusp of getting a promotion at work which would have opened a whole new level of opportunities for me - my vile manager then puts me up for redundancy and lied on the evaluation (including about a time I had off in hospital - 3days - when I miscarried. This was also proven unfair dismissal).
Fast forward 2 years where I'd been applying out my arse for any job and was getting no where, partly due to inflexibility as I was a single mother with no family to help. Managed to bag a really convenient office job with a fantastic team who are very flexible and understanding. But I'm 26 now, it's depressing just how basic it is with no room for progression. It's not going anywhere. It's minimum wage. It's not a field I have any interest in. And now they're moving further away which gives me even less time with my boy (currently 2 hours a day - weekends with dad).
I had expectations of higher education and moving out of my area, I had a career path chosen. I love my son with all my heart, but there is definitely resentment. In the darkest moments I feel he's an embodiment of what I never accomplished for myself. I chose to have him, I chose to be a nob at 18 and not continue with Uni. I'm fed up of people saying 'You can do when you're older'. I'll still be in a crap, low paid job then and will have lost all motivation.
Wow, I sound like a selfish arsehole

Vladamirs,I completely agree with you.women should think through practicalities and impact of having a child.and if on balance it does not stack up for them fair enough. Women should be having those discussions with partner. I also agree being remiss in not having that conversation can lead to problems

Reading your post I didn’t get a feel of a well formed decision, you’ve clarified that I have misunderstood. Fair enough

But Vladimir, it sounds like your friend was saying that she didn’t want children and made the choice not to have them based on this. Some people want children, some don’t.

From your post, it sounded like she was childless not because she cared about her career more, but because she didn’t like the idea of caring for children.

LipstickHandbagCoffee Fair dues indeed. I think these are things women (especially) need to think about, unfortunately so. I'd like it to be equal among men and women but I can honestly say that even my millennial-aged niece will need to have these considerations.

From your post, it sounded like she was childless not because she cared about her career more, but because she didn’t like the idea of caring for children.

LonginesPrime That is essentially 6 of one and half a dozen of the other. It matters not, either way. A woman doesn't need to 'declare' why she doesn't want children. Would you change your opinion of her either way?