Leave work and be a stay at home single mum

[alexaakkxx]

just wondering if anyone has done what the title says?

I am a single mother to 2 children who are 6 and 2. I work a very stressful full time job that doesn’t pay the best and in all honestly I don’t really enjoy it at all.

i currently get UC help with childcare costs but even after this, I still am not left with much and quite frankly I would probably get around the same amount from UC to stay at home with my 2 year old.

I have applied for college as I think going to university is the best option for me as I’m not and never been sure what I want to do as a career and always been in boring admin jobs.

I know I will never get the time back that I could have now with my young children and with my job, I hardly see them as when I’m home it’s dinner bath and bed and they are with their dad 3 nights a week.

Has anyone quit their job and stayed at home as a single mum or will this be a big regret of mine?

Getting more and more annoyed when I think about this. Clearly if someone is voluntarily contemplating giving up employment and going on benefits the benefits available are too generous? It shouldn't be the case that being unemployed make you better off than working!

I can think of plenty of nurses and teachers who deserve payrises for what they do and can't have them. I'd rather they had the money than someone giving up work to go on benefits.

@Obki hilarious that you’re so caught up in an online forum, I think you need to calm down😄

Giving up work with a vague idea you want to study is a bad move long term.
Decide what you want to study and have a plan for how that will work out long term. What is the career path you want to take, be very clear to yourself, and avoid bs degrees like criminology, you won't do anything with it. Are there careers you're interested in?

Without a plan, a confirmed and researched one, you're likely to end up back in another job you hate and/or trapped in a cycle of low income that will affect you and your dc for the rest of your lives.

Annoying though it is to have someone like OP rock up and want to make a lifestyle choice that the rest of us have to fund, she does have children and it’s for them that the safety net is in place.
I know someone who does fuck all because she’s a lazy mare, claims every penny, has loads of thing subsidised for the kids and bangs on all the time about how hard it is to be a single mum on benefits but if she wasn’t able to claim it would be her poor kids who suffered the most.

She also complains that people
’judge’ her. Well yeah, because you’re a healthy adult who chose not to work and to claim benefits instead.

It's interesting how being at home is a valid choice, in the best interest of the children, really hard work grafting your fingers to the bone all day etc. As long as you are not single. If your children have only you to rely on you're a lazy parasite for considering anything other than full time work as well as all school/nursery runs, housework, cooking, shopping etc. The fact that it's incredibly hard to find and fund childcare places at the moment (no childminder or after school club can pick up DS from school currently - I'm lucky I have family help and flexible hours) is irrelevant too, you're obviously just not trying. It becomes very clear that deep down a lot of people still think badly of the children of single mums, and the mums themselves. I wonder how some of these smug individuals would cope if the bottom of their world fell out one day and they found themselves left to manage alone on a hugely reduced income.
As for studying, I calculated during my MA social policy module that a single parent who goes to uni will more than pay back any support they receive (in student loan repayments and benefits not claimed due to no longer needing them) provided that they don't have a large number of children, their degree leads to a graduate type job and they do it early enough in life. UC has really shafted students as loans are taken into account as income despite the fact that they have to be paid back, but hopefully it is still worth it.

Actually fuck it. May as well give up work too and sign on. Let all the grafters look after me for a change. I deserve it after all the tax I’ve paid.

@DrCoconut 👏

She’s a sahp. Don’t they work harder than anyone? Or is it just when they have the status of a dh who is actually paying for them?

op is not doing anything different from any other sahm. It’s the kids dad who is not stepping up.

‘She’s a sahp. Don’t they work harder than anyone?’

no, she’s a woman living off benefits. I’ve never understood the argument that SAHP somehow work harder than parents who work AND look after their kids.

‘op is not doing anything different from any other sahm. It’s the kids dad who is not stepping up.’

she going to quit working to live off benefits. She has no other income. That’s not being a SAHP, that’s living off benefits.

Is it that you just hate your job?

Still not understanding the moral difference between SAHP with both parents together and single parent who doesn't work. Neither are objectively contributing anything to society apart from raising children and possibly volunteering. Why is it worse for the single parent to do that?
As I said before, from a mental health point of view, it is not beneficial for the child to have one absent parent and one who works fifty hours a week. I know this isn't the OP's situation, but a woman working all the hours, the kid in constant childcare is arguably worse for the child compared to the parent staying at home.
I think it's a scam that people feel that they have to be a 'net contributor' in order to be seen as worthwhile.

Why are my taxes giving some people the option to stay home with their children? Women going back to work after maternity leave don't have the option to stay home until the child is 3 years old, why should someone on benefits have that choice?

I'm more than happy for some of my taxes to pay for benefits for people who are unable to work - disabled people/those with health conditions and carers of disabled people, whether that be parents looking after disabled children, children looking after disabled parents or anyone who is an unpaid carer to someone else - and this group of people should receive more financial support. I am absolutely not happy for my taxes to be used to pay someone like the OP to make the decision not to work. It is disgraceful!

To a PP who said if the benefits system was not there, the OP's children would suffer - I am sure she would opt to work if there was no other choice, especially when the children are at their father's house nearly half the week.

3 of my friends did access courses then went to uni and have great jobs now.

Research what career you would like and go for it.

Who do you think you are about ‘why are my taxes giving some people the option to blahblahblah.’ Do you know the percentage of taxes that is actually spent on welfare especially unemployment benefit. Last time I checked on Gov it was about 7%. You think your taxes are being spent on that 7%? Please get a grip.

People have on this thread need to tweek their thinking. The question shouldn’t be ‘why should I pay for you’ or ‘why do you get to quit your job and be on benefits.’ The question should be ‘why the hell is the system so fucked. Why can parents of young children live a better life being on benefits instead of working part or full time?’ Anyone can access the information on Gov.uk website and see that if you have a child under 3, legally you don’t have to work.

I have a friend who works one day a week because if she works anymore, she’ll get more money deducted from her UC and that means it’s difficult for her and her DC to survive for that month. Now how does that make sense? Why is the system built this way? You really think some parents are going to choose to work full time and get LESS money just so they can say ‘well look at me, I work.’ No, their children’s best interests come first so if that means not working for the first couple of years of their life, then go for it

Oh and I don’t believe in slogging along in a miserable job when you can be at home with your children. If you’re at home with your youngest alongside studying to be in a better position in the long run then that sounds like the best option. My youngest is 7 months old and I’ve already calculated that if I go back to full time work I’ll be £300 down a month then if I fully relied on UC. It’s very clear what choice I’ll be making

I think you should go to uni. It’s the best thing long term

im presuming you are pretty young btw

A friend did exactly this, single mum to 3 young boys running herself ragged trying to get them to nursery/school on time. Ex didn’t help he saw them once a fortnight at the weekend so all the juggling was left to her. She was making herself unwell. And in a minimum wage call centre job. She was off work when one of the boys was unwell and she didn’t go back. She enrolled at the local college did an HNC then HND (the college had childcare included) then went to uni and became a social worker eventually.

They can't live a better life on benefits which op will find out unless they get a significant amount of CM which does not affect benefits at all. With a mortgage and no rent element, UC will be a very low amount and life is likely to be miserable. If op can work even a few hours a week she will be significantly better off as the first £573 of earnings would not affect her Uc at all. Where do people get this idea that people can be better off one benefits ?? For each pound extra that someone earns they lose 55p of Uc which means they get to keep almost half of it so I've no idea why your friend is so much worse off working extra unless she has huge travel costs. Even 85% of childcare is paid !

@Babyroobs ah yes I did see that OP said she has a mortgage (my bad). It’s only beneficial if you private rent and can get your whole rent paid for if you’re rent amount is under the LHA. If you have a mortgage to pay for then UC doesn’t help with that. In the OP’s case it seems best to go part time but how difficult will it be to work part time, study and still be a parent to two children? Sounds like one has to give but studying will benefit OP in the long run

She’s not a robot…I imagine staring into space is all she’s capable of.

Please go to college/uni.

A lot of nurses and social workers did exactly what you are proposing.

Many of them were single parents and gave up work to become full time students.

They now earn more than minimum wage (28k - 42K).

If they had stayed working their previous minimum wage jobs like others on here would rather, then they’d still there. They’d have minimal pensions so would rely on the state and wouldn’t pay half as much tax.
So the 3-5 years were worth it.

Think long term and get an education. But make sure it’s a degree with guaranteed work at the end.

@HowieDBreakfastBeef -ah I missed that-

Ignore all the condescending posts suggesting uni won't help.
I went to uni 15 years ago as a single parent of 2 toddlers. It was life changing.

I didn't even have a (gasp) career plan. And did English, at a non Russell Group uni.

I became really interested in language development modules and then did teacher training, early years teaching, leadership and now work as an early years SEN consultant, which I love.

Teaching was a hard slog, but the lack of childcare expenses in the hols made this work. Now I have a really flexible role, some homeworking and earn 60k (not amazing on mumsnet but pretty comfortable in real life).

More importantly I got my spark back at uni, saw different outlooks, remembered that I wasn't just someone's mum.

And I lived on student finance and tax credits. So what, it was 4 years and in the long term I would have been much more reliant on the state if I had stayed in a low paying job. And the long uni holidays were amazing. I did my reading for the year ahead, as it is hard with kids, and had an absolute ton of quality time with the kids.

There are some self righteous idiots on here... ignore them and good luck xx