To hate how mums always have to sacrifice their career...

[rumun88]

I have 2 kids .. one 18 month old and a 6 year old. I work in a cafe for an estate, one week day and one weekend day and there's no flexibility in that I have to do a weekend day.

I've been offered a job as a GP receptionist and I would love to take it. But it's only £10.42 an hour and with it being weekdays we would need to pay childcare. Basically with the summer hols coming up, childcare for both kids would cost more than my wage. DH will cover it, but part of me is thinking what's the point when it means I'm not bringing any money to the pot technically. I'd also have to have both kids in different childcare settings which are opposite side of town by 7.30am. In my current job he works from home the 1 week day and is home the weekend day so no childcare.

So I have the choice, take the new job and get my weekends back but don't exactly earn, keep my current job and work every single weekend.. or be a SAHM.

Please help. I could cry! I was a dental nurse before kids and again childcare was an issue. We have no family support.

What would you do?

I don't feel like I've had to sacrifice my career, I do feel it's been delayed a bit due to having a year out and soon to be another year out.
That said I'm still in a senior position and feel there's plenty more to go.

And see your baby for more than an hour a day.

All comments clearly made from someone who hasn’t worked full time with a baby and just spoons out hyperbolic assumptions about what it’s like.

When she comes back from work?

I didn't sacrifice mine however it was difficult to juggle

Don't have time to read the article right now so perhaps it's addressed, but couldn't that correlation be explained by the children of wealthier parents being slimmer, on average? It's well known that richer kids are less likely to be overweight, and I'd assume households with one very high earner can better afford the other parent cutting back on or stopping work.

Mine slepts in my bed and bf too. Even when I went back to work. I also didn't only see them for an hour a day.

Are you suggesting that mothers who work outside the home can’t cosleep and breastfeed?

The average job is 9-5 so assuming you commute you’re not home till 6. Then you have dinner and baths and household chores to do. Unless your baby is up till midnight you’re only going to have realistically 1 hour tops of quality 1 on 1 time with your baby.
when I went back to work full time when mine were 3 I rarely saw them in the week.

Your breasts can’t be in 2 places at once so no you can’t breastfeed if you’re at work during the day and your baby is somewhere else.

What average job? Depends on the commute? What about the babies who get up at balls o’clock for hours of quality time before the commute even begins? Is dinner and bath not part of the quality time? You may have rarely seen your babies in the week, which is unusual and sucks for you I guess, but it’s not at all my experience of working and parenting.

Yes but mat leave is 12months in the UK, so typically by that point baby will have morning and evening feeds and probs some night feeds then food and water during your working hours.

There are also studies that support working too.

Working mothers benefit daughters, study says - BBC News

''It found daughters of mothers in work have better careers, higher pay and more equal relationships than those of stay-at-home mothers.
This effect was particularly pronounced in Britain and the US, the study, based on data from 24 countries, found.''

''It found no links between maternal employment and adult sons' working patterns.
However, sons of working mothers tended to "spend more time caring for family members than adult sons of stay-at-home mothers".''

@Mumtothreegirlies I’m a single parent and I went back to work after 8 months with both my kids. DS1 breastfed till he chose to stop at 15 months. Slept in my bed till DS2 came along when he was age 3.5. DS2 breastfed for 20 months till I weaned him off as I’d had enough by then! He also slept in my bed till he was about 4.

I expressed breast milk at work and brought it home.

Did your kids never slow down on the feeds? From one, children’s primary form of nutrition is food anyway, breastfeeding is on top of that. I went back to work when my daughter was nine months; I breastfed her till she was three. Your milk doesn’t dry up because you go to work in the day.

It's really odd that there was an identical thread from last week, with the exact same details...
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/work/4837331-which-job-would-you-choose

It really depends on your setup.

My husband and I have a flexible schedule, both can and do work from home often and work around each other and share drop offs/pick ups. Nursery is in walking distance of our home.

Well I worked from home and relatively senior so could manage my own time a bit better which made it easier, but still.

Let me explain it to you as it's clearly very difficult for you to imagine anything else than this weird version of working with kids: my kids got up pretty early, 5:30 or so. We would leave for nusery or childminder around 820. Having spent 3 hrs together. I would then pick them up between 4:30 and 530 depending on my diary. They went to bed at 7:30ish, so another 3-2.5 hrs together. Out of the hours we weren't together, at least 2 would be spent napping anyway. So everyday we would have approx 6 hrs together. I then didn't work Fridays. And weekends of course. So plenty of time to coseelp and breastfeed. My two were 12 months months before I went back to work, so they really didn't need to bf more.

This is very age of baby dependent.

By 12 months many babies tend to just have a morning feed, a bedtime feed and maybe an expressed bottle at lunch if mum is returning to work, although many have other milk for that feed.

Its not so easy to demand feed a 3 month old and be at work.

Shock 🙄

Add up your and DH’s monthly salaries. Deduct childcare costs from that. Factor in that you’re earning a pension, developing skills and engaging with adults in the workplace - just like your DH - and that your DH is also a joint parent with joint responsibility for childcare and the home. Take the GP receptionist role!

I wouldn't leave my kids to do a job for no money OP. What's the point if that? You'll never get the time back, but you could work in a reception anytime.

It’s clear you have a very limited experience of the workplace. Firstly a 2 hr commute a day is really high, most people are not travelling that far daily at all.
The majorly of 9-5 office based roles are now hybrid. Between myself and my DH there are 3/4 days every week when at least one of us is at home. No housework is done in the evening. Dinner and bath is quality family time to me, not something that takes away from it.
On the days I’m in the office I’m still with my toddler from 4:30 to 7:30 in the evening alone. I then work a shorter day on a Friday to spend some extra time together, time made up from a shorter lunch break so I have a shorter week and don’t lose out financially.

Certainly, there are societal pressures at work to stop mothers pursuing their career.

In my case, I'm a self employed LP, struggling to put the hours in because my ex simply refuses to have the DC more than every other weekend "because I've got work and you're s/e so more flexible " 😡. Contrast this with a GP friend of mine, who still finds herself doing the bulk of the life admin, because her lower- earning s/e partner is always "busy" 😡.

However, back to the OP's case. You said you didn't want to sacrifice your career. Now, this GP receptionist job- it doesn't look like a career - type job, am I right? Low wage, little opportunity for progression? Doesn't seem that it is, pragmatically, much of a step up from the cafe job. (Plus, if you keep the cafe job, your DH gets quality time with the kids each weekend- a chance to break the pattern of you being default parent perhaps?)

It sounds like your true career would be dental nursing. If it was me, given the current scarcity, I'd be wondering if it would be feasible to take the next step up and study to be a dentist- or failing that, a hygienist perhaps? 🤔

Otherwise, have you investigated whether it would be possible to do some temporary dental nursing through an agency?