How can I make a comfortable income from home

[Sweetly1]

Hi Ladies I want to find out what ladies are doing to make a comfortable income around their primary school children and still have time for family? Kindly advise?

Only Fans seems to work well for some people

That’s completely my point.

women have exhausted themselves because they’ve had to dance to the tune of the patriarchy. Women are damned if they do or don’t. They then turn on women that have made other/ different choices because they’ve internalised this mentality. Why is the OP being turned on? Be angry at the patriarchy, not at her!

Imagine a completely different culture which truly understood what it’s like to be a mum. And didn’t end up with women harshly judging other women online for all having to live in the same culture. Genuine flexibility. Understanding that the school day and working days are utterly incompatible. Holidays. Endless events to attend at school. Sickness. A really slow return to work after a baby that isn’t seen as ‘sitting in your arse’, but is kind to women and little children. State funding high quality child care. Understanding the gender pay gap that already exists. How working from home can negatively impact promotion opportunities. Women are punished for having children like it or not. Or for stepping off the work merry go round. God forbid!!

What puritanical times we live in.

But I agree with your point. I’m saying the saying the same thing. But maybe not expressing myself very well.

But I’m genuinely saddened by the resentment towards women (mums) on this thread. Patriarchy will always win because women turn on women, and not on the real enemy.

18% think the OP isn’t being unreasonable. Are they also women who have been out of the work place for years?

I have been looked down on from relatives and friends who have chosen to stay at home.

Been asked how I can possibly juggle everything etc. One relative is now wondering how she is going to rely on the state pension having no work for years (claimed CB) and manage a husband who shows no interest in her and has his own life which doesn’t seem to include her.

Exactly. Ludicrous and farcical post(s) from @AliceRose1971 with some bizarre generalisations ... Hilariously incorrect assumptions, and clearly projecting.

Can't even be bothered to engage with that poster anymore truth be told.

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@PropertyD

You are right with everything you say. I have to say I get annoyed with women who stay at home, unmarried and often smugly say they couldn’t possibly leave their children in childcare at a young age, partner supports all of it and then partner leaves. I have two friends who have done this.
MN is full of them wondering where it all when wrong.

100% this! ^

What am I projecting? Enlighten me.

You could start off in the nhs or approach a company called CEC healthcare coding to see if they have a pathway. I’ve gone full time wfh and wish I had when I had my boy at home. There’s a National shortage of us so you never know!

I don’t think it’s resentment towards SAHM. I think choosing not to work is an entirely reasonable, valid and worthy choice for some. But it is a choice. Choosing to exit the workplace means you sacrifice your financial independence (in many cases) and impact your employability if you take an extended period out. There are ways to mitigate this but you have to actively choose those too!
Choosing to stay in the workplace (though in many cases it’s a necessity) also comes with sacrifices; time with young children, time pressures, childcare issues etc
There are no perfect choices but as adults we should accept the consequences of the choices we make.
Having said all of that I am a massive advocate for flex working (and I have many working mums in the workplace I manage working very flex hours), I believe deeply in better funding of childcare and the removal of cliff edges and that many workplaces need to focus on improving the gender pay gap. But all of this has to be balanced with commercial reality and personal accountability.

I hear you.

i just think women have it very tough. I guess the issue of ‘commercial reality and personal accountability’ is a big and complex one

Looking after children and running a home is work, and it is invisible and unpaid but it supports so many others (largely men) who support commerce. Also worth looking into the stress levels of sahms. Some very interesting research projects on this. Also high depression rates.

Also if more money was put into good quality childcare (and wraparound for primary) more sahm would work as their pay packet wouldn’t just cover nursery fees etc. So many are faced with this and either leave work because they don’t want to pay someone else to ‘raise’ their child (that’s a shorthand but you get the sentiment) or they work and all pay goes on nursery fees and feel utterly f’d over and guilty. Plus they’re utterly exhausted trying to ride 2 horses of work and managing small children/nursery logistics, run a home etc

The solution must be to value women genuinely. Even when they’ve been out of the work place for years due to childcare or working ‘in the home’. Often they’re absolutely brilliant at organising and ‘getting the job done’ because of the skill sets of running a home, diary management, time management, can spin plates, delegate etc.

GP drop off rate for women after kids is a total crisis. They should be supported. We need them.

There is so much untapped potential in women who take time out (as the OP has done) to raise kids. I see it all the time. Really bright and capable women but they can’t get back into work because society makes it very hard for them. And they’re considered unemployable (a terrible thing to say to any human being.)

Anyway, there are some very nice women on this post who have made useful suggestions to the OP. She won’t go in at 50k (that’s pretty obvious) but if she’s in her 30/40s she’s got many working aged years ahead of her, so she may get there in time.

@AliceRose1971 @Kitte321 both such well written posts

I HAD to give up work because we couldn't afford the nursey fees. I was happy with it but I would have had to anyway because nursery fees would have completely overtaken our salaries

I don't see the responses as being anti-SAHM

If a poster had said that she'd spent the last few years working as a TA or doing basic office administration and now fancied working part time flexibly at home, during school hours for an unrealistically high salary, people would be equally quick to point out that her expectations are unrealistic.

I've spent the last 20 years working in IT. If I posted that I wanted to earn more money and could see that there were opportunities in the financial sector and wanted to earn 150K whilst always being home for the school run, I would want people to actually give me sensible advice about changing career whilst pointing out that walking straight into such a job was very unrealistic. Not give me humouring platitudes.

You know not all families are the same. Some women have husbands that work away for weeks at a time - they might not have any support so working becomes untenable. Maybe they have a child with additional needs or a health condition that would require lots of hospital appointments. Maybe they did try to make it work and due to a whole host of the above work was just not possible. I know plenty of women pushed out of work once they had children. Thankfully it looks like the job market has changed in this regard but it wasn’t always like that. Finally some women have lots of kids so have young ones for many years. It’s good to see those women looking to get back to work and thrive again.

I don’t see any anti-mum sentiment on this thread. I see people thinking OP is unrealistic and entitled to expect to be paid fifty grand for a part-time job (so around eighty grand equivalent salary) when she has no qualifications or experience or work history. Thats fair - most of us don’t earn anywhere near that after slaving away for decades.

It's ok people on here staring I want this income or people chiming ij that they get 50k and 60k working mainly at home but nobody is discussing what these jobs are, what skills, qualifications or experience anyone has to command such extensive salaries - what is it you do that hope to do part time for £50k as it sounds a bit of a fantasy to me.

This, I was made redundant in 2024 and as a skilled professional who has always worked full time, the jobs market is hell! It's important that stay at home mothers realise they will be looking at low to unskilled minimum wage work once they've sat unemployed for years! I'm a H&S practitioner on £30.5k full time, my partner is a Senior IT Network Engineer for the NHS on about £40k! Just to give reality to the mothers that have nothing to offer but think £50k for unskilled part time work is a fair ask!

I’m another one who think the OP has had a bit of a pile-on. Yes 50k is unrealistic, but she was only looking for advice. OP, I wish you well in your efforts to reenter the workforce. Counselling is something which might tick some of your flexibility boxes - there might be some Level 2/Level 3 courses available for free at a local FE college so you could explore without initial cost if it’s something you’d interested in pursuing further. Good luck xx

Same here. I’ve only had 2 years away from working and I can’t find anything, I’ve been looking for a year. I’m really frightened for the future now. Not expecting anything anywhere near 50k, I’d settle for NMW.

If you read my two posts you will see that I have, and never would, suggest that being a SAHM is not a completely valid choice. It just comes with sacrifices (as does being a working parent).

I think you’ve pinpointed the issue, that is for so many women it’s not a ‘choice’. Though it might look like it from the outside it’s normally responding to circumstances. One person above mentioned how they’d prioritised working by throwing money at childcare to keep working, but that’s assumes that all families have money to throw at childcare. Many many don’t. They get pushed out of work and it can then be v hard to get back in, in part due to lack of childcare and supportive employers, but also the cultural view of mothers who take careers ‘breaks’.

Lots of economic studies coming out about this and it is a huge social and economic crisis. This is an old article but still relevant:

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/nov/05/motherhood-penalty-has-driven-quarter-of-a-million-women-out-of-jobs-says-report

All that lost potential of these women! It’s a scandal. We have so many skill shortages in the UK. Why not funding for retraining women re entering the workforce? We should be ambitious for these women. They have a lot to give.

I don’t think that every SAHM makes the same choice. Not every woman that stays at home does it as an active choice. Then comparing them unfavourably to women that worked through the hard years and sacrificed by going to work. Maybe that SAHM was on her own for weeks on end and had zero support due to a million different scenarios - a few of which I mentioned in my original post. People always assume that a SAHM is having it easy but that’s not true. You could work full time and be home at 5:30 if you’re not in a big commute and still have a very supportive husband or family around you and have an easy life. you can also be a SAHM with a partner that works away for weeks and months on end and have no family support around. You can’t compare it to so to make that kind of assumption that just because you stayed at home your life was easy and just because you went to work your life with hard when your children were young that’s not actually true. I do find that when women take that line and they make it just black-and-white that it affects other women negatively. Even simple things like having a positive healthy relationship compared to somebody who has a negative potentially abusive relationship makes a very big difference in how hard life is for someone regardless of whether they were working or not on top of that. I think that if this particular poster wants to go back to work and own £50,000 a year we should all support her in that. Being out of the work force does not mean she has no skills

I completely agree @AliceRose1971

No wonder the OP hasn't returned, why would she when so many posters are obviously taking pleasure in telling her she'll amount to nothing better than a minimum wage worker because she had the audacity to be a SAHM, and banging on about 'entitlement'? Many on here, though they're denying it, clearly resent women who make different choices to them and want to see them suffer for doing so (note all the 'well I toiled in the workforce for years and SACRIFICED; if I had to struggle and suffer then all other women have to too! Otherwise it's not fair on ME' type posts).

Note also the multiple people who have made jabs about how the OP may want to consider porn or prostitution, comments which wouldn't look out of place on an incel forum. But sure, all these posters are doing is simply managing the OP's expectations in an objective manner, they're not revelling in it or enjoying the put downs at all. /s

The bitterness and contempt expressed for women who are perceived to have had it easier than them is so sadly misplaced; the OP is not responsible for the hardships experienced by working mothers, nor does she owe anyone an apology for being a SAHM. The OP has not insulted or thrown judgement at anyone, she has asked for advice on career options, that is it.

@NiftyBlueRobin a noble post. Presumably you have links to part time, WFH jobs that pay the best part of £40 an hour without any experience or qualifications required? Now would be the time to share them.

@AmIHumanOrAmIAYeti Thank you. I've already shared my suggestions with the OP upthread, and have acknowledged that it's reasonable for people to manage her expectations. I also felt the need to acknowledge that the OP doesn't deserve the bitterness, nastiness and accusations that she's been levelled with by many posters here, and I hope she sees that and realises that not all of us are rooting against her.

OP if you're reading this, once again best of luck.

This response badly mischaracterises what many people are actually saying, and in doing so it sidesteps two uncomfortable but relevant truths.
First, in many cases being a SAHM is a choice, choices have trade-offs. Pointing out those trade-offs is not “bitterness,” “contempt,” or some vendetta against women who stayed home; it’s a basic acknowledgement of how labour markets work. Time out of the workforce has consequences for skills, networks, and perceived value. That reality exists whether anyone “enjoys” stating it or not.
Second, market forces are not a moral judgement. They are indifferent. After a long absence from paid employment, it is simply not realistic to expect to re-enter the workforce at a high level without substantial retraining, recent experience, or a highly specialised background. Saying this is not the same as declaring someone “amounts to nothing” or deserves to struggle. It’s managing expectations in line with economic reality, not trying to be cruel.
Accusations that posters are “revelling in put-downs” or acting out some grievance against SAHMs conveniently shut down any honest discussion. Discomfort is being reframed as oppression. Hard truths are being recast as misogyny.
As for the more extreme or inappropriate comments (e.g. references to porn or prostitution), those can and should be condemned. They are not representative of the broader point being made, and using them to smear all criticism as incel-adjacent is disingenuous.

No one is saying the OP owes anyone an apology for being a SAHM. But nor is she entitled to have the economic consequences of that choice ignored. Asking for career advice necessarily invites honest answers, including answers she may not like. Acknowledging limits imposed by time away from the workforce is not punishment, resentment, or cruelty; it’s realism.
Pretending otherwise doesn’t empower women. It sets them up for disappointment.