To think that there are no well paid family friendly careers?

[Careerhelppp]

I’m currently a SAHM to young children. Whilst my children are still young, I’d like to start preparing to return to the workplace in a few years time.

I previously worked in PR in London and have now moved over 300 miles away! The majority of PR is in London so it’s not really feasible for me to return to this. The area I was in was also the opposite of family friendly so it just wouldn’t have worked anyway.

DH is a high earner and there is no need for me to return to work. However I’ve started feeling like I’m just letting all of my potential and independence fade away and that I need to have a plan about getting a career back. The difficult part is that DH’s career completely dominates everything. He works away a lot and at short notice so I’d have to work around this. This is non-negotiable - DH couldn’t not do this and if he moved to a different role, we’d be taking a huge pay cut (probably over double what I’d ever realistically earn).

I’ve thought about law (love the academic side but I don’t think the hours would be flexible enough), teaching (not well paid enough to make it worthwhile for us), accounting, being a financial advisor, even being a therapist.

Ideally I’d like a job that is fairly flexible (eg. Allows me to finish earlier and pick back up in the evening), includes some WFH and is has a salary of over £50,000 if full time. Perhaps something where you could become self employed?

Any ideas?! Totally prepared to do another degree if needed and the cost of retraining isn’t an issue.

I work in digital, I don’t come from a digital background, I got in with my previous skillset and ended up taking a side stepped role and adding to my qualifications before then getting further promotions.

I have had a relatively high paid role in education for almost all my career, but I worked full time for many years before having children and was able to negotiate part time working. Plus my DH runs his own business - initially elsewhere, but he moved to working from home when our children were young. Even so we used some wrap around care when they were in primary.

I fully work from home in a COO role which is basically a very high end EA type role with more influence/decision making. It’s a small company but a high paying industry (pharma) and is very flexible, I earn £71K. It is possible, but it’s not easy at all to find.

So surely the easier place to start is to research this in your current industry and experience rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water?
I used to recruit in these area and I agree with the PP you’ve quoted, there are lots of flexi roles out there and many are really exciting! Why not talk to a few recruiters and start researching possible companies and agencies in your area. There are a lot of large agencies outside of London. ChatGPT can be a good research tool and place to start with this.

You have a long list of requirements and may start retraining only to find you don’t like it or it takes a long time to build up to where you want to be. Logic says start in your area of expertise, network on LinkedIn, start to know the local market, put proactive feelers out with companies and agencies. That will take a lot less time energy and money than retraining!

Of course you would. It’s transferable skills. Whether you want to is a different matter.

Didn’t the BBC move up to Salford anyway? Like this one: not saying it’s the right level but it is part time and you mentioned Manchester, so might be worth keeping an eye on other BBC comms vacancies.

https://careers.bbc.co.uk/job/Senior-Press-&-Communications-Officer/44471-enGB/

You could also have it in the Big4/Mid tier. I’ve got plenty of colleagues and contacts who have roles like the OP describes.

Tutoring can be very family-unfriendly, as it inevitably takes place outside school hours (unless you can pick adults or home-ed kids). Similarly with swimming, unless you're only teaching pre-schoolers.

Is this people that are quite senior? Do you ever get trainees or people in their first roles with this kind of set up?

There's a substantial shortfall in electricians in the UK.

It's also a trade that won't be replaced by AI any time soon.

I mean this politely but do you have the academic ability and base level qualifications to look at the fields you’re throwing out like it’s easy to just do? Law and accountancy exams and training as an example are absolutely brutal!

It would be helpful if you set out what qualifications you actually have so you get some realistic options.

Remote outsourced bookkeeping is something which pays very well for what it actually is. It’s also very flexible.

I used to work in the internal legal team for a local authority. I was in the children team and the cases could be awful. There are other teams though. The solicitors earn decent money and the hours are absolutely fixed, they were not doing a minute of overtime so 5:30 finish so could pick up from ASC if all local. Local authorities generally good on flexi arrangements too. I was only a junior but the work the solicitors were doing seemed really easy and repetitive. You’d need a legal qualification but you could do that alongside paralegaling or work experience. They always seemed to need new people with a decent work ethic and more than average number of brain cells.

Accountancy:
You might struggle to find an accounting firm to pay for your exams if you only want part time work. You need a certain amount of hours experience to qualify so it would take a while (normal training contracts are 3 years). Pay isn't great pre qualifying. There are less prestigious routes with management accounts etc which you could look at. Either way exams are tough when you have kids and have been out of exam mode for a while.

What about supply teaching? Then you could dabble in and out which might be helpful with your husband.

Have you thought about adjacent fields such as a Fundraising roles for charities?

You cant start at a high salary, but if you are looking to change careers, you will have to play the long game.

There are also 'returner programs' specifically for those who have had a career break, if you are open to returning to PR, you cpuld look into this.

With the Send reforms there will.be a need for about 5 x the amount of educational psychologists and occupational therapists and it is a national shortage with requirement all across the UK. It is specialised and really nothing like PR but you could be training up for it now and doing qualifications and e.g. learning support assistant work in schools around your children's school hours, with a view to becoming qualified in a few years in time to take advantage of job opportunities. However it's the sort of thing where you would need to have real skill and interest as well as academic chops so it might not be what you're looking for.

I mention it as it's an example of one "long game" you could play.

I don’t know any £50k entry level jobs but just coming here to say stop plugging teaching on this poor woman! Loads of women LEAVE teaching after having kids for a reason!

Realistically, there aren't going to be many sectors which pay trainees £50k while also allowing flexibility.

Are you willing to accept lower pay in the early years while you're getting trained and building up some experience?

I just want to add, you need to think of chilcare costs as a shared cost. If anything, you should mentally attribute more of the costs to your DH as his inflexible role means you are needing to be flexible.

You also have to think if youre moving away from the work youre experienced in, you might struggle to enter at £50k+

SEN tutoring, can be flexible and we'll paid if think you have patience to teach. My friend did this with no higher education but had a previous career in the arts.

I do home dog boarding and daycare in my home, and it pays me very well, around £50k p/a. I only take well behaved small dogs. I have no commuting costs, I'm at home all the time. It's a doddle tbh. Overheads are only £300 a year, which is the cost of my licence and my insurance. I love the freedom. Once I have fed and walked them in the morning, I have hours to myself. I then feed them and walk them again around 3pm. Then the daycare ones start going home around 5pm. No boss, no stress, no deadlines.

I know a lot of people in in-house legal teams, mostly in financial services, who earn very well and who also have a high degree of flexibility...but they've all been there, done it, and got the T-shirt. Really it's a matter of 'Flexibility, high pay, no experience required - pick two'.

How many dogs do you have in your home, though? Do you have a cleaner?

It’s not about the job, more so the industry / company! I work as a finance director and have huge flexibility. I attend all school events and extra curricular etc… of course I ultimately have to do my work, so I often work late or start early, but I work flexibly around my children.

Also glad to see you have discounted teaching as an option if flexibility is important to you. I gave up a teaching career after 13 years due to realising how not family friendly the job was. I missed out on a lot in the first few years when I tried to juggle it all. Such a shame as the profession is losing female teachers in the same position as me at an alarming rate!

I usually have 6 or 7 a day, which is a mix of day care and boarding. No, I don't have a cleaner. The dogs and me stick to 2 rooms - the kitchen and the dining room next door. Got laminate floors that can easily be steamed. They never get upstairs, there is a dog stopper on the bottom step. I've got 4 here today - they are all fast asleep and won't wake up till 3pm for food and walkies. In the meantime, I can watch TV, mumsnet, sit in the garden etc.