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.

How about social media management? Have your own consultancy. I presume there's some transferable skills with PR and if you work for yourself you choose your hours. Plus can do a lot of it from home if needed.

AI Governance roles on the other hand are a prime opportunity. Learn all about ISO 42001, EU-AI act, NIST AI RMF, US state level legislations etc Lots of companies are in panic mode trying to figure out how to actually control all the AI they are using and provide assurance to regulators and clients that everything is how it should be.

Learn a trade. Set up a women only trade site. Use your PR skills to aggressively market that women can now have women trades persons in their house doing work. More women own houses on their own then men, because they are better at getting their finances sorted. But also plenty of women like the idea of women doing their trades work and leaving women, not men, in their house whilst they are out working.
If you make millions you can send 10 percent this way.

Development Director at a school in the private sector or universities. Some academy chains also have this role. Would use your PR skills, has a lot of flexibility except for set events which may include some evenings and school holidays.

This is similar to my job - I earn just over 50k, WFH full time (travel to London about once a quarter), my job is fairly flexible (I have colleagues who work around school pick up). I’m a Project Manager at a national charity. It’s a wonderful role, I feel very lucky.

Tbh i hate when people suggest pausing earlier in the day to pick up kids and logging back on in the evening - realistically, nobody actually properly logs back on in the evening, or those who do end up burned out.
People that suggest it want to work part time around their kids but still be paid full time, and as a manager and a parent myself it's something I tend to say no to for the reasons above. I've managed people trying to do it and it just doesn't work - it's not helpful to have staff working at a time when nobody else is so they can't do any meetings or check things with people if needed.

Theres plenty of jobs can be 'family friendly' you simply have to accept what you are looking for is part time work, and put in a request to drop to 3 or 4 days a week. You can ask for eg to 30hrs a week as 5 x 6hr days from 9-3 for eg, or 27.5hrs likewise split across 5 days to give the shorter days you want.
Lots of workplaces will agree to you reducing your hours and having a shorter day to accommodate children as long as you accept you will have to sacrifice some pay.

Not sure why people are voting saying you’re unreasonable. They ate probably in different careers. The great thing about the PA market is there are alot of remote positions on offer. I will only work remotely now, companies insisting on 5days in an office are lagging behind and clinging to micromanagement strategies and refusing to move with the times. Don’t give decent wage bcus the £ is wasted on overpriced office space to keep the gov happy. All a smokescreen. If they wanted to cut emissions, care for environment etc etc hybrod and remote would still be standard. But it became a farce like covid and we went backwards. Join some decent agencies and let them know what you will or won’t consider. Don’t talk yourself into alternatives. What you want is out there. If not do what I did, stepped away from employed roles that dictated to me. I became a self employed freelancer, and reflected that on my online profile and let companies that were the right fit and mindset come to me. Especially as a PA you can EASILY become a VA there’s a huge market out there.

If you are thinking about retraining or taking a degree or similar, then waht about Computer Science/programming as this is often Wfh/flexible.

I work in the voluntary sector which is often flexible and supportive. I earn £50k pro rata in a specialist job and mainly WFH. All large charities need PR officers although you might not get the salary you want unless it was a more senior role.

I would not recommend law. It takes an age to get qualified and it’s very inflexible in the early years. I now earn a reasonable salary in a satisfying job but it took a lot of sacrifice to get here.

Don’t laugh but have you thought about nursing? The training is 3 years, 50/50 (half in work placement, half in lectures). Once qualified if you do another year (look up SCPHN degree) then you can work in the community rather than hospitals and work 9-5, no weekends or bank holidays. There are a plethora of career opportunities in nursing both in and out of hospitals which people don’t realise. Plus the NHS is stable employment with an excellent pension scheme. I’m 20 years qualified next year and it’s the best thing I’ve done career wise.

I'm in Scotland and after your first 4 years of teaching the salary in 55k. It goes up very quickly. Is it much less where you are?

There are thousands of newly qualified nurses and midwives who can’t get jobs in the NHS. 20 years ago bears absolutely no resemblance to now!

I think even a couple of years a go this was true. But huge swathes of software engineer entry level jobs are being axed.

Even in companies with excellent growth, decent revenue and good VC backing are not replacing engineers or growing their teams.

The tide has turned unfortunately on software roles.

There are lots of comms and marketing roles that can be flexible and are not based in London for the salary you are looking at. Suggest looking at NHS, local councils, bigger third sector organisations, and the civil service.

I get over 50k in social work assessments - I work from home except a few visits a week, I work completely to my own schedule and can do school runs. I’ve got a really good set up, but It’s exhausting working full time, doing everything for DC and being at home with some kind of expectation that I’ve got it easy and should also do all of the housework/laundry etc. I would prefer to be in an office but I couldn’t manage everything. (Yes I want a divorce)

My friend is an accountant in a managerial position for the navy. She trained in her late 20s early 30s after having her first child. She has two now and works from home during school hours. Gets paid very well. Another friend who is a SAHM (4 kids) was a teacher prior and will soon go back to teaching foreign students (asian) online during 9am to 1pm for term time only. Won't make a fortune but she will have an extra income. I have two kids, I'm a clinical psychologist in a managerial position and will return to work after mat leave to work 30 hours term time only. I earn well but could earn a lot more if I worked for myself and saw clients privately. The training is a killer though and the market is a bit saturated now. If I could turn back time I'd have trained as an accountant probably. My other friend has 3 kids same job as me and she is happy with work/life balance, does 25 hrs per week. I have lots of friends and all work, but the better paid ones are in project management, engineering or accountancy and they can work from home which helps. Just thought to give you some examples.

To be honest I have no idea what the pay is like, but for flexibility and using existing skills you could consider something like being a driving instructor

I’m a civil servant too. On just shy of 70k, work flexi hours (do work later if there’s a crisis etc, but it’s not expected, and that’s not often). I can work 7.30-3.45 if I like. Most of our team go and collect DC from school as a late lunch and log back on for an hour. Went to all assemblies and sports days. Great pension. They also do part time, part year working. I started off less senior and worked my way up whilst raising kids, largely on my own.

They’re shrinking by 10,000 roles but I’m sure they’d love to have OP come into a senior role with full flexibility and not much in the way of experience.

It's a myth that high income careers are not family friendly. That's largely perpetuated by shitty employers or shitty men who do not want to look after their children or contribute to housework.

My DH earns £130k – he does all school drop off and 2x pick ups a week. He attends every school event, and regularly takes time off for child sickness and appointments etc. I earn £65k and do the same.

We both work full time – 2x a week from home, 3x a week from office. He has a 30 minute commute, I have a 1.5hr commute. He works in finance. I work in the media.

I lucked out 3 years ago when I started a new comms job that I'd found on LinkedIn - I started on £40k. Before that I had been a journalist working at a specialist magazine. I now have a fully remote job that would not exist in my region, working for a learned society. Very happy there because they treat their staff very differently than in my previous sector. I had set up a search on LinkedIn for editorial jobs in my area, and it turns out that this trawl also sends you remote jobs from other parts of the UK. I'd 100% recommend doing this as it will throw up stuff that you might not find on other job search sites.

The only people I was ever envious of when slogging my guts out as a jnr lawyer were the women I knew who were hair dressers/beauty therapists. Is that something you might consider?

I’ve spent many years as an expat and in every location there were some that set themselves up working in their own home or travelling to other expats. Whether they were the highlight queen or the brow star, they worked flexible hours, with women they liked and were able to charge a small fortune.

many of them on returning to their home countries opened their own salons and all have been enormously successful.

you can qualify quickly, and there’s a million ways to make it work.

No, you don't need to. There are a few career change academy's that train Financial Advisors and support you to start and grow a business (usually as a partner of that organisation). You wouldn't usually be an independent financial advisor to take this route. I think its a good second career, as you understand more about your clients when you have had a previous career, and not necessarily understanding personal finance as well. You can also make yourself a niche supporting people who work in your previous industry. Women are also in the minority as financial advisors, but more women want to work with a female. So there is lots of potential.

You wouldn't earn £50k from the outset, it could take 2-3 years to get there depending on how hard you want to work and some luck. You'll have a period earning very little and then erratic earnings. But if you can manage that with your husbands high earning job and are prepared to build the potential is much bigger.

And if you are self employed you are completely in control of your schedule. So up to you if you schedule in work meetings or putting the kids first. Obviously by prioritising family you could slow your business growth, but the option for flexibility is absolutely there.

Happy to chat more if you want to ask any questions about this industry, probably best to send a message as I don't want to put too much personal information on here!

@Careerhelppp I can relate, my situation is similar although I should probably start my own thread.

I am desperate to get back to work but it’s hard to find anything at the moment. Do you have any big companies based locally? That would cut the commute time and in my experience a bigger company can accommodate flexible working patterns better.