At what point in your road to having DC did you realise that forging a good career and getting to see your DC as much as you want are pretty much incompatible?

[Freddysteddy]

I think I realised this before I got pregnant, but not long before - so post-taking-out-a-big-mortgage.

My friend has just worked this out this month having gone back to work f/t with a 6 mo baby in nursery.

Some people see it coming for years, I guess and maybe don't bother trying to get a career?

Just wondered where you stand on this whole thing.

To be perfectly frank I don't want to spend all my time with my children. I have maintained my position as faculty head through two maternity leaves and four years of parenthood.
Granted, teaching can be quite flexible as I can finish early some days and I do have the holidays. I will be doing more hours while training for my new career but they are happy, I am happy, and there is more than one way of being an effective mother.

You can have a career and see your children but not if deep down you want to see them all of the time.

i would be more than happy to go back pt since being made redundant 3 times but what i don't understand is this
i worked in an industry mainly populated by women (fashion) and even though loads have kids there is still no part time work available unless you were in a job already and get your request granted when you come back from ml. why is this? surely in a recession this would make more financial sense as well?
secondly why are most part time jobs SO badly paid?
i have a nasty feeling that at least for a while i will be working (when i finally get a job) to pay for nursery and have money going through my bank account with nothing left to show at the end. i have debts and to have a cashflow is important if you need to shift to things like 0% credit cards and stuff.
plus there is a big difference between job and career......

When I tried to return to work after maternity leave and realised just how long the hours were and just how inflexible my employers were going to be.

Now I am self employed, in the same sort of field, doing interesting work but nothing like the pay / visibility / career progression than if I'd stayed in a employed position. Now many of my colleagues are becoming managers and I can't ever imagine that happening for me now. On the plus side, I can work from home, finish by 3.30 most days and am around for the DDs, so I am mostly happy with the compromise, but it's still a bloody big compromise!

Can I just add that I always thought it would get less complicated as they got older, but am finding the reverse to be the case. Many more clubs and activities clouding the work-life balance now!

That is my worry Katisha. Nursery is so straightforward. School seems to require much more juggling!

In answer to the original post I think I have always thought full-time child rearing is a job in itself (if a woman does not have any help even more so).

I know some people say if the employer is flexible it is possible to do both and I am sure it is, but it must be bloody hard work and completely exhausting. I am still waiting to have my first child (one day until induction) and can't see me going back to work in a rush.

Scottishmummy - I agree with you about teaching children to be hard-working and achieving etc. However, I think parents need to look at the child in front of them. I would never have been a big career person no matter how much my parents imbued in me the values of financial independence etc.

I take my sense of achievement from my hobbies (not playing tennis all day I would like to point out). To me achievement isn't only about the ability to earn - it can mean being successful in playing a musical instrument, teaching myself new things, doing well at a sport and hopefully being a bloody good parent.

I'm just beginning to feel that career and children may be incompatible, after the birth of my second child.

I feel like this because I can't for the life of me work out how I'm going to cope with school hours and school holidays. Nursery is easy. But school holidays? HOW?

Holiday club and annual leave, CK.

To add to MrsS' list, aupair and for some lucky parents, grandparents.

Thanks MrsS & Blueshoes. Do you know, do childminders do school holiday care as well as pick ups and drop offs? (No grandparents available here, sadly)

Some do, certainly, CK. You can sometimes get a "holiday au pair" for the summer holidays as well.

Now ours are older they go and stay with their grandparents for about a week in the school holidays.

Thanks MrsS. Time for me to phone childminders, methinks (DS now 3.3, at nursery but school will be here before we know it...)

chipmunk: "... there is still no part time work available unless you were in a job already and get your request granted when you come back from ml. why is this? surely in a recession this would make more financial sense as well?
secondly why are most part time jobs SO badly paid? ..."

chipmunk, I feel your pain. Have you thought of taking a job ft, and then later applying for flexible working once you have proven your worth? Also, if you can work for a big company, keep scouring the internal vacancies for a (related) flex position.

You are right that it is easier to get a better-paying pt job through internal request or transfer. Pt jobs that are advertised externally either pay peanuts or are unskilled, usually both.

You might need to take the hit first either on hours or pay, but make sure you join a company that is amenable to flex working requests or is big enough to allow you to move sideways to flex positions in time.

Although I know nothing of the fashion industry, I would think of re-tooling/moving out of an industry that generally exploits an ever eager mass of young single women that provide cheap and ready work fodder. I could be completely wrong, of course. But if I am right, then you cannot compete against something like that.

foxinsocks - morningpaper's comment made sense to me. I work part time- my company is very understanding of my need to spend quality time with my daughter during her formative years. They have finally sorted me out with the right sort/number of clients to keep me busy enough. I give back by picking work up at home once DD has gone to bed.

I have 2 challenges - from having looked at the job market about a year ago when things weren't great on my return to work, I discovered that I am completely unemployable elsewhere within my industry because of my level and my need to work part time at the moment.

I have also discovered as far as my career goes with my current company, that I am unlikely to get promoted to the next level until I can commit to more than 3 days in the office, which won't be feasible until my daughter is at school (and I am hoping that at some point before then I will have another which scuppers that plan!). We are working to see if there's another way I can achieve the role, but to be honest, it's far more important that I spend time with my daughter and there are still some areas I can try to progress in so that I'm ready for promotion when I'm able to take it.

What is difficult with having children is watching everyone else progress around you, especially in a young industry like mine, but I just try to remind myself that my life is so much richer than many of my colleagues in many ways (how smug does that sound?!!).

I had no idea until I tried it with DD1. I hated leaving her in f/t nursery, she hated it too although had been fine when my mum looked after her. I decided something had to give so I became a SAHM who occasionally works and studies round DH. I see f/t pareting as my job for now, paid work on top is not an option, I have enough to do and am fullfilled at home.

I agree with Katisha and others who have posted about combining wotk with childcare being easier in the early years than it is when they get to school.

It's a popular misconception that it gets easier when they get to school.

But of course even the school years can be covered. We've muddled through with the help of:

1. Nursery
2. Nanny
3. Aupairs
4. Pre-school care
5. Grandparents
6. Juggling leave

I have just gone back to work after second maternity and am considering handing in notice. I think it is really personal and what suits you. Some people don't want to be at home with their kids all the time, and if so flexible working must be available. However I work in public sector - teaching - in many ways the best industry for juggling both but even then as long as I am part time, keen to leave in good time at the end of the day etc. I can not progress in my career and am stagnant. My (female !!) headteacher has made it very clear that she doesn't like p/t staff and stood up in front of a whole school staff meeting and said that we were loosing money for 4 reasons - one was that so many staff were going on maternity leave!
I think you have to love what you do to juggle both sucessfully and have to grow a thick skin

It was when DS started school as opposed to nursery. I decided to quit and settle him in for the first term and then look for something else. Turns out we are all much happier with me not working (DS in particular), so we are going to go with that.

I think it doesn't have to be an all or nothing situation. I have worked full time/part time/from home/night shifts over the years, depending on what suited you can do anything you want really, but you have to really want it.

The poster who said it gets harder as they get older hit the nail on the head for me.
When I was pg I was absoluterly certain I would go back to work ft.
As it happened we moved immediately after they were born and so I gave up my old job. Once we'd setteld into our new home a pt job almost fell into my lap and I discovered a wonderful tiny nursery on the same village where we live. Result.
Then they went to school and things changed overnight. I needed to be in court for nine, school not open till 8.30am. Trial sits until 4pm, school finishes at 3.30pm.
My husband works much longer hours than me and has a commute so he couldn't do the school runs. Then there was illness ( schools are much stricter than nurseries), half days, holidays.
If I had wanted to continue I would have got a nanny. But frineds nannies and au pairs kept coming and going and letting them down and I couldn't bear the thought of it.
That's the thing isn;'t it. If I had had to work or desperately wanted to continue I would have emplyed someone. And it would have been absolutely fine I'm sure. But I didn't. Hmmmm

And violet - Whilst I take your point that DH and I share should share responsibilities it didn't make any sense. There is no way his job could be part time and worse the hours are unpredicatble so he can never commit to things. Why did I give up rahter than him? Simple - he earns ten times what I do.

Going back to the OP and her question, I think there is a big difference between combining WORK and children and combining a CAREER and children.

Yes I do combine work and children - it is hard/restrictive but I do it because I want to and financially, I need to. As it is, I work for an understanding boss, my request for p/t working was agreed on return from my first maternity leave - so it is manageable and I have a reasonably senior and well-paid role.

However, I cannot see how I can combine a career and children - the next step for me would be a manager role and I am aware that that is just not going to happen when I can't be at work before 8.30 and I have to leave at 5 on the dot. So I have accepted that I will remain where I am for now - which suits me to be honest as I am not a particularly ambitious person anyway.

But, I think another poster hit the nail on the head when they said that one of the parents has to take a step back from their careers - it is impossible to combine working/children if both partners are working hard to acheive their career goals. In my case, DH earns 3 times what I do so I have had to accept my limitations as I need to do the bulk of the nursery drop-offs/pick-ups etc.

What is difficult is that we were brought up (well I was!) to believe that I could have it all - family and career. our mothers burnt their bras so that we could. But I don't belive that you can. And it does get harder as they get older; dd is 3 now and I find it much harder to leave her with someone else now than when she was 7 months

missjules - it is an interesting point.
I am bringing my daughter up to believe she can do whatever she wants, be whoever she wants to be. Sometimes I wonder if I'm selling her a pup.

I've found that taking time off has definately enabled me to reconsider where my career is going and what makes me happy. My priorities have completely changed and I am not as driven as before.

I realised it before I had children, seeing work colleagues desperately trying to find something to do with their kids for the school holidays; frantically having to cancel meetings to stay at home when their kids were ill. They managed to combine motherhood and work, but there were a lot of compromises. And I don't compromise easily. Also, their careers were shot because they weren't f/t.

I'm not saying that any of this is right, and the company I worked for was a rubbish company. But I swore then and there I wouldn't go through the same thing myself.

So I work evenings in a dead-end job to pay the bills - but at least my husband & I can cover all the childcare between us.

This was my solution as the lesser of all the other evils, and I appreciate it's not perfect.