How do people with office jobs make pick up time?

[Duv]

I live in London about an hour from my office in central London, and have my 1 yr old in a nursery that operates 8am-6pm. This just about works for us as I WFH a fair bit and have some my office core hours are 10-4.

But we are planning on moving further out, outside London and commuting about 1.5hrs. Looking a nurseries and childminders in the local area of the new town almost none are open beyond 5.30, and 5 seems to be the norm, with some only open till 4! I appreciate 1.5hrs is a longer commute than most, but even if I had my existing commute time (and I think 1hr is pretty normal for a central London job) I have no idea how anyone is managing to pick up their child before 5.30? Aren't typically working hours 9-5.30? How are you guys doing it?

I work 8-4 so pick up at 4/4:45 and DH doesn’t start until 9:30 so he drops off late.

The reality is you can’t move 1.5 hours out of London with 2 FT working parents and use standard nurseries as childcare.

An understanding and patient employer and clients who understood I'd have to leave "early" for a 90 minute commute to get back for 5pm. Single parent and no family around who could support. I promised my employer it was only until the twins started school - the before/after school childminder works until 6pm. I made time up in the evenings and weekend. Employer was fine as he knew I wasn't one of those parents who took the piss and at least I was using paid childcare (unlike those that don't bother at all and expected to be able to start/finish as they pleased for the school run to be able to avoid paying childcare costs)

I used to stagger hours with DP - so he would go into work early and I would drop DC. Then he would leave early to pick DC up and I would work late.

Then I changed working pattern to work 4 days over 5 to work shorter days to be able to do most drop offs and pick ups.

At one point paid an after school nanny to pick up twice a week from after school club (5.30 close) for a couple of hours.

I don’t think it’s normal to close at 5 or earlier unless it’s a preschool nursery, and usually childminders are more flexible as well. We live in a small market town in the SE, and DS’s nursery did 8-6, and the place he goes to for afterschool club, the nursery does 7.30-6. Even so, pre Covid WHF we could only manage it with DH dropping off and me collecting (DH started and finished an hour later than me). Neither of us could have managed to do both and a full day in the office plus a commute.

The think you need to think about if moving further out is limited routes home. I'm in zone 6 and can get home all sorts of ways. If you rely on a single Trainline and it goes down you are stuffed!

I honestly don’t know, OP! Wish I had an easy answer.

We don’t have office jobs but are both based in hospitals so out of hours, minimal flexibility, no WFH. We ended up leaving London and moved to a different city as we realised the only way to make things work would have required us to afford to live in zone 1. And we couldn’t! We looked to move further out for cheaper housing and childcare, but the commute would have meant leaving the kids in a box outside nursery at 7am.

Currently able to afford to live much closer to work, but still couldn’t afford a nanny and so the juggle can be very difficult.

Because most people don't do both the nursery pickup and a 1.5hr commute at the end of your working day.

This is a very real problem - childcare actually closes quite early (I’m not failing to recognise the hard work of early years practitioners on an inadequate wage here). There’s also scarcity of childcare for those who work outside conventional hours, or shift work.
The most common solution I have seen amongst my friends and colleagues is that one parent -usually the mother - compromises their career.
This is one reason why flexible, working from home jobs are really valuable for mothers (despite the vitriol directed to many saying this on a thread the other day about getting people back to the office).

I have a ten/fifteen minute commute: but if a meeting runs over, by the time I walk to my car park and drive home in rush-hour traffic, I’m not going to make 5.30 pick up. This is a big reason I can’t apply for senior roles, because of the requirement for this on-site visibility and presence across the whole day.

Adequate structures and funding for childcare in this country are not a priority for policy makers - thus women’s careers and economic productivity is significantly impacted.

Not having both parents do a 1.5 hour commute. In your case, staggering WFH days so you aren’t both that far away might work.

I’m older now but I work a not very well paid job that is 100% flexible. As long as I get the hours in, they don’t care if I take a couple of hours in the afternoon to go out / start late etc.

We have a lot of employees who do it as the second job in the family so they can manage the childcare while their partner has a ‘big job’ (not all women either). It’s not too hard to scale it back up to a much better paid job elsewhere when the flexibility isn’t needed any more.

I think you are either going to need a nanny or someone to do drop offs and pick ups and childcare for an hour or two before and after nursery if you want to move that far.

You also need to think ahead to when your child is in school, with x13 weeks off a year, plus inset days, sick days, all sorts of events such as sports day, parents evening, maths morning, nativity etc etc. SO many parents now have a flexible schedule that doesn’t look like 9-5.30/ 8.30-5 with a commute each way, x5 days a week, as they have to be back often for pickup at 3.15, or at the latest by 5.30 / 6 for childminder or afterschool club. Or for holiday clubs that often finish by 4!

Don’t leave London yet! Pre pandemic I had a 45 min door to door commute from Zone 3 (including walking time) and it was just about do-able when I worked 5 days a week in the office and my DH had a flexible job.

But it was still sometimes stressful getting in for 9am meetings or sitting in a client meeting at 4.50pm in central London location frantically doing “commute time” maths. Many a frantic taxi ride from the tube to the nursery to make 6pm pick up.

If you can both be flexible and make your WFH days work between you then 90 min commute should be ok as long as you know that the days your DH is WFH he has the drop off and pick up covered (and vice versa)

I would not move out that far.

It's going to be incredibly difficult even when all your transport works perfectly.

Or you need a nanny or an au pair.

Going back 20 years when we were in this position, with no family to help with drop off/pick up, DH working overseas a lot flexible working/WFH weren't a thing at all, I had to give up my job. I continued working freelance when I could fit it in, but my full time job with commute just didn't fit in with nursery/childminder hours at the time.
Happy to say I don't regret it, managed to keep up professionally, and as soon as possible, went back to working PT then FT, in jobs I've loved.

I had live in childcare. Those were the days when you still had au pairs.

Just to clarify. It is to wrap around nursery care and do the pick up/drop offs until one parent got home.

We are S London but my commute is 1hr 15 and DH’s is much longer so we have to alternate office days. I always do the school drop off before going to the office (while DH does the nursery drop) and we have a childminder. Life with a nanny would be much easier (and more expensive!).

60min commute to city office jobs is quite normal.
Even a 30min train journey, 10min walk at either end and the add a bit of time waiting for the train. Or the train getting you into the city 20mins before you need it too, ie being in the city at 8.30 + 10min walk for a 9am start.

I think for most people it’s a combination of wfh, splitting the work day so one of you goes in early and one works late, and using alternative childcare such as nanny, grandparents etc

I think the number of families where both parents work a 1.5 hour commute away and don’t have a nanny or grandparents to pick up the slack is very low. Because it’s so hard!

My friend would be out of the house around 5.30am to start work at 7am and so then be back by 5pm ish to pick up kids from nursery. Husband did the morning drop off with similar commute and then worked later and got home around 7ish. Honestly she was completely exhausted and was close to burn out. Covid and wfh saved her actually and now she does hybrid which has hugely improved quality of life for everyone. And they did have helpful grandparents for emergencies!

DH wfh most of the time, and I'm about 60/40 office to home - both have c1hr 20 - 1hr 30 commute. We make sure to coordinate our wfh/office days so we're not both in the office on the same day if possible - on the days we have to then DH goes in later and does drop off and I leave earlier and do pick up. Nursery is open until 6:30, though, so we have a bit more time. We're lucky in that both our jobs are flexible enough to make it work.

For a those saying a 1.5 hour commute is not reasonable it's exactly the length of commute the job centre consider reasonable and will expect you to apply for jobs up to 90 minutes away even if its minimum wage as part of your job seekers contract. My DS has just been put in this situation.

However to answer your question OP it will be tough to do that with childcare, so unless you can employ a flexible childminder or nanny I would stay within a 1hour commute and as others have said share drop off, pick ups and WFH days with your partner.
A lot of people do rely on family on an emergency and it's much harder if you havent got that.

Ditto. Sometimes feels like it's not worth working (and we are both high earners) but I can't WFH at all, can't leave work before 6pm on a good day and no family nearby so there is literally no other option.

My children are adults now but for years I had this issue! My commute from home to my London office was 1.5 hours and I had various arrangements over the years.

I was lucky that I was able to work part time. Initially I left at the crack of dawn and DH did the drop off allowing me to leave early enough to pick up.

With two pre-school children I had a nanny (this was the best and easiest arrangement but the most expensive).

In the early school years I had a 'before and after' school nanny for some of the time, and this transitioned to another parent bringing my DS back and staying with him and her DS, until I returned. (I paid her). DD made her own way back.

From DS being in Year 3 I had no childcare - only school, and when DS was in Year 5, DH and I split up so it was totally up to me to drop off and pick up.

I spread my part time 3 days a week work over 4 or 5 days so I arrived late and left early.

This was all pre-working from home. It would have been far easier to navigate these days!

Train delays always produced a bit of stress but somehow things worked out in the end.

In our case DH did the morning drop offs and I started work early, at 6:30am some days and did the afternoon pick ups.

Later on they went to a private school that did wrap around care, though pricey.

I am office based and commute is 60 minutes min. 90 on a bad day.
dh wfh and deals with pickup and drop off 3 days a week and I have work life balance which means I work early and late on those 3 days. It gives me Monday and Friday where I only work 10-2 to allow me to do school run and pick up. If dh didn’t wfh I couldn’t do it.

We used to WFH and do pick up, but I found it too stressful to have a kid at home during my last hour of work so I quit. Now a SAHM doing some copywriting freelance and choosing my own hours. Regular jobs are not made for parents of young children.

DH and I are in outer London - my commute is 60mins, his is 75mins. We have organised our week so one of us is always WFH. His office days are Tues / Weds, mine are Mon / Thurs and then we decide on Fri depending on work schedule / meeting friends / other commitments. Then whoever is WFH is responsible for drop off and pick up. It felt relentless when we first started doing it but actually we very quickly got into a routine. Plus it took the pressure off if there were issues on the trains or whatever getting home.