How are you coping with a long working life with no parental leave breaks?

[SorryAswad]

I've been working since I was 25.
I'm now 40.
Retirement age is likely to be at least 70 by the time I get there.
So I'm looking at another 30 years of work.

I won't have children. So, aside from annual leave allowance and unless I take unpaid sabbatical, the coming 30 years is just a long old unbroken stretch of sameness.

While parental leave is very hard work, it's still a fracture and change in that monotony of a long working life. Without the prospect of children, and so without the prospect of that change, working life feels long and overwhelming.

I know I could change jobs but that's not my point. I quite like my job. Even if I did change jobs, the fundamental is still the same - 9 to 5, week after week, month after month for the next thirty years with nothing different, no temporary change, on the horizon.

I wonder how others feel about this and cope with it?

My workplace stopped offering sabbaticals a few years. You can ask for unpaid leave or flexible or part-time working but I've never known anyone be granted those things "just because".

That's rough and it sounds like your employer is not very employee focused. You may need to make some hard decisions to save your sanity.

Edit: wait, what's the difference between a sabbatical and unpaid leave? Can't you just take unpaid leave?

I will have a pension, but potentially not enough. Stbxh and I were planning to pool our pensions, but he upped and left so that plan went to shit!

Save up until you have £184 a week to live off, take a 39 week sabbatical.

Argh.

But surely you're entitled to a share of his pension, in the divorce settlement?

Where I work, a sabbatical means doing something work-related with a degree of accountability afterwards. This might meaning doing some training, or traveling in another country but doing some network-building while you're at it. The idea is that you come back from sabbatical having done something that enhances your profile or ability.

But unpaid leave means just buggering off for a period with no expectations, and no accountability. I've only ever known one person be granted unpaid leave and that was because of a very messy situation where unpaid leave was the easiest option all round.

This. I've been working since 16, in retail, factory work, minimum wage jobs. Wish I'd stayed at college & gone to Uni to give myself a better future. I'm almost 59, worn out, but still got 8 years to go until retirement. I've only got my state pension, I wish I could get it at 60!

Hilarious that anyone thinks uni and a professional job would be an easier ride than factory work. You don't need any skills for a minimum wage job at 16 and that's why it's low paid.

Fancy asking the NHS Dr's how easy it was not to have started work until 23?

Why is it always a race to the bottom - I worked from 12 and had to pay my own way etc etc

The OP asked one question and gets slagged off for not working until 25 when she was likely studying

I know what you mean OP and I often think this about my DH and am encouraging him to take a sabbatical at some point as I do worry about burn out.

I’ve had 2 x 12 month mat leaves and periods where I’ve reduced my hours to look after kids or also taken quite long gaps between roles over the years. And whilst looking after kids is hardly a holiday, it has broken up the monotony of working.

In Australia, if you've done a job full time for 10 years, you get a special 3 month leave allowance. Paid. (although I think it might be 9 weeks plus the usual leave allowance, can't quite remember the details.)

It's a fab idea.

It is obvious why OP started work at 25 but she is making it a competition by wanting a break like maternity leave or parental leave. As someone childfree her argument is that she is going to be working longer than people with children. I started proper, full time work at 21, didn’t go travelling and even with 9 months of maternity leave, I’ll have worked longer than her because she didn’t need to start at 21 and had the option to start at 25. OP has 15 years of work behind her, I have 13 (12 if you take out maternity leave) but I’m younger so I’ve got another 6 years of working after she retires. I won’t be having another maternity leave, although I obviously can’t plan if I will not be working due to redundancies or illness. So on balance, I’ll still come out at working 3 years more.

OP, people can get a break from work and reassess their priorities - some are good breaks and some are bad breaks. Some opportunities to reassess your work are planned with time to save and some are sprung on you and you go with it, whether you have the savings to do so or not. People can save up and take a sabbatical or take voluntary redundancy from a job they’ve outgrown, travel and reassess. People can also become very ill, have a heart attack or cancer and need reassess (some people also can’t afford to reassess after this). Presumably you aren’t envious of people having heart attacks and cancer and the chance they have to reassess their life? Some people find maternity leave a great experience, although still not really a break. I personally found maternity leave to be horrible, I was desperate to get back to work to a job I didn’t even like. Yet, here you are OP saying you like your job and wouldn’t want to go back after a sabbatical. So to me, the only real option is for you to progress up the career ladder, put as much into your pension as you can, look at other ways you can grow your wealth and retire early because it’s actually that you are fed up of work. If you can’t do these things, then unfortunately you aren’t alone as that it the situation of most of the working population, parents or childfree.

I cope by redirecting the money that children would cost me into investments that will allow me to retire quite early.

While not everyone will be in a position to do this, I think using unpaid leave if your company allows it is the way to go here, OP.

I’m lucky that my employer is very flexible and extends non-statutory entitlement to parents and non-parents alike.

(And I know I’ll get the “I can’t afford to take unpaid leave so that’s not a solution” comments, but surely if you can’t afford to take unpaid leave, you wouldn’t have been in the position to take extended maternity leave or to take parental leave either so it’s much of a muchness).

I'm not suggesting "Uni & a professional job" are easier than a factory job- I'm just commenting on my experience. And that I've worked longer than the OP, for a poorer wage. It wears you out. And no, it's not a race to the bottom, I'm not looking for sympathy, or "slagging off" the OP. Some Uni leavers might do well to work in a service industry and learn how to interact with the public however! I had a student Saturday girl working with me and she struggled to answer the phone and speak to customers. So in some cases they are cosetted and not prepared for the real world.

Save up. Take a sabbatical

Simples

It's no fun being on mat leave. Going to work is easier

@WhereIsMyLight You have misinterpreted me. I'm not remotely making it a competition between people with and without children.

I really do appreciate everyone's comments here - some brilliant things to think about around breaks, early retirements, hobbies etc. Thank you!

You could always do what I did OP. I had a work related mental health crisis and was sectioned. I got to have a break from work and really reassess everything. Not sure I'd recommend it though...

Or you could ask older men how they coped? They historically didn't get any significant parental leave.

If your place of work doesn't offer sabbaticals, then find a job that does?

Some people are being very aggy about what OP meant about mat leave - for what it's worth OP I don't think you meant it as any kind of attack on parents. I LOVED being on mat leave, and now that I'm pregnant again I'm already on the countdown and can't wait to have another break from work.

Being on mat leave can be hideous at times, unrelenting, miserable, isolating, but it's also a huge change of pace and of mindset and a different kind of 'grind'. What's that saying - a change is as good as a rest? That was how mat leave felt to me, and I'm delighted to (all being well) be having another one coming up. In fact when I'm done having kids I think I'll feel the same as you, with a long bleak stretch of work ahead of me until a probably too-late-to-actually-enjoy-it retirement.

So sorry this doesn't answer your actual question OP, but I just thought people were being a bit unfair in their responses.

Sorry OP you have this the wrong way around. People with children are forced to work full time without breaks because the costs of children are so high (including funding mat leave with savings because SMP doesn't come near to covering the mortgage or the rent). If you have one child and are a single parent, you have to earn 193k more per child than the people who don't have children.
This means that if you are on say 50k a year you have around 4 years off to play with over your working life than a person with one child, or around 8 years relative to a person with two children.

I would definitely not be working the way I do now if I did not have two children to support.

If job security is important to you, you can arrange that time off by working part time in a permanent job or finding work which accommodates requests for sabbaticals etc. If it is not, you can just resign and rejoin the work force in future. but 193k that you have that we don't is not to be sneezed at

you can always quit..just save up and go travelling for 6 months

I did that when i was 30

I had to save up to pay for the mat leave (cos statutory pay is shite)

Yeah, I still think you should accept that you may need to take unpaid leave of some kind if you are determined to be in this job for the long haul. Maybe it's preferable that you don't have to spend the time doing something career-focused or enriching.

You can present this in a positive way to HR and superiors. Either "I think that I would benefit from a break because I want to continue delivering excellent results but need some time to decompress" or, "I know sabbaticals are no longer allowed, but I am craving a new challenge that will contribute to my career and so I want a period of unpaid leave that will enable me to do X thing which will enhance my skills."

They do, statutory adoption leave is almost exactly the same!

Yeah i will tell my child free friend who works for minimum wage that. And that she can apply for sabbatical benefit ................oh wait

I had 3 months off in my mid 20s. About 8 months out after my father died. And I'm just back in work after 16 months out following redundancy. I think that's all very different from taking maternity leave where you have the responsibility for a mini human, no sleep, etc.

A lot depends on your financial situation - I loved not working, but it was not financially stable for many more months. Not working when you have money is great. Not working where you have to count all the pennies and go to job interviews where you don't get a job offer - rather less great.

I'm 39 so practically the same age as you, have no kids and living my best single life. I don't really think about the next 30 years, I find if you continually think about it, then it'll depress you. I just take each year as it comes, maybe do some job changes (change is as good as a rest sometimes). 10 years ago I was working in the bottom grade of the civil service, now I'm doing caseworking two grades later, so sometimes you just have to wait and see what life can throw at you.

Quite a few childfree people in my workplace have made plans to go more and more part-time in the 20 years approaching retirement. There's no need to worry about supporting anyone else financially so they can concentrate on making their work pattern suit themselves better.

So, maybe working a 9 day fortnight aged 45, rising to 4 days a week aged 50, with the goal of 3 days by 60.

I know one of my colleagues feels that the 3 day weekend every 2 weeks has really benefitted her mental wellbeing and is well worth the relatively small drop in pay.

It might be worth seeing if this sort of planning might be something that would work for you if your employer could accommodate (or if not, consider a move to an employer who would).

You've only been working for 15 years! I've been working for 36 and have a 16 year old. I'm a lone parent and I've never taken parental leave in my life, it's unpaid btw. Took 4 months maternity as I was self employed. Come back in 20 years and tell me your tired OP.