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?

Sorry I think I can get £2k back over the year. Cost to me is then £10k plus the £2k tax back.

Isn’t it just lovely to see yet another thread on the ‘mumsnetters without children’ forum hijacked by mumsnetters with children? Every. Bloody. Time.

It's essentially pointless having the board. A shame.

Absolutely.

My OP was really quite specifically about child-free people because I think staring down the barrel of a long working life does look different for parents and non-parents. And I was very specifically interested in the view of people without children. Hey ho.

This is not meant in a combative way but I am curious as to why mumsnet (a parenting site) feels like the place to post / seek converstion about the specific experiences of the childfree.
It must be something about the site that is not parenting-related - is it that it is mostly women, or something else?

You don't need your employer to keep your job open, you can get a different job when you want to return to work.

It's comments like this that annoy me.

So if we'd like a break from the workplace, we have to quit our job and find a new one? Not only would we spend the most part of that break job-hunting and interviewing for the next job, but we'd lose the protections that apply to employment of over 2 years. Just to get, say, 3 months off unpaid to do something we'd like to do.

But yeah, it's just us childless people being ~lazy~.

This has been asked and answered over and over again - it's because it's the biggest forum in the UK for women. MN is a parenting site but many, many of its boards have absolutely nothing to do with parenting and you don't have to be a parent to post here.

Exactly.

It must be something…not parenting-related

Hmmm, let me think. Could it possibly be that this is one of the very few female-dominated discussion sites? Could it be that the vast majority of the site has nothing to do with parenting and the site has evolved far beyond its original inception? Could it be the diverse range of topics? Or is it a deep-seated psychological need of the childfree to discuss their issues among a group of women they secretly wish to join?

And the fact that maternity leave is very hard work does not detract from the fact that they are getting paid time away from the work place for something they are doing for themselves, for their own personal satisfaction and fulfilment. But those without children don’t get paid time away from work for things that may be equally important to them.

It's unreal that this has to be said somewhere on this site every damn week.

It is, isn’t it? If I could be arsed, I’d advance search the poster and see just how many of her posts are parenting related, but I couldn’t be arsed, tbh.

Not sure why you're giving us chapter and verse on your childcare costs? Your choice to have kids. Your choice to post on the CHILD FREE board.

@toadinthebucket I suppose the whole premise of the thread was comparing childfree vs parents (who take leave).
My point is you don't have to be a parent to take unpaid leave from work (I was dismissed from my long-held job when I applied for leave so it was unpaid and I had no job to return to).
But you do have to be prepared to take risks, make sacrifices, and steer your life in the direction you want to take as much as possible.
This is universal.

You would be shocked to hear how many new mothers are dismissed from their jobs while pregnant or on maternity leave. I wasn't aware of the issue when I was child-free until it happened to me, just before I became non-child-free. (Still the same person btw)

exactly!

Incorrect. The whole premise of the thread was to get the experiences of child-free people and how they feel about a long working life with no breaks. Fuck all to do with parents.

@Sweetenuf2

Adopters do get adoption leave which is the equivalent to maternity. If their employer has an enhanced maternity package they are entitled to the same.
I had 13 months off - 6 months fully pay, 3 months half pay, 3 months unpaid and a month accrued leave

Childfree person here 🙋🏻‍♀️

I didn’t realise this thread was still going on 😃since I last posted I have now planned a trip for 3 weeks.

I’ll be travelling and seeing old friends but also planning what I want to do in the long term to get a proper break from work and how to achieve it.

I’ve been applying for some arts grant funding which would buy me about 3 months off if successfully.

@Ted27

Yes, I’ve already been informed that I’d been given incorrect information about that! 😄 definitely happy to hear I was wrong about that.

Good luck with the application, sounds great.

Thank you so much @betterangels they have various application windows throughout the year so I’ll just keep applying until I get a yes lol 😄

@SorryAswad

I eventually went on to adopt a child but at 38/39 felt the same.
I had the opportunity to take redundancy. I had temp jobs for 6 months, then went on a 5 month overland trip down east and southern Africa. I then went back to uni full time to do an MA. I had a lodger to help with bills and a part time job.

After all that I went back into a completely different area of work and had the best job I ever had for 3 years. I then decided to adopt and went back into the civil service.
At 55 I again felt the prospect of doing the same thing for another 10 years soul destroying. As my son was now in his teens I felt I could plan for longer term changes for me.
Last year I took another redundancy and left to become a foster carer. I'm 59 and this will do me for the next 6 years until I cam retire properly.
I think the prospect of doing the essentially the same thing in the same environment is quite soul destroying. So for me the answer was to make really big, drastic changes. If you have no dependents it's much easier to take a gamble.

My dream was to travel across Africa- so I did it. It lead to a lot of other changes in my life which led me eventually to my son to where I am now. A world away from the civil service.

My question to you is what would you really like to do if you had a year off. And how could you make it happen

Yes! That's a good strategy 😊

Why do you keep bringing this back round to mothers v child free? It's not a competition.