What is your job/career? And how many hours do you do a week?

[lunavix]

And did you start off with those hours or full time and dropped down post-kids?

Mantech. I work shifts and can do between 30 and 50 hours a week but have 18 days off every 8 weeks.

who wants to "soar to the top" though. way too much stress.

in answer to op, marketing/it, part time and I did drop my hours after having kids. It does help if you run your own company though. mind you, maternity leave didn't happen so maybe it's swings and roundabouts.

secondary teacher, p/t 3 days since DTs, now in teacher training, quite nice really

swanny try here

Xenia - I get where you're coming from - I think. I'm a soaring to the top kind of person myself, can't help myself loving work, being ambitious and having a career plan. But I was only chatting to a good friend today who's been a SAHM for 7 years, and my dp's been a SAHM for 4 years now, and neither of them have any real 'ambition' - no intention or desire to soar to the top, so both will be happy in the next year or two to get part-time jobs or re-train in something they enjoy, but will never earn huge amounts of money or probably work full-time. She said in a very matter of fact way that she (and dp) will never be like me and I'll never be like them. I started out being a bit offended but I know what she means.

Honestly, I find this at times frustrating, especially with dp, who went to Cambridge, has a brain the size of a planet, but not a single piece of ambition in her body.

It's tricky to understand and then be happy with other people's life choices that are different to yours - for you (and me), working full-time means something to us and therefore hopefully to our children - they'll be proud of us in a different way to the parents/carers who stay at home looking after them.

Flipping heck - I'm trying to think of how to word this post in a less bizarre way - but I know what I mean!

and I'm about to take over running the teacher training course xenia, lest you think me incapable of soaring in 3 days a week

Senora - I do..! I actually love the stress... for all my grumbling I love trying to balance work and home, having too much to think about in both areas of my life and having it all jumbled up from time to time. It's just who I am.

Xenia - your kids must be sooo glad you're out of the house all day. Sorry but how are you failing your children by working part-time? You do talk bollocks.

I worked full-time - clerical within the CJS before I had the boys.

Went down to half-time when I returned after my first, and the woman who covered my maternity leave took over the other half of my job. Worked well.

Fast-forward 12 years and two more children, I now work 25 hrs pw, admin role, still within the CJS. The role was advertised as 25 hrs pw when I applied for it.

And of course ds's are quite clear on who's the real boss - they'll always tell you it's dp...

dotty - nope, you're not convincing me!

but it's not that I don't have ambition. I do, but it's not really work related iyswim.

Doctor, 48ish hours per week average but some weeks more than that because of my shift pattern.

I think Dottydot talks a lot more sense that Xenia .

I'm a CM and do 50 hours not including prep and paperwork. Kids grown up.

For me it's all about balance. Working full time would not give me that - I'd miss out on so much of the children and I'd be utterly stressed out trying to fit 1001 things into the small amount of time I wasn't at work. There's no way on this earth I'd want to be putting my kids in breakfast and after school club or any of that malarky. God, it fills me with horror to think of 5 and 6 year olds staying at school till 6pm. Then I've got friends who have to split holidays with partners to cover school hols - when do they get time together? No, sounds like a pile of crap to me.

than Xenia, not that Xenia.

And, it makes me absolutely PMSL that you think by working full time you are doing your kids some sort of favour!

Teacher, f/t, so leave house about 6.45 & back about 5. Roughly another 5 hours work at home.

Pre-children I worked full time as a staff nurse, hospital based doing shifts. Some weeks, if on nights say, I would do 7 x 11 hour shifts straight off, but then have the whole following week off. I did 150 hours per month.

Stopped completely when I had dd, did a bit of voluntary work in her old pre-school when she went to school ft. Then had ds and stopped completely again.

Now with both at school ft I work 3 school days a week. Stops me getting bored, gives me something else to think about. But the 2 days I don't work mean I can get chores done so the weekend is free for fun.

actually I think I work too much (currently about 20 hrs, 25 hrs before ds2 was born)

maybe I have a better balance than I thought I did.

...have friends who do p/t & mostly they seem to do 90% of the job for 80% of the money - not for me!

(Suspect Xenia probably IS doing her kids a favour by leaving their day to day care to someone less robustly bonkers. But then I also suspect she's a trolly troll from Trollsville).

Not me - I work for myself so get paid a lot more per hour than the people doing my job in the office. HA!

Is Xenia still there? someone wants your advice about working on a parenting thread (I think it's that) from a few days ago.

what do the untrolly trolls do all day in trollsville do you think?

I used to work in Export Sales, then moved Marketing as I found dealing with stroppy continentals too stressful.

I took voluntary redundancy from my job when on Mat leave and then moved anyway so eitehr way would have had to give up that particular job.

I have been working P/T since DS was 2 (just over a year now), I work 20 hour a week, 8.30-12.30. I have crossed the tracks to work in a Purchasing role but basically the same kind of office based admin job with frills on.

This suits us well at the moment because I spend all afternoon with DS, and have time to get stuff done at home.

When he goes to school I will be able to change my hours to fit round school pick up / drop off.

I don;t consider the work I have done as a "career" - that would suggest some kind of forethought which there wasn;t, really!

If stay at home mothers can say it's best for children to stay home why on earth can't full time working mothers put the case for it benefiting your children if you work? Surely that's only fair and neither position is astonishing.

Dottyd probably has it right - some parents have no ambition and want to stay home and that feels right for them and others reallyought not to be in the home and hate it. Those who hate it shouldn't stay home for the children. Get back to work. If you love it then stay at home. if you'd only be working on the Tesco checkout still work on the Tesco checkout if you hate it at home and no one will be happy if you're miserable.

I suppose you need to work out the kind of person you are. I want to be the best person in the UK at what I do, always have and I love my work. Not everyone is like that and it's a fairly gender neutral issue too - plenty of unambitious men around whose principla life aim is as much time on the X box or Nintendo wii and football as their lives will let them.

1d, I'll try to find that one being Xenia fount of all knowledge (clever working mothers are better at their children than stay at home mothers too - we really do have it all... he he)