How the fuck did people do this before the pandemic

[BluPeony]

Last year I had my first DC. I took my full year of maternity leave and added on a month of annual leave and I have enough left that I'm working 4 days/week until basically the end of the year.

There was a requirement for us to be in the office 1 day per week, now up to 2 days. It'll likely go up to 3 days by the end of the year. I don't know if they'll build up to full time because they're being very cagey and vague and actually we've recruited so many people that there aren't enough desks for everyone and before the pandemic the company was trialling loosening the office/WFH balance so that it didn't have to move into a larger office and pay more rent.

But anyway. My commute is 70-90 mins door to door. I go in on Mondays because it's a bit quieter on public transport and it's my partner's day off to look after the baby so I feel okay about being so far away.

I've been trying to decide which other day to go in and it's just shit no matter which way you look at it. I would have to drop my baby off at nursery when they open at 8am on the dot and I'll still be in the office after 9am - so I'm screwed if anyone puts in a 9am or early meeting. I'd have to leave work early to make sure I can pick him up when they close at 6 and I'd still be in deficit with my hours and would need to make the time up somewhere. My partner can't do the nursery runs because he has compressed his hours to allow him to be at home on Mondays and he doesn't have an option to WFH.

We're discussing one of us going part time, etc etc to try and make this work but it got me wondering how on earth people did this before/do this now if they can't work from home - do you just only see your baby at the weekend?? Do you work part time? Give up work? What about maternity pay if you want another baby?

I'm exhausted. I hate going in to sit at my desk on a Teams call with other people at their desks. I hate that I'm missing out on so much with my baby. I feel like I'm becoming a shittier mum with a short temper because of the stress and tiredness. I was just getting into the swing of things before I went back. I'm feeling very sorry for myself tonight and not looking forward to my commute tomorrow at all.

To those questioning commute length, I used to leave house at 0745, drop at 0800, catch a train at 0815 (nursery was on same road as station, had to pay £1k pa for station parking).

This would get to the London terminus at 0900 and then tube and a short walk to my office meant at my desk for 0930.

Days I was doing pick up - leave office at 1630, walk and tube to terminus, train home just before 1700, pick up car from station, drive to nursery, collect DC about 1735. if tubes were slow, a stopping train just after 1700 would mean pick up about 1750. Home 1740-1800.

Nursery was 0800-1800 (though they did have an early hour from 0700).

And I consider we had a fairly good commute for London - one train and one tube. Moving closer in would have made little difference, it might have trimmed 5-10 mins from the train (but I wouldn’t have got a seat, so that would have been worse).

And my office moved 3 times within zone 1 in the time that I worked there, luckily all roughly the same number of stops from my terminus.

I hope you still feel this way when your children are grown and you are considering retirement.

Covid didn’t make a difference to what happens here. I’m a teacher, so can’t WFH. Nursery opens at 7.30, though you have to pay extra if you want to use that first half hour.

Its possible to have a really flexible career with good work life balance.

I have climbed a long way up the career ladder while also working part time while the children were going and always doing school runs once they were at school.

So have I, but I think we need to face facts that we are the anomalies. I am 48, I have been a working parent for 20 years of those friends who had babies around the same time as me, I stuggle to think of one other for whom this is true.

With a suportive partner and family, good health ( both parents and children) and a shit ton of luck it's possible, but it isn't typical.

I've worked for the same employer for 20 years. We've always had flexi time - 148 hours to be worked every 4 weeks, within 7am-7pm, core hours 9.30-15:30. I did long days when dh could do pick up, shorter days when he couldn't. I also massively helped that I reported to a woman/mother of teens.

@Neurodiversitydoctor " I hope you still feel this way when your children are grown and you are considering retirement."

Definitely you live with the consequences of giving up a career at that point in your life but in my old age I'll be glad of my time with my kids. Swings and roundabouts.

@Bunbry I work in tech from home. I have childcare sorted but suspect I'd need that for hairdressing too - can't imagine trying to concentrate on relaxing a client and getting their hair right with a toddler running around their ankles.

Agree. There's a reason why there are seminars for Women In Science where very successful women describe how they got there while raising a family. It's not in reach of many, many women, and/or there were huge sacrifices along the way.

Actually 'while raising their family' is a misnomer for many because it order to success their children were looked after more by grandparents/nannies/boarding school. I say that w/o judgement, they did what was best for them, but that was the sacrifice.

I had a hairdresser who bought her child along when she did my hair at home. The child was in my son's class at school so they just ran amok around the house while I had my hair done. It was not a relaxing experience.

So I'd like to have another baby. We plan to start trying next summer, when baby will be 2.5 ish years old. He's currently 1.3.

My work have excellent maternity leave policies in place: full pay for 6 months, phased return formalised so that you work 80% for 100% pay for 3 months when you come back. I'd like to take full advantage of this for our second DC.

Plus our mortgage is due for renewal at the end of the year and will jump from 1.7% to 5% in all likelihood.

As others have picked up on, we live in the SE of England and my office is in London. DP is hospital based close to home thank goodness but is sometimes on call in a different hospital in the same trust which is a 20 minute drive away.

I think we will have to have a serious review at the end of the year and make some tough choices.

I'm well aware that if I get to retire money will be tight. Just like the millions of other people for whom a high paying career was never an option. Also my youngest is starting school in September so I haven't written myself off just yet.

Do look into a hospital nursery at your husband's work place, they often have longer hours and salary sacrifice.

My only option was to have a nanny, especially as XDH was of the “children are your job to sort” variety and never changed a nappy. Obviously this was an expensive option, but nursery or childminder was impossible. I had a job involving travel too. It was hard work and only viable because I was earning so well.

Have you thought of childminders they tend to have more flexibility on hours I start at 7 and work to 6.30 take the funding and we all work to the same standards as nursery and are inspected by the same inspectors.....I'm not working today my co minder is....we have better ratios than nursery so can give more individual attention

Yes, nursery is slap bang in the middle between home and train station - 10 mins walk to the nursery and a further 10 minutes to the train station.

On WFH days we get up at 6/7am and have an hour or 2 before nursery then I can get him by 5:15 and we have a bit of an evening together as well. Very different on offer days, obviously.

DS is 2 and I've been back at work almost a year. I'm part time - 4 days a week and DH is full time. Both of us have a career but DH is the higher earner and has more responsibilities than me. I've been doing my job for 5 years and have no intention to progress further in the short term. We're both in the office 2 days a week but the difference is it's 30 mins away, 45 in rush hour. Can you do shorter hours on your office days or reduce your hours by half a day or something so you don't have to make the time up on the other days? If you're concerned about having to do more than 2 days in the office can you get a flexible working request agreed to keep it at 2 days.

Oh yes we've been on their bloody waiting list since I was 16 weeks pregnant and they still don't have space for what we need - they've offered one day less than what we requested from January 2025. At this rate he will be starting school by the time they're ready for us!

It's an absolute joke.

My children are now ages 8-13. My elder two have ASD, all three have ADHD. I’m divorced and get zero help financially or otherwise from their father. Actually, he is the gift that keeps giving and I thank my lucky stars my career enabled me leaving him.

What I have learned is that for the childcare expense to be covered you either need to really lean into your career or totally lean out. Senior partner at big4 told me it’s go big or go home, but I don’t agree with that because of the negative connotations. It’s not a bad thing to step out of the workplace for a few years to focus on raising your children. It’s also not a bad thing to lean into your career if you have suitable childcare and you enjoy your work.

I was heavily pregnant with my first child when I realized my marriage was not solid and my husband was not the man I thought I had married. Delivering our first child was extremely tough. I was 3000 miles from my parents and sister. My brother was serving in Afghanistan and I was very worried about him. My ex husband was not the support I needed and would not spend money. Our household income was $1.5m (USD) the year my daughter was born. He went nuts because I wanted to use the local daycare, not the one by his office because the local daycare was $500 more per month. I had already compromised because I wanted a nanny (I found my unicorn - a norland nanny living in the US already a citizen so no visa issues). He laughed at me for ‘wanting’ a $75k nanny when I only earned $65k. Yet, I was lazy if I expected to stay home with my daughter. I worked for him for 6 months and ran back to working for someone else very quickly.

You can’t focus on work if you do not have excellent childcare you can trust implicitly. This is why childcare is inherently expensive. The hard part is figuring out what is best for your family and serves your children best. It will change as your children grow. Listen to your gut. It’s right.

Do not think that stepping away from work means you will never return. There is a path back and it’s through education and volunteering. What I have seen work well is women take extensive time out to raise their children and complete a bachelor and/or masters before returning to work once their children enter secondary school. Volunteer through being a governor for the local school, helping with special projects in the community and fundraising.

The other path back is to learn a trade or vocation and fit in your work around your children. As a nurse, do bank work on a very part time basis when you have cover. As a teacher, tutor 1-2 children. As a hairdresser or beautician, have 10 clients that you keep who are happy to be seen at your home after the children’s bedtime. These are all valid ways to keep your hand in so you have some experience when you want to go back to full time work.

Whatever you do, make sure you do what works for you and do not leave yourself vulnerable to your husband. My friends mother was left high and dry by her husband. She used to volunteer to write for the local paper and they provided a strong reference for her to be hired as an editor of a magazine. She later, after her children graduated university, started her own publication in the local area outside of her work as an editor, a glossy aspirational magazine. It was successful and her husband leaving her had much less impact because of this.

For myself, I leaned into my career. Today I’m heading up a division of a bank. I make about £330-500k per year. My children are well taken care of and I spend a lot of my income on childcare. It wasn’t always this way but I’ve done the work and it’s given me the freedom I needed. I’m so so thankful I could walk away from my marriage.

My husband didn’t see the kids much during the week before the pandemic. I think that was typical for a lot of people if you work in city of London and commute in and if you’re kids are young. I stayed at home as I knew 2 people doing this wasn’t possible without a nanny or grandparent. Nurseries weren’t open long enough.

It’s really hard op - mine are young teens now but when they were babies I was in the office in central London 5 days a week. I got up at 6am, was out the door to nursery at 7.10 for a 7.30am drop off (that I negotiated with the nursery as they didn’t open until 8am before I asked) into the office for 9am (if all went well) and then my husband did the pickup at 6pm and I left on the dot of 5pm to be home to see them before bed. I was exhausted most of the time and the juggle was insane but it was just what was required if I wanted to maintain my career.

Was it worth it? For me yes, I’ve been promoted twice, I have an interesting job that I now (ironically) wfh 5 days a week most of the time, so I see the kids before and after school and supervise in the holidays, my work now is really flexible and I have agency over my hours as I work globally so it can be pretty unsociable. It’s all a phase and imo it’s worth taking the long view.

Everyone in my family and social circle - either the husband or the wife went part-time after kids.

I took the first 2 years off for each child, so 4 years total, then went back part time, 1 or 2 days a week.

If you absolutely have to both work full time to make ends meet, and I totally realise some people do, well that’s what you’ve got to do.

But it is difficult and exhausting and not ideal for either parents or children. If you can afford it then I’d encourage you to take a break and/or go part time. Your children are only little once and you have lots of years left to work when they are older.

I worked part time when mine were younger. I went back up to full time about 18m ago when my youngest was 7. My work are luckily very flexible and I decide when I'm WFH and in the office, there's no set amount I need to be physically on site.

It would really frustrate me if I was forced to go in and just sit on teams calls, I think it's madness and I don't know what companies are gaining from it.

Can you put in a flexible working request to only have to do one day on site? They would have to find a really strong reason to say no which doesn't sound like they could.

The other option could be compressed hours for you too so you do 2 shorter days in the office and 2 longer ones at home?

I agree to be honest. I know people who make it work and absolutely hats off to them. Some do it because they want to to and more power to them, but far too many do it out of necessity and I do think it's unfair that it's just expected now.

Also the fact that it means more kids than ever are in nursery from younger and younger ages, for more hours than an adults working day and nobody seems able (parents) or willing (government) to actually pay for it?!

We did it because we had to. Otherwise we couldn't pay the bills and have a house. It does get better.