Working full-time or part-time. Advice please!

[Aquarius93]

I returned to work in January from a second period of maternity leave. My children are now 3 & 1. After my first I was adamant I wanted to work full-time, save money and build up my career as much as possible before she was in school. Since January though I have been starting to feel burnt out at work and with the weather improving, I am wanting to spend more and more time with the children.

I am lucky with my childcare arrangements. My mum covers 2 days a week and we pay for nursery on the other 3 days. My husband’s job involves long hours and he earns less but in an incredibly niche role that is very hard to come by and frankly his dream job. He has ambition and room for progression but opportunities don’t come up very often. I have a demanding job but am fully home based so get more flexibility. I enjoy my job but wouldn't go as far as saying I am passionate about it.

Where I need the advice is understanding what working arrangements suited people best. I always thought when my daughter was in school I would work 5 days around school hours so I could pick her up each day but would others recommend 3 full days, as I guess this is easier to manage school holidays? Financially, working 3 days a week could save me a lot on nursery fees.

How did you feel reducing your hours impacted your career? I want to be able to progress in the future but not until the kids move to secondary school (I know I’ve got 10+ years).

For additional context, I would love to have a third child. So in the back of my mind I am also thinking about the cost of an extra child (and potential saving of nursery fees).

I’d love to know other people’s thoughts on this. I feel like it is all I can think about at the moment!

What about DH? He earns less, you want to work full-time, would he be amenable to putting in a flexible work request then you could use your leave for nice days? It doesn't have to be you! Or you could both split it and both do 4 days a week?

DH has very little flexibility in his job and we know a flexible working request would be rejected. He’s a professional sports coach so is completely restricted by training/match schedules. Even annual leave is only allowed in the off season (so he won’t be much help with school holidays in the future).

I am also happy to support his career at the moment as he gets a lot more fulfilment out of his than I do from mine - I just work for the money! It is also easier for me to step back into my career in the future.

I dropped down to 4 days a week after maternity leave but this was for my wellbeing as I was recovering from severe pnd
It didn't really have an impact on my career I was on the same pathway for promotion as my ft colleagues when I was made redundant. The other two colleagues that were made redundant at the same time were full-time and one of my colleagues that was kept was also on 80% like I was so I don't think it impacted that decision

My daughter is now in school and my health is better and it was an advantage to have an day after school to sort swimming lessons out. I'm looking at going back to work full time when I find employment at least initially and would probably put in Flexi working request in to drop back down to either 4 or 4.5 days once I've gone through training and settling in. I'll be changing job role and I think there would be a benefit to be in full time at the start.

Here's what I did

I worked 5 short days after DS was born (nursery offered reduced rate)
I continued doing this after DD was born (2 school year age gap between children)
When DS started school, DH took him to school and I picked him up. So we used no childcare for him.
When DD got to pre-school age we put her in the school nursery as it offered coordinating hours with school
When DD went to school I changed my hours to be within school hours.

My strategy was to maximise time with the children and minimise childcare whilst "keeping my hand in" job wise (at the worst point, my salary was basically equal to the childcare cost). My career stagnated during this period. I was fine with this as I wanted to focus on my children.

When DD was about 8, I got some of my energy and ambition back. I moved to a full time job and with the aid of flexible working (myself and DH) we saw out the primary school years with minimum wrap around care.

There are plenty of school holiday childcare options here, or for some holidays I was able to work my usual 5 short days as 3 long days.

I considered it a huge benefit to be able to pick my children up from school and to take them to after school clubs and organise play dates etc. I would suggest ideally it's worth making sure you can do this at least one day a week.

the main thing I regret is not keeping my pension topped up during the reduced working years.
Yes, it was hard work, and I never got a break as the 3 day workers would do (I was always at my paid job, or looking after children). However the "hard" years are comparatively short in number.

I've done full time and three days a week in a professional role. Full-time was manageable with one child, harder with two. Three days a week is clearly not a full-time role so I wasn't overloaded with work like I saw people on four days or fewer hours over five days being taken advantage of. Three days is a lovely balance. Unfortunately in my role I would almost certainly need to go back full-time to progress.

Thank you for the responses. It’s great to hear other people’s experiences! Definitely given me a lot to think about.

Thank you for calling out the pension aspect too. That is definitely something I would need to think about from the financial side!

My husband and I work flexible and do full time in 4 days (plus a bit on our day off) so we only needed childcare 3 days a week. We never had anyone else watching our kids (we are immigrants) so had to make sure our week worked with just us. It was fine except for a few years when the kids were little and my husband travelled for work a lot and then it was a mess as there was no flex in our schedule at all.

Now the kids are 12/8 so my husband works 2 shorter days to pickup my son and I have Fridays off as school is just a half day in Fridays. Daytimes are fine but we struggle with the evening clubs. Hybrid working has been a major improvement for us!

we have both always worked full time. My mum didn’t work when I was a child and when my parents split up it was really hard for her to get back to work and she’s still financially far behind my dad (not because he wasn’t fair, but she had to catch up for ages). It was therefore super important to me that I knew I could make things work with or without my husband (I make less than he does but either of us can pay the mortgage for a while on our own)