How do people manage careers and having children?

[Lou3214]

Hi all :)

Currently TTC my first baby with my DH... I'm already worrying about having to take a step back in my career and more so, worrying about what people will think of me for that.

My want and need for a baby massively out-ways my want for an amazing career but I can't help worrying about the judgement that will probably surround it.

My DH has an amazing job which he loves and is 100% ready for a baby too, I guess I'm just wondering if anyone else has ever felt like this and if so, how do you balance it?

Due to my DH's job, we live far away from family so them helping out whilst I work isn't possible and I don't really think full time childcare would work for us financially, so I will definitely have to drop to part-time or drop work all together.

Thanks in advance :)

It's really really difficult. I've completely rejigged my career and started my own business that I can do largely from home but that obviously isn't an option for everyone. Could you both go part time - if you can each do 1d/week at home then you only need 3d childcare. Childcare will wipe out most of one salary so think about your other outgoings.

We manage because we have both stepped back from our careers instead of assuming only the mother has to do this. I have dropped to working four days a week, and DH does compressed hours (10 days over 9) so he has 1 day at home with our daughter every fortnight. He also wanted to reduce his hours to four days, but his manager wasn't supportive but agreed to compressed hours.

DH also took shared parental leave after I finished maternity leave, which made my return to work easier.

Childcare costs are expensive but just about manageable - we'll be very glad when the 30 free hours start! Staying in work through these expensive years should make it easier to pick up your career later.

I've found that people expect women to go part-time and are surprised if you don't - I've had a couple of comments about how I'm practically working full-time. People are also surprised that DH does 'so much' and has one day at home with her.

It is really, really hard. I'm sorry I can't come on here and tell you it'll all be easy - best to go into it with your eyes wide open!

My DS has just turned 3. I went back to work when he was 10 months old and worked compressed hours (5 days in 4) to have a day off with him in the middle of each week until quite recently. After two years of that, I felt burnt out and moved to a part-time role that took me over a year to find. It was great to have more time - but OMG the job was crap! So I quit. And now I'm just about to go back into a full-time role and DS will now have to go to nursery full-time too.

But... I thought I'd feel really guilty about putting my three-year old into nursery full time. But recently he's really stopped loving the 'mummy & me' days that we have each week. He just asks why he can't go play with his nursery friends. So... I think it'll be fine. He wants to play with his friends, I need a satisfying job.

One thing I'd say is that you really need to make sure that your DH and you share the parenting job properly. Don't automatically sacrifice your job just because you have a uterus! A fair few of my friends have setups where both parents work 4 days each and the little one is in nursery 3 days a week. Seems to work really well!

Good luck! :)

I'm only 31 weeks pregnant so have all this dilemma still to come but we've tried to make it easier (and counteract the gender stereotypes) by doing shared parental leave and also are both going to reduce our house so we both do about 28 hrs a week each.

I'm yet to see how it works out in practice but some of our friends have done it and it's worked so well for them :-)

The people I know who manage it best are at one extreme or the other. Either they both do part time and split the childcare, earnings can be modest but so is their lifestyle. Or they both work full time, very highly paid and can afford full time live-in nanny. It's in the middle that it gets tough.....

DP and I both work full time. We have DDs aged 7 & 2. It's tough it really is.

I was annoyed when I returned to work because I couldn't get over the amount of people that suggested I think about working part time. Bet you can guess how many people said this to DP!?

It's your pension and future you should think of. Absolutely bear that in mind.

Whatever works for your family. Not just because you're the mum. There is still an unreasonable expectation of mothers, an imbalance in these attitudes of what we should and shouldn't do.

Fuck em.

(apologies for rants above)

Compromise
Outsourced childcare
Giving up work

Depends on financial commitments and priorities. After that dress it up as you like.

I genuinely don't know how people manage it. I'm self employed so only kept on the bare minimum. I'm at home most of the time and I still occasionally need help from DH. He can only be flexible because he's in a management position. I have nothing but total admiration for those who manage to juggle a baby and full time work.

DH dropped to pt (from home) when I went back to work after DC2. Life with kids is certainly easier if both parents aren’t FT but it doesn’t have to be the mother who gives up work/ goes PT you know!

But if that’s what you want to do that’s fine too.

I dropped to 2 days after mat leave with dc1, and have stayed on it (dc now about to turn 4 and 2). Tbh i considered quitting altogether as i loved being at home and dc didnt settle that easily into childcare so i felt very guilty leaving them. But I grew to like the balance of 2 days working (about to quit so i have more flexibility around school).

My career has pretty much stalled. 2 days just isnt enough to do the work i have to do or be visible enough. I also found things harder after my second mat leave - 26 months off combined over 3 years meant i just felt out of the loop on a lot of things. I feel I've been passed over since then.

In practical terms I've found things that make it much harder were a) long commute for me and dh, which is really stressful always rushing back to try and get to nursery and b) dp who often works away meaning i have majority of time off for sickness/ pickups etc and c) no family to help. Maybe if you have a different set up it will be easier.

In summary it has seriously damaged my career but that's because i wanted to do minimal work while the dc are small, i live a long way from work, and havent prioritised it. I was relatively old when i had kids so was ready for a break. Guess time will tell whether I'll regret it or not, but not so far.

We both work full time and it was hard in the early years which we are just about out of.

It is doable but what helped was having a great nursery, flexibility in our jobs (although my oh does have to work away a lot), equality in parenting ( when oh is here he is as likely as I am to leave work due to sick child) and a cleaner.
It has been worth the slog as we are nearly out the other end.

It's hard work but doable if your employer is relatively flexible with leaving times to make sure you are there in time for childcare collections and your childcare is in a convenient place/has convenient opening hours for you.

I went back to work full time after DC1 and 4 days after DC2, now currently on maternity leave I wonder how I managed it, but I did!

You need to drop your standards a bit, or get outside help. If you can afford a cleaner I am sure it would help (I always said I would but never got around to it, just learned to live with more mess, not quite as clean as others!)

Organisation is the key, so each of you know who is doing collections that week/day, who has urgent meetings that can't be rearranged, who needs packed lunches on what days etc.

I have three DCs and went back part time. I worked 3 days initially and now work 2.5. I chose to go part time as DH had much greater earning potential than I did. He works in a well paid industry while I am public sector. I had more time off than intended with DC3 as I was diagnosed with cancer while on mat leave, but went for a promotion just before returning, which I got.
We have both made career sacrifices, DH is still working in the dining room just now as he left early to do pick up. DC3 starts school this year so things may become a little easier financially.

I’m really early days - a nearly-3 y/o and a 5 m/o - but so far I don’t think it has damaged my career, and I work in a very traditionally demanding and competitive male-dominated industry, albeit in a fairly forward-thinking firm. I actually got a really major (for me) promotion and pay rise within a year of returning from my first mat leave, when I guess they knew there was a risk I would go off again. I didn’t drop down from full time hours (although I no longer work late into the night as I used to regularly). In fairness, I think I still do just as good a job for my firm as I did before I had children, but I’m a more mature and well-rounded employee now. Having children has definitely cured me of my workaholism, which I think has been a good thing for my career, funnily enough (I was trying too hard before...)

My eldest is in nursery full time, my youngest will be too when i return after mat leave. I preferred this option to a nanny and with family help we make it work.

I've completely re-evaluated my career. Before kids I was highly motivated, good at my job and set for promotion. I was adamant that I would continue this after maternity leave.

To cut a long story short, I didn't. I did negotiate a job share to keep my management role but even with a decent salary, I was still only working to pay childcare basically. I was stressed, anxious and unhappy about not being able to give what I had done in my life before kids, and I didn't even feel like I was being the mum I wanted to be.

My priorities had shifted and I couldn't go back to working like I used to. Some people can, I wasn't one of them.

Good luck with it all. I think the key is to be open minded and flexible - things can be v unpredictable and having a fixed mindset about it all could lead to more problems than it solves.

I am coming to the end of May leave from DD2 and am about to return full time to work. We also have no family locally.

We managed with dd1 by having flexible working hours for DH. I am a teacher so the holidays help. We were lucky enough to find an incredible childminder who has become like family to us now. She is our local support and on hand whenever we need. This made an enormous difference.

For both of us we have had to make compromises with our careers. Before having my children I was very close to making a big jump in leadership. The fact is that for me it simply isn’t possible now that I have two small children. I have had to accept that I may not make that next step as there are now younger and brighter people coming up behind me who can work all the hours they want and never have to leave meetings early because of childcare or take a day off for an ear infection.

Dh is also less ambitious than be maybe could be without kids. He works from home a huge amount which helps enormously but I suspect that some of his colleagues are fans of presenteeism and believe he simply isn’t working.

When dd1 got to about 3/4 it became much easier. Now she is at school and I have a wee one again we have another few years before we might get a bit of leeway.

It is possible but very hard.

But to answer your question - how do you make it work - for me that has involved full time childcare (v expensive), lots of help from family (for outside Nursery hours and unexpected days off eg with illness) and a DH that does half.

When you do the sums for paying childcare versus giving up work, remember to think about the medium term future, not just the early years. Childcare becomes cheaper in stages (as the free hours kick in, and then school) and your salary at those points will be much higher if you carry on working in the early years. In other words, someone who only just breaks even or even makes a loss on childcare compared to earnings when their child is a baby, is likely to be far better off financially 5 or 10 years down the line than someone who stops working.

Of course if you want to be a SAHM that’s different. I’m just talking about the financial perspective.

I will be going to back to work full time and doing 2 days of nursery and 3 days with family.

If we didn't have family to help i would be going back compressed hours in to 4 days to reduce childcare costs a bit.

I love my job and can't wait to go back after maternity

Childcare is a lot more affordable from 3yrs onwards. Dh and I share parenting as we felt two careers could recover from a small step back each better than one could from a huge step back.

You just have to be super organised and thick skinned.

Good luck.

I don't think I'd be able to do it without the help from family. Like a PP mentioned, DS goes to Nursery two days a week and my inlaws and parents the other three.
Nursery is around £70 per day where we are and full time it wouldn't have made financial sense to go back to work.
DH and I both work full time. It's tiring and we feel guilty some weekends when we desperately need to do things around the house and not doing lots of child focused activities but on the whole DS is extremely well adjusted and confident and I don't regret going back to work.

I've done quite a bit of maternity and paternity coaching in the past and finding, now that I'm expecting twins, that I'm putting to use all the tools and techniques I used with them to make my own adjustment. Practicalities are one thing - feeling like you can make that decision without judgement is another - and as other people have referenced - it's about a thick skin.

The two things I'm a big fan of are:

(1) Doing the work to outline who you want to be identity wise, why that's important to you and what ingredients make it up. Basically a 'what do I keep of old me and what am I willing to let go of'. We're talking literal lists so you get really settled in 'This is best for me and my family' and make it a strong belief, and..

(2) Starting to have conversations from that perspective - if you're worried you'll be judged, speak to a friendly person at your office about what you're thinking about. You might find they offer up a working situation that makes what you want possible. Most of our worry is because we don't broach the subject and think we're going against the grain when in reality, lots changes when we ask or inform people of what we need to be our best in this next stage.

The annoying reality - cause I've seen it on all sides - is that people will judge you if you quit, if you go part time and even if you choose to come back full time (I've coached quite a few women through this one!). If you can remember what people say and do is about THEM and never about YOU - then you can just let them deal with their opinion.

If anyone is interested I'm doing a talk about some of the above next week at a shared working space www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/35-steps-to-make-babies-and-work-work-for-you-tickets-45516484029 Just tips and tricks - but I'm a big advocate of having someone to talk to who isn't going to tell you it should be one way or another (I have my own coach - cause I want to keep my sanity when these wee ones arrive!)

I’m now in my 50s with 3 grown up children, but I returned to work 3 days a week when my dc1 was 3 months old, and managed to maintain my career (though taking longer off on leave) through having dc2 and 3. I only ever worked 3 days a week when they were small and stepped back up to full time when youngest turned 4.

Not going to lie, it’s tough, and definitely staying at home would have been the easier option in the short term.

For us the key was having similar expectations of ourselves as parents. We never bought into the stereotype of me being home doing all the house and child care related stuff and dh being the earner. Dh was a hands on Dad from the get go, we shared drop off and pick up at the childminder etc. Financially it was tough because this was in the days before any free nursery hours, so we paid in full until each child started school. And of course even though it was cheaper when they were in school, the logistics of wraparound care became harder.

However I can honestly say hands down that having children was the best thing I ever did; maintaining my career the second best. It’s worth it to have had an interesting career, and to be well set up with a good pension, whereas if I’d ever stopped working then i think I’d have missed out on a lot of interesting experiences along the way. Also I see quite a few couples where there isn’t the balance I would like... women my age who are really under employed, working for pin money even when their children are much older and even left home, and the husband has a much better deal in terms of career and sense of self worth

You can’t imagine until you’re combining work with parenting what it will feel like, and I’d say it’s good to be realistic about the fact it will be bloody tough at times, but ime the positives outweigh any downsides

It can be done usually means working the same number of hours as you normally do before children. If you work outside of office hours on top too then it becomes very difficult! (Like how I used to) That's why I had to give up.

Possibly a step back for PT for some workplaces? I heard mums still able to progress doing PT so really depends where you work.

With childcare, it only expensive for 2-3 years, you can look into:

www.gov.uk/help-with-childcare-costs

I do wish I have tried to make a career move instead of left it all, what I left was much greater than I thought. I will never earn anywhere near my old salary, my current salary alone doesn't support my children, my pension hasn't been topped up during my years of career break. I am pretty much relying my husband to be around to look after our children even my retirement!

However, I am happy to have a relatively stress free low pay job now. I do my hours and go home.

Good luck with your TTC and good that you already look into childcare! Hope everything turns out great whatever you decided to do.