Condensed hours when you have young children

[olldbones]

I'm due back to work in October and looking to put in a flexible work request to reduce my hours. I am considering applying for 28.5 hours over 3 days, which would mean working 8am - 6pm. It's not a long commute, so I expect I would get home about 6:15pm.

Those with small children working in a similar pattern; does this work? Or do you feel like you don't spend enough time with them 3/7 days?

I did this pattern for ten years and it worked well.
One suggestion: having in-home carers like a nanny or SAHD works much, much better that trying to fit childcare around. Especially if that person does basic housecare like a bit of laundry, cooking a simple meal. Worth extending yourself financially for, IMO. It takes the rush and stress away.

I absolutely never felt like I wasn't spending enough time with them. They got quality interaction from their Dad, from me and from their nanny. They were lucky.

@guineapigbridge Thank you. My partner is now working from home on a permanent basis so I'm hoping while I'm out in the day, he can do a quick runaround the house over his lunch and set breaks.

I do condensed hours, and feel that the loss of time on my longer days which would generally be spent rushing to pickup, etc is more than compensated by having the quality time with them on my days off.

However, you do need to have childcare options that will allow you to do those hours without putting yourself under extra stress, bearing in mind the private nurseries near us all close at 6pm.

I had this in my previous job. It worked really well as it meant I could spend my days off with the children. Also had some much needed downtime whilst they were at school.

I had wrap around childcare (morning + afternoon) + a cleaner to enable this.

@caffeinebuzz thank you. We are very lucky in that my Mum will be looking after my daughter in the week. My husband would be able to pick her up from Grandma's at 4:30pm (give or take!). Logistically it all sounds fine, I'm just a bit nervous about those days and whether I would feel I haven't seen my daughter for 3 consecutive days

Absolutely, it's hard to imagine so much time away when you are with them non-stop through your mat leave! But sounds like you'd be reliability making it home for bath and bed time, so you can try and have a nice routine together for that. And then of course you get the time back to spend real quality time together for the extra two days you wouldn't be working.

In my company all flexible working is reviewed after the first six months. If your company does similar you could try it and drop back to more regular days if you do find it's an issue.

This is what we've worked to for the last three years, with a cleaner on Fridays. Has worked brilliantly. My kids and their Dad are very close now.