seriously, how do mums afford to work??

[omaoma]

am currently on ML and wondering about getting back to work. looking at what the cheapest childcare might cost me in London, once i factor in travel, i think i will be left with approximately £4 a day. i am not exaggerating. what on earth is the point? am i missing something??? £4 for all the hassle of rushing to drop off/pick up in time, deal with sick days, deal with work stress, and miss my gorgeous daughter for 10 hours a day. how do you all manage?

foxinsocks apologies. I've just read that all back and it's seriously arsey . As you may guess, I live in Surrey and am skint and have just had this 'debate' with someone who thinks it's all my own fault because I insist on living there.

Sorry, I went off on one and it was totally unjustified.

well I think when you have to go back to work, you just have to get on with it. It's not like it's accepting it, but you have to start being creative at ways to reduce the bill if you need to.

So like Fio suggested, shift working, working weekends, tryign to get flexible working for both of you at work so you can reduce your hours, etc. etc.

Also, have you looked at having an au pair? That's probably the cheapest form of childcare you'll find that will provide you with the hours you need.

it's fine eyeballs, honestly.

Tough times for a lot of people at the moment and it's pretty hideous if people are making a judgement on you purely because of your postcode.

I do apologise for my last post to you, reading it back i was rather, ahem, snippy?

Annie - I just don't think that it is reasonable to expect the government to subsidise peoples choices about whether or not to work/what they do for a living/what lifestyle choices they make.
There isn't a bottomless public purse, it has its limits and at some point i feel that we have to be responsible for our own actions.

Yes it was wrong that i and my daughter had no heat but, that wasn't the fault or responsibility of the government. I chose to have my dd knowing that i would be a single parent. Her father chose not to pay maintenence. I chose to carry on working in a job which at the time was low paid because i knew that i would end up very well paid.
So in essence, I looked at the longer term.

I do think that in general, it is the attitude that the woman is responsible for childcare, sickness cover, paying for childcare etc that stops mothers wanting to/being able to work.
Until it as accepted that both parents are equally responsible i think we will always have this imbalance in the workplace.

Obviously single parents with no co-parental support are a different kettle of fish.

I can't afford to work. I wouldn't earn a lot, definitely not enough to cover childcare etc..

I will work when they're both at school, and then I'll just have to suck up being a low earner... but rihgt now?? no.

I never understand how people can be so blind when they say 'how come you don't work?'. I used to smile politely. now I find myself saying, get a calculator and let me know how you'd make it work will ya!?

OR, do you wanna look after my children all week for less than the going rate?

they back off with skids on then!

my dh paid for me to go to work!!

Hello idrank... peace?

I do really wonder why childcare costs so much more here than in other countries. It's not that I feel the gvt should bale me out, I just don't get where it's all gone so horribly wrong that so many women have to accept not earning any money while they have younger children. That just can't be right, surely? These children are the ones who will be supporting everyone in the future, so surely it's a good investment for everyone if it's more affordable for people to have 'em in the first place?

bail? bale?

Gawd, I should know this , I'm retraining as a proofreader (see Fox and others... I am working on other career options, I'm just arguing the principle of the matter)

I'm lucky and I work from home 20 hrs a week. If they didnt let me work from home, then I'd actually make a loss because of the train/bus fares into work. I end up with about half of what I earn a month in my pocket (for about two minutes!) - the other half goes on childcare.

If I worked full time, I'd probably end up with proportinally less than half my salary. And its unlikely we'd get our tax credits. I certainly couldnt pay the mortgage myself. In our house it all goes into one pot, but basically what I earn covers the bills and not much else.

Unfortunately (actually right now I dont see it that way because I have much less responsiblity work-wise which is fine by me!) I took a substantial salary/career drop after I had DS in order to have the option to work from home part time.

DH gets frustrated that I spent so many years 'getting degrees and running up debts for no reason' and has a point, however you dont go into all that malarkey with the intention of giving it all up (or partly up in my case) when you have kids. It's just panned out that way.

We're saving like mad at the moment in order to bridge the gap between when my maternity leave starts and when DS's free childcare starts (will be about 5 months) I desperately dont want to pull DS out of nursery for many reasons, and I'm just hoping we can cover it, although he'll have to drop some hours.

Someone asked for solutions, and the only one my poor underused brain can think of is that employers should help subsidise childcare more. Surely there are loads of women who would love to go back to their old jobs but can't afford to. And surely it makes better business sense for employers to keep the same person in the position rather then looking for and then training up a replacement?

Just a thought abou why childcare is cheaper abroad. The creche care does NOT compare to the relatively high standards in the UK, so costs are therefore much lower. I went back to work when dd was 5 months old. Her UK creche had at least 1 member of staff per 3 babies. This was the case uptil the point she left aged 2. Then there was the EYFS stuff. She loved her creche, and leaving after her last day upset me more than leaving work after 10 years.

She went to a private Belgian creche for a couple of months. It cost about half what i paid in the UK. There were 2 members of staff and maybe about 16 children from babies to 2.5 year olds. Dd at nearly 2.5 wasn't too bad as she was happy to play with the other kids and do some drawing. The babies sat in bouncy chairs and cried mostly.

The state run nurseries are means tested and generally cheaper still. You have to sign up at about 3 months PG to get a place. I would be uncomfortable about putting a dc in one, but all my colleagues use them and are quite happy about the care levels.....The expectations are definitely different here.

At 2.5 dd started kindergarten. This is seen as an introduction to school, not childcare. 99% of families send their dcs though school is not compulsory til 6. In her first year, dd's teacher (and she is a trained early years teacher not a nursery nurse) had 24 2.5/3 yos! On her own. Well there was help at lunchtime. The mind boggles as to how one person could get 24 dcs to the toilet/eat lunch/have a nap let alone do anything educational. But they do! And they go on trips out too.

Dd has absolutely loved it, and is so knowledgable about many things. Coming from the UK I was quite shocked again about the staff/child ratio, but it actually works! They are quite strict with them, but Belgium is supposed to have the highest educational standards in Europe - and yet no private schools (apart from expat ones). I am not complaining.

it all boils down to the fact that having children is not a right.

We can't have it all. Life is just not like that.

i have 4 year age gap between my children so i can work. As i only have to pay one lot of fulltime fees at a time. i chose to start a family early so i could have both at the same time.

it is possible but only with compromise.

Well, perhaps you are lucky raindrop.
I'm sure I'm not alone in that it took me 14 years to get my Ds. My Dd is more than 8 years younger ~ I had her at almost 43. If I'd had my way, I'd have had Dc's in my mid twenties and would have had a loving husband and father to my children to support me financially whilst I decided if I wanted to work, or not and care for my children. Life does not happen the way we'd like it to ~ no, but it'd be lovely to be able to afford to live whilst also raising a family.
My childcare costs would far outstrip my salary, so where's the point? I'd be dragging my Dc's out of the house at 5.30am and often not be collecting them before 22.15hrs. It will not work! and it doesn't always work for thousands of us.

childcare could be offset againsttax that would help after all my chauffeur is

But raindrop, if having children is not supported by society, and people shouldn't expect any help at all, who will pay taxes when we retire? People seem to be looking at children, and childcare, as a drain on resources, when it's an investment in the nation's future! They don't stay children forever!

"I just don't get where it's all gone so horribly wrong that so many women have to accept not earning any money while they have younger children." I think this mindset is wrong too. Why not think of it in terms of joint incomes. Or say the same thing about men? Yet no man I know makes this calculations for himself. (I'll read the rest of the thread now.)

Ah, AxisOfEvli made the same point. I'll get me coat.

It is a fair point, but as I've said, it makes no difference whose salary the childcare come out of if the family still ends up worse off if the women works.

it depends how you define worse off though Annie

I keep on at my job because I worry about dh losing his (he's in a vulnerable profession) and that's one of the reasons I went back in the first place iyswim. So a lot of us working is about job security and being able to pay the bills should the worst happen.

Was thinking about this last night - if you didn't know about childcare costs, can see why you freaked out but on the other hand, it's still not something you can expect others to help with unfortunately (I mean the government!). Though I do dream of the day that childcare becomes tax deductible!

and I, personally, would like child benefit means tested so that more help could be given to lower earners/single parents.

Seems ridiculous that it isn't tbh.

Annie your solution would not work at all whatsover (sorry). I work in a male dominated industry. Because I happen to work for a large US corporation, they do fall over backwards to support 'diversity' (i.e. not fall below their current 5% of women in certain roles ) and have flexible working, etc, and I have to say my immediate management have been great. However, if the company were to subsidise childcare directly that would make me (and presumably DH since they could not apply it only to women) more expensive to employ than non-parents, which in turn would mean that when faced with a straight choice as to who to employ/make redudant being a parent would inevitably count against you. Not to mention the resentment it would cause amongst non-parents. Whilst havign both parents continue to work after the arrival of children does make good business sense for employers, subsidy of childcare for the greater good of society has to happen (if at all) at a governmental level through taxation as it does almost everywhere else in Europe.

cthea - great minds think alike

solo exactly we can't have it all all of the time and are deluding ourselves if we think we can.
You just have to choose where you are willing to make the compromise. I think it is unreasonable to expect to work and have a family with out compromising somewhere and ridiculous to expect the government to faciliate a lifestyle choice.

I am lucky in that i married young and was able to start my family young. But we have had to compromise.
we don't own our house, don't holiday every year, live quite frugally, but i love my job and my DH also enjoys his work but has also had to his fair share of being stuck at home.

Annie, I would have thought a microbiologist would earn enough to pay for childcare?