Working part time, is it just a big old con?

[blueblanket]

And in fact, rather than being the "best of both worlds" (seeing your DC and keeping your hand in with work, and the brain ticking over), it's actually the WORST of both worlds because you're part time everything?

I've been back at work 2 days a week for a good while now ( so this is a considered opinion) but just feel like I"m not giving the best to either my child or my employer.

I work remotely from home for a great company, but the other problem with the flexibility is that with iphones etc everyone's at the end of an email almost all the time and it's really hard to switch off, even on my days off.

is is just me?

I went part-time between my two DCs and it was a disaster. My employer was not flexible at all, and if I had to leave work early because DS was ill it was taken off my holidays - but none of the work I would do outside of my set working days were recognised or counted. I had to deliver the same results as a full-time job but in three days. It was a difficult industry (management consultancy) and I was the only women in the office with a child (a small firm). They basically said to me in front of everyone during a company meeting that they would never make an exception for someone who is pregnant or having children.

I think that if I would have stayed full time, I would have never seen my children. Working 60 hour weeks was simply not an option for me. I stopped working after second child and I am going to retrain and do a different job when I go back to work. I will do PGCE training to be primary or secondary school teacher, I'm not sure yet.

Also with working part time, my holidays were pro rata so I ended up with 15 days holiday a year, and in the end I had to take most of my holidays to look after DS who was ill all the time with stomach bugs.

To me, working part time was a very bad experience.

I must add that a)I have a long commute and b) DH works from home and does the cm/nursery run. So my working does have an impact on him. I do love my job though, which is good as I have very very little left after paying for childcare and travel!

I have two children one at nursery and one at school. I work part-time (if you can call it part-time) 4 days per week.

I work in the City with a stressful job and personally I think working part-time is the WORST of both worlds. I dont feel I give 100% to my employers or to my children and would love to work less and spend more quality time with the children whilst they are young but unfortunately cannot 'afford' to give up work.

I feel constantly stressed at work to meet deadlines and to get home at a reasonable time to see them let alone with the amount of homework my 7 year old gets and preparing for school the next day and some other project they have thought up for mums who have more spare time than I have. Then there are birthdays to remember, money for school outings etc. School holidays are a nightmare juggling act and my poor husband who I have less time than I have for anybody just asks for list of things he can do to help. At the weekend I dont want to do anything or see anyone as I just want to relax and spend some time with the children although admmitedly I end up cooking lots of food for the freezer so the children have fresh home-cooked food during the week otherewise they wouldnt eat until 10pm every night!
As for any me time - thats on hold for the next x number of years!

I would agree with those posters who say that to work part-time you need to be very disciplined, though the extent to which this is true depends on a) the sort of work you do and b) how good your employer is at dealing with P-T employees. Another aspect that is worth considering is that if you work part-time, other mummies may assume that you are available for coffee, walks, play groups on your non-working days, when all you want to do is spend time with your children and get the washing done. I work full-time but am a teacher so friends do sometimes (wrongly) assume that I will be around in the holidays to see them when in fact my priorities are a) to get my work done b) to see DS1 and DS2 and c) to get a rest (not necessarily in that order). Now that I am moving into management, it will become increasingly difficult to keep up with friends in the holidays because I will spend so much of them working. You need to guard your non-working days carefully unless you relish coffee mornings.

I'm doing 2 days a week at the moment, jobsharing with the girl who covered my ML. I'm finding it a bit rubbish to be honest, not least because it feels as if it's not 'my' job at the moment. Eg all the shelves by my desk are covered in the other girl's stuff, a piece of equipment I'd put in my drawer wasn't there when I worked last week. As people have said above, other people forget that I'm not there Mon-Weds, and arrange meetings that I then can't go to which leaves me very much sidelined, even with tasks/projects which are a major part of my job.

One good thing is that I've earned so much annual leave from ML that working 2 days a week, I've got enough leave to have 3 months off this year. (never mind that so far I've had to use 4 days at very short notice when the nursery wouldn't take dd!)

I'm on a graduated return scheme whereby at the end of a year I have to decide to go back to full time, or put in a flexible working application. If I went back to full time, I'd hardly get to see dd, and also have a late shift once a week for which we don't have any childcare (dh gets home after she's gone to bed most nights). Part time is only allowed to be between 40 and 60% of hours, so 2 or 3 days. I'd love to be able to work say 2 full days and 2 mornings, but I doubt that would be approved; getting the approval to do 2 days was pretty tricky in the first place.

My job is similar to Effie's [hi! ] and I've done a lot of training for it, plus it's very specialised - there are fewer than 500 other people in the country doing my job. I really don't want to have to give up, or step even partly off the ladder, as it would be very hard to get back on, but looking as I do at my institution, yes there are lots of women but of the 8 in senior positions only one has children, and they're grown up. Pretty telling.

happystressedmum, I think you are spot on. But I have to say that I am a very happy stay at home mum, and not working suits me. It doesn't suit everyone, that's for sure. I love not being stressed out, and spending all the time that I want playing with the kids. My house is always a mess though, it was neeter when I was working, strangely enough! anyway, that's not the point of the discussion. I think that working part time sucks, but for me I would find it very very difficult to work full time and see my kids only a couple of hours a day.

I do 30 hours a week, as and when I want, in term time only.
It's great- no child care to worry about.
I would struggle to do full time, and also enjoy the holidays.
I'm lucky because we don't rely on my job- but I would be going crazy if I didn't work,

I'm self employed part time - hours vary according to time of year, but around 30 hours a week average. DH & I work together, & we both do around the same amount of hours.

Its a good balance in that we can fit our work around school times, holidays etc, & its no problem for one of us to be at home if dd is sick. The other advantage is that since we work together, its patently obvious that if one of us ends up doing more at home, the other has to do more at work!

The disadvantage is that its very hard to actually go away properly together for more than a long weekend, as then neither of us is at work to deal with things.

It would be really helpful to know what jobs you do - it's equally valid to see which jobs don't seem to lend themselves to part time as those that do IYKWIM.

blueblanket - I know where you are coming from - except that I work 4 days a week so the time in which I am trying to 'switch off' is less.

TBH, I find it balances out - yes I do take the odd call/ check the odd email on my day off, but then again I sometimes pick up the DC on days when I am working, and do a lot of 'split shifts' (stop work @ 4pm to deal with DC and do a couple of hours later in the evening) - I think it all works out reasonably fair for all concerned.

I found working part time hard; it was difficult to feel part of the company.

However, I didn't stay long enough to make it work (or find out that it didn't) and am now self employed.

This gives me much greater flexibility and has worked well for us for five years.

I run a Structural Engineering Consultancy, for your info.

What I have seen that doesn't work very well are jobs that need you to travel often in our out of the country such as:

• Management consultancies
• IT consultancies
• jobs in outsourcing
• jobs with shift work unless you have good support from family, or you accept that you will not see your husband very often
• some jobs in sales or sales support that imply unpredictable very long hours - such as working on large bids. It's fine if you know when you will work late, but if it's really unpredictable you're in trouble.

I have a friend who is a translator and she's had to adapt from working in legal which had very tight deadlines, to teaching her first language as a second language in business (Japanese). She's very happy.

What I have seen that works: working in training where you can prepare your work from home and deliver the training courses in predictable and regular hours.

I suppose it depends on the job.

I work full time but my hours although not excatly flexi time. I can please my self quite a bit and arrange work when it suits me (within reason) so most days I might break off come home for a couple of hours to sort tea and homework out and go back to work while DH takes over. I'm usually home for about 9ish.

I have to work some weekends and again that can be around what I'm doing and how I plan it and I do go away. I arranged to go away for 3 weeks last summer while I knew the DC were at playschemes and on their own residentials.Working these hours meant that I could have the rest of the summer off without taking leave. I know this wouldn't suit everyone but I love it.

I konw that I am really lucky and this job wouldn't work as well if it was part time.

i haven't tried part time working yet but i think my preference would be for short days either 4 or 5 days a week.

i'd be happy to work 9.30am to 3pm which would be 20-25hrs depending on 4 or 5 days.

i am lucky that i am quite autonomous at work and set all my own meetings so i wouldn't have a problem leaving at 3pm most days. with other departments requesting meetings i could just say i'm not available after 3 without having to explain why.

oh, also, i am only 15mins by bike, 30mins walking from home to work and i think that makes a HUGE difference!

Fluffles I think you are spot on about the travellling time. I live 30 min walk 8 min( if that ) car drive away which means I can go at last min and split my day up if I need to go to a class assembly or parents evening.

Although I do have a couple of set sessions work a couple of evenings in the week in the case of an emergency I can always ask one of my team to cover for me or get a casual instructor in. This makes a huge difference to my attitude to work and I have been able to relax more in this job than if I had been in a 9-5

I work five hours a day and find it hard to switch off at home. Its kind of expected that I will reply to e-mails at home even when off sick and its something I need to change when I go back - am on mat leave at the moment.

I do not want to spend my afternoons answering e-mails that could really wait until the next day when I should be playing with the DC.

I am going to be firm.

Hopefully.

I work 3 days a week, which I enjoy as I find it more relaxing than being at home! However, I am lucky to have a reliable job share partner (who has a DD the same age as me) and a job that doesn't provide me with a blackberry or any continuous way of contacting me out of hours. I would find it hard to switch off from work if I was being constantly bothered by emails/calls on my non working days.

I do have a long commute though, and some newer colleagues seem to regard me as being off all the time (though I have worked in the same post full time for 5 years prior to mat leave). However, it suits me and all of our deadlines are met. As previous posters have said, it depends on the job you do and I'm sure if I had a blackberry I would hate it!

Interesting post & responses, I'm due to go back to work in April and am going to do 3 days a week - no idea how it's going to work out but I'm prepared for having to work in the evenings after ds goes to bed (as I used to work til 7pm usually and now I'll have to leave at 5.15 to pick him up from nursery) and have my blackberry on on my days off but I think it'll be worth it to be able to be at home with ds.

We'll see!

Cassell why do you have to have your Blackberry switched on on your day off?

Having read all of this I wonder if my problem was that I wasn't working fewer days, just fewer hours every day. School house basically. I think working 9-5 (plus the usual extra) 3 or 4 days a week would have been better.

For me, working PT is the best of both worlds. I work 4 (8 hour) days a week and take a Wednesday off. I worked full time when I first went back to work after DD was born, but within a couple of months I felt that I didn't have th bond with her that I would like. I have been part time for about 6 months now and having that one extra day a week makes all the difference to me. I'm a Project Manager, and for me the big benefit is in the projects I can work on. As a full time employee, I could get stuck with the kind of all encompassing 24/7 projects that can consume your life (I'm in the US where work life balance is little more than a vague concept for most employers). As a part timer, I can say that X project isn't suitable to my part time schedule, and as a result I actually work only 35 hours max a week, instead of the 60 that would be expected as a full timer.
My part time agreement is very much a priviledge and NOT a right here, so I try to be realisitic with what I accept - for example, I chose Wednesday as my off day as Mondays/Fridays tend to be the chaotic days for the other members of my team. I accept that from time to time, I have to work on my off day if the project is a tough one. But on the whole I do feel very lucky with the balance I now have.

tiger: "ancient when sprogging". That's me too . You've made me laugh!

Can you really work only 9-5??? I tried working 8-5 after DS1 was born but was told repeatedly that this meant too short days and was badly perceived by others in the office (???). I wasn'a a big shot with huge salary either.

This was used as an argument on my redundancy case as well two years later. So happy to see the last of them.

I came to this thread a bit late, but from BlueberryPancake's summary that includes;

• jobs that need you to travel often in our out of the country
• jobs with shift work unless you have good support from family, or you accept that you will not see your husband very often

not working isn't necessarily the truth. And the criteria she puts forward for working;

• working ... where you can prepare your work from home and deliver the training courses in predictable and regular hours

doesn't always fit either.

I have been told that my job is completely unsuitable for a mother. It entails shiftwork, being away for several days at a time, leaving the country often travelling very far away. Yet there is no work that I can do at home, I cannot prepare anything before I go to work. And it is fab. I love my job.

What makes the difference is the amount of control and power I have over my work timetable. I work 8-11 days per month. I can pick which days these are (within reason,) choosing days which suit me, my family and my childcare. Should my husband want to, he and my daughter can come with me to work and stay in the hotel with me. Mostly I go alone though, and take my little laptop and play peekaboo on Skype.

When I am at work, because I am unreachable and in a foreign country I cannot be prevailed upon to try and multitask things that should be done at home. Because there is nothing at all about my job that can be done from home, once home I am completely free from all work commitments for 20-ish days a month. I can compartmentalise my home life and my work life so that neither infringes on the other. I come back home from work having had a day or 2 of not being woken up by a toddler, refreshed and ready to get back to housework!

The key to it all is the attitude of the employer. Ironically the few women who do my job have had to fight tooth and nail for the privileges we have, with our battle reaching the front page of the newspapers on occassion. There are still many things that could be better yet, (I am pregnant and cannot do my normal job and I am not too sure about the alternatives we are offered, or the way they pay us in the meantime.) But overall, it is a fantastic lifestyle and I cannot think of a better job I could do and have children too.

BTW even if I didn't have a job, my OH would not expect the house to be tidy when he got in. We're just not that kind of people