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career and family?

Im in a position where im not where i want to be yet with my career. Im a librarian but cant get a job as one as i dont have enough experience. I do lots of volunteering so that when promoted posts come up i can send in CVs but nothing yet.

I also have an admin job to get some more hours. I know that when we have a baby i wont get maternity pay for either job as i dont earn enough (literally 1 hour away from it in one job) but more importantly i know that i wont be able to volunteer or attend any conferences and will look quite bad.

How does everyone else see the whole career family thing? Are alot of people wanting to be full time stay at home Mums?

Replies

  • Hi HomeFairy,

    I think me personally I would love to stay at home when we have a baby but for us financially we could just not afford it and I have always liked the idea of being a 'career mum'.???? I have always wanted to work and enjoy my job and what I do as I work in admin/finance and have done for over 15 years now.So for us it will have to be a bit of both, I am hoping to be able to afford to at least drop a day but would like to drop 2 days if at the time we can afford it but my dh is self employed and sometimes he has no work so money can be tight for us at times.xx
  • i know we couldnt afford for me to stay at home, but then again with two part time jobs as i have it wouldnt make sense. My dream position would be a full time job,even if it meant we were only slightly better off with me working after nursery.

    Do you have family who could take care of your LO, or would your DH work around your hours at work?

  • Hi HF,

    My mam thank god because we couldnt afford to pay for childcare.

    My mam currently looks after my brothers 2 kids well she picks one up from school and is home with the other but hopefully by the time we conceive and I go back to work he will be at Nursery school so the plan is for me to drop our baby off at my brothers house for my mam to look after so she is there to pick my brothers kids up from school phew............what a sentence! he he.

    Reason being my parents are old fashioned and never learned to DRIVE!!!

    xx
  • I'm not very career focused anyway and could never decide 'what I wanted to be when I grew up' even after I grew up. Luckily I do have a good admin job that I enjoy and get paid pretty good for what I do with great maternity entitlement.

    We have already decided that after we have bambino I will hopefully have 12months off then would work 3 long-ish days after I went back. OH's parents would be more than happy to have baby for us and OH works near where we live and neither of our parents live far away so he would always be near, though I work about 10miles away and don't drive as yet. I would like baby to go to nursery part of the time as well though, assuming I could find one I was comfortable with considering everything thats in the news lately.

    If we were ever in a position where I could give up work or do 1 or 2 days a week then I would love it but I don't know if we will be.. Not in the next couple of years anyway! x
  • Ive done a little researching and i only get the government pay for one of the jobs, which is annoying as i pay tax on two after all the overtime i do.

    Thing is, i dont know if i will still get the overtime when im preg and therefore should just count on normal hours.

    Thats really lucky BB that you've got family near...we do but we try to avoid them!!!! Hehehe...*menacing laugh*

    x

    [Modified by: HomeFairy on January 04, 2010 09:01 PM]

  • I work four days (Wed off). I am a teacher so get the holidays off too. Lily goes to nursery two days and the other two days my Mum and Dad have her. Hubby used to get a day off in the week if he did a 6 hour shift on Sunday...but they made lots of people redundant this year and he had to re-apply for his job and his hours changed. So that's why my parents have her two days and not one anymore.

    She loves nursery and I do the salary sacrifice with part of my wages in exchange for child care vouchers to pay for nursery.

    I do enjoy my job but I love my time with Lily and don't fancy working fulltime anymore! xxx
  • lol at menacing laugh.
    There's no way I could go back to my hours as they are now, as I work wweekends and on call and an evening each week and long full time days.
    But I will def go back to some part time hours after 6months. I'm a vet and I'm scared if I have any longer than that off I'll lose my surgical skills, and keeping up with new meds etc will be hard. I'd gope to go back 2-3days a week with no on call.
  • I currently work full time, but ideally I want to change my hours to working 4 mornings a week and either putting the baby in nursery or my MIL might look after it (she is self employed so might offer to have the mornings off to look after the grandchildren). If we can afford it though, I probably won't go back to work, we'll have to see how I feel once I actually am at home all day.

    Does anyone actually know how much private childcare is and is there a price difference for sure start goverment ones??
  • no idea YummyMummy2b. Ive tried looking at private childcare before just to try and figure it out and also because there are so many waiting lists around where we live, but i didnt get very far.
  • Well i was hoping that MIL might look after LO some times but they have just sold their house and are looking realyl far away so that will be a no go!

    There is my granma who lives near to where I work - she used to look after me and my sister when we were little. BUt dunno if she would be able to cope now.

    But staying athome just isn't an option - i earn the most and couldnt ask OH to give up his job. And i have to go back to work full time in order to get full maternity pay.
  • I came back to work 34 hours after 7 months maternity, my lo is in full time private nursery and it cost's a fortune. There is no way we could afford not to work. When I have baby number 2 ill prob drop a day of work and have them both in private nursery 4 days a week.
  • I came back to work 34 hours after 7 months maternity, my lo is in full time private nursery and it cost's a fortune. There is no way we could afford not to work. When I have baby number 2 ill prob drop a day of work and have them both in private nursery 4 days a week.
  • It costs us ??31 a day for Lily to go to nursery. x
  • I must admit this is something that I worry about.

    I absolutely LOVE my job and currently work full-time. I always thought that I would never want to give up work, but now I'm seriously starting to TTC I'm not sure I could return to work after maternity leave!

    I think that PIL will help with caring for LO and then will look at nursery for the other days. Luckily DH is a teacher, so he will have all the holidays off, and as he's in work early he finishes early. I start later so at least that means LO won't be in nursery for that long a time.

    xxx
  • I must admit this is something that I worry about.

    I absolutely LOVE my job and currently work full-time. I always thought that I would never want to give up work, but now I'm seriously starting to TTC I'm not sure I could return to work after maternity leave!

    I think that PIL will help with caring for LO and then will look at nursery for the other days. Luckily DH is a teacher, so he will have all the holidays off, and as he's in work early he finishes early. I start later so at least that means LO won't be in nursery for that long a time.

    xxx
  • I spend alot of time thinking about this one! I will go back to work as I enjoy my job (I'm a Corporate Training Officer in local government) but not full time. Will prob do 3.5 days and my mum has offered to help out too. xx
  • Hiya
    I have looked good and hard into this before we even started TTC as I needed to know if we could afford childcare and if/what childcare entitlements we could get!
    I work 30 hours in retail and my husband is self employed so we are not classed as being on a 'low income' but with all the bills etc we don't have enormous amounts of money!
    With my job I always work every other weekend and then have the other days off in the week so we would only be needing childcare for 6 days out of a fortnight which is really good!
    I will definately return to work as I am in the slow process of making my way up the career ladder but think having a baby later would slow me down if i were further up in management rather than where I am now - does that make sense? Also the more money I would earn the less help with childcare we would get so would effectively be worse off!
    I think it is something that everyone needs to consider before starting TTC as its not as straight forward as you may think and some people are shocked at the private nursery prices!
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