Just as the title says, doper women (or doper men) who’ve left work and come back, what has been your experience? How long were you out? Also, why did you leave and why did you come back? Were you forced to take an entry-level position when you came back or were you able to find employment at near the same level you were at when you left?
For what it’s worth, I probably won’t actually leave the workforce. Sometimes I would really, really like to; however, we need the insurance, want to pay for our kids’ college and also want to retire at a reasonable age.
But I’ve been so incredibly burnt out at work for at least a year, so I thought it’d at least make me feel better to give it some serious thought, even if I probably won’t do it. I considered finding a new job and am currently looking, but I’m not sure that’s the answer. I currently have a pretty high-profile job and many of the companies I’ve interviewed with assume that I wouldn’t want something lower-profile because of it. I could start my own business again, but that would require even more of my time than I’m giving to my work now without the benefit of insurance (my husband consults so insurance through him is not an option).
Plus, I would still have the same problems I do now - stress from dealing with all the logistics of child rearing and running a household while working. I know that a lot of people work and manage a household successfully and I guess we do ok, but at the same time, sometimes I wonder how worth it the whole situation really is.
I taught for about 5 years, then left until my youngest child was in school (about 9 years out of the workplace). When I needed to get a paying job again, all of the teaching jobs in my certification were gone. Gone. After a 6-month search and assistance from the superintendant of our local school system the best I could get was a temporary 5-week job at a school about 40 miles from home.
I pretty much started over and got a job doing data entry, which eventually led to my learing programming and systems analysis. Had I only majored in math or science instead of English and history, this would not have been necessary.
I worked in the trust department of a major bank prior to having kids. I was off work for about 8 years, until my youngest was in first grade. I am now working for my kids’ school district for about half of the pay I was making prior to having kids. But working for the school means I have the same vacation days as the kids. I am very fortunate that my dh does well and we can afford to have me underemployed.
This, I don’t quite understand. Why not make it clear in your cover letter and when you interview that you’re looking for a new position because you are looking for something that is more flexible and family-friendly, and that you are willing to trade the high-profile aspect for this?
I didn’t leave the workforce and come back, but I did negotiate down to 75% time at my company (which still gives benefits), which I LOVE. (And it’s already a fairly flexible place in terms of work scheduling). I really like it that both my husband and I don’t work full time – yes, that would be incredibly stressful.
The other thing that we do that is really, really helpful is that we have a great (part-time) nanny; when things get really stressful she is often able to help out by coming earlier and/or staying later, like when I go on business trips. I don’t remember your family situation, but perhaps if you are going to stay in a high-profile job, it might be worth the money to hire someone who can help out at those times when it gets overwhelming.
It wouldn’t have to be a major full-time expense necessarily, either. For example, I know an older lady from church who had a ton of kids/grandkids (therefore, tons of experience) and was looking to pick up a little extra money, and gets the kids of another family ready for school every morning. Our own nanny we share with another family, which means that we do have to schedule around the other family to some extent, but it is significantly cheaper that way.
I’ve never had the luxury of being able to stop working, but I did step down from management back to a plain Jane worker bee position in the same field.
This was met with much :dubious: in the initial interviews. I explained my pursuit of my current position thusly: “Yes, I have been managing a team of ten for the past six years. While I have enjoyed developing my leadership skills and expanding my skill sets, I found that management actually takes me away from the most interesting part of the work, which was the writing and design. I’ve found myself spending 90% of my time managing people, budgets, and schedules, and only 10% of my time is spent writing, editing, designing, or developing a creative piece. That’s what I got into this business to do, so I’ve decided to get back to that before my skills get too rusty.”
The real reason was because I would make about 30% more money simply by changing companies, and my workload dropped by about 60%. In fact, I am still mindnumbingly bored at work, except on paydays, when I remember why I like this gig so much. It’s less work, but all of the work is the stuff I actually want to do and I make more money than when I had to count beans and evaluate employees.
I - a guy - left to take care of my aunt. In 2007. Just before the credit crunch. I finally managed to get back into permanent employment in February after exhausting my savings and being on benefits for a year and am now on just over half my previous package.
I took 7 months maternity leave (8 weeks full pay, 18 weeks half pay plus £400/month statutory maternity pay, stat pay only for the last 4 weeks) and returned full-time.
Other than being 6 months behind my peers in terms of exams and job progression, I haven’t had any issues (and 6 months is nothing in the long run).
Because of the nature of rotations I returned to work in a paediatric emergency department- which meant crazy shifts, fairly heavy workload, and being seriously out of my comfort zone (first paediatric experience since med school) all while missing my own kid, and pumping in the on-call room every 4 hours. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” sums up my general feeling about those first 6 months.
After that I went to work in General Practice, which is a much more family friendly 9-6, M-F type deal.
I earn more than my husband, and love my work- SAHM isn’t an option for me.
I’ll be a self employed GP locum (think the medical equivalent of a substitute teacher) come March (if I pass my exam next week), which means any maternity leave with subsequent kids will be unpaid unless I get a regular salaried post, which probably means I’ll just take on extra shifts at weekends or evenings (lower paid, less senior medical jobs to cover annual leave or sickness) when I’m pregnant and a shorter maternity leave.
One of the things which has really helped is getting a cleaner. A luxury I know, but a justifiable one. I worked out that 3 hours of her time is roughly equivalent of 6 of mine (everything takes longer when you have to multi-task with a toddler) and coming home to a clean, tidy house with an empty laundry basket every Tuesday is worth every penny she charges, because I can spend more time doing the things I enjoy with my family and can stress less about running the house.
I left an engineering job shortly after my first child was born. I left him in daycare for about a week and decided that was crazy. I stayed home for three years until kidlet #2 was 1 year old. At that point I started going nutso and MrSin said I either needed to go back to work or go back to school. I couldn’t find a part time engineering job so went back to school to polish up the old engineering skills. I found I loved school even more as an adult and ended up with a PhD.
Not to gloss over it, it was hard financially and emotionally. At the time I quit Mrsin and I made within a couple of $$ of each other so our income was cut in half. The singuy also changed jobs and we moved across the country away from all family and friends. His new job did not come with a company car, so we only had one car and he had to take the bus to work. So we had to find a home close to a bus stop. And we moved to upstate New York in the fall, didn’t meet a single neighbor with kids til spring. Heh, the neighbor kids were initially told to avoid our house because we were both engineers and therefor must be a couple of gay guys, not that there’s anything wrong with that hee
The money thing was hard, the isolation was hard and the lack of intellectual stimulation was hardest (the interwebs hadn’t been invented yet). But, yeah, it was worth it.
I was out of the work world for almost 10 years. When my second child was born, I decided to do the stay-at-home thing, and by the time child #4 was born, the idea of having a regular job seemed totally ludicrous. But when the youngest started in school, my excuses for staying home just weren’t as compelling, but then again my husband is a workaholic, so any school holidays, sick days, or summer vacation, I am the one to take care of the munchkins.
So I was looking for a job with infinite flexibility that would hire someone who’d been out of the workforce for a decade. Pretty tall order. I’d worked as a teacher before, but I didn’t have credentials in the state we currently live in.
But the most amazing job just sort of fell in my lap. I now work for a non-profit science education organization. I do things like run the after-school program, the summer camp, and one-time events. We just had a huge pumpkin-chunkin’ contest and all the kids built these amazing catapults and trebuchets. My job is hugely flexible and a great deal of fun.
I didn’t take any time off when my children were born. Back in the dark ages 23 years ago Canada didn’t have the exceptional maternity benefits we now enjoy. I did decide however when they were approaching their teen years to take a year off and spend extra time with them while they would still talk to me. That was July 2001 and it turned out to be a particularly poor decision. My year off turned to 2 and the only job I could find was in retail management. It took me another 2 years to find a similar job to the one I left and that was at a reduced salary. My issue was more timing than a work gap however you never know what the job market will be like tomorrow, it’s definitely a risk.
Let me add that although I had difficulty getting work afterward, it was well, well worth it to me to have the time at home with my children when they were pre-schoolers. Sure, for about 9 years we had no vacations, almost never went out to eat, bought no new furniture. However, this was planned for. We bought all our major appliances and furniture before having children. We had already done lots & lots of travel, domestic and foreign.
I saved money by breast feeding (no formula costs), making a lot of baby food by pureeing adult food, almost never used disposable diapers, etc. I also learned to bake bread, which was lots of fun and which the girls enjoyed helping with when they were old enough. I used a bicycle with a child seat for local trips. We made much use of the public library, which at that time had a bookmobile that had a local stop. I was in the best physical shape of my entire life before or after.
Thanks for all the responses so far! I was looking around for a job that had fewer hours or offered more flexible time, but unfortunately I work in a really fast-paced environment. It’s hard to find a product management job, especially in healthcare, where I would have enough flexibility to set my own hours. However, I might see if I can negotiate something with my company. I tried earlier when my role wasn’t quite as important, but I think I’ve become important enough for them to want to keep me. Like I’ve said before, I do a lot of public speaking, media events, etc. But I could be wrong. I suppose it never hurts to ask.
