Hanging in the balance – tipping the scales between work and home

I can’t say it’s not been tough having kids when many of my peers have been building a career. It’s meant things have often become stretched at either end, be it financially, putting in the hours in the office and outsourcing my children’s early years. I have become exhausted, been made redundant once, partly due to extreme stress that caused a mini nervous breakdown, and faced criticism from other people – notably one of my old childminders – for not pulling my weight at home. In all, it’s been a minefield, one that has left me exhausted, stressed, sometimes underpaid, and increasingly bitter.

The final straw came when, talking to my daughter about going back to school, she became tearful, obviously stressed herself, and only calmed down when I promised to speak to work about reducing my hours in order to start picking them up, something I’d avoided for years after playground anxiety from the days when Jonah would have regular pre-and post school public tantrums.

Those days are thankfully behind me. It’s high time I started getting a bit more involved. With only two years left of primary school for my eldest, many parents might be beginning to get their careers back on track. For me though, years of juggling have left me – and them – in need of some time out.

Last year, in particular, as their school went through a number of changes, I struggled to keep in touch, had become nonchalant about homework – after all, who wants to help with spelling when you’ve been staring at Word docs all day – and felt I was letting the side down on all fronts. By spreading myself thin at work and at home, all I’ve really achieved is to make my life own life more difficult, and at times, frankly miserable. Which is to say, no one should make a life for themselves they wouldn’t wish on heir my kids.

Granted, I dragged myself up to where my peers are, salary-wise, in that time, but it has always come at a cost: of over scrutiny for having to leave on time, work from home, and dash off to appointments or emergencies, where child free colleagues can network in the pub. It has forced me to take hasty decisions about childcare, and fail to bond with colleagues outside hours.

It’s a tough decision to take a step back, drop my wages down a notch, and head back into the social mire of the playground. But if I don’t do it now, I might never get the chance again.

On the plus side, I’ve negotiated the hurdles of the early years when I was still cheap, the days where the kids would come back cranky have been alleviated with the help of assorted childminders, paid to keep their cool and deal with it, where I might have lost the plot under 24/7 attack. But it’s come at the cost of developing relationships with Ava’s friends and their parents, which has meant she has become a bit isolated at school, while Jonah’s mates, whose parents I cultivated out of desperation for social contact in the days of being a stay-at-home mum, have become staple guests.

Now, with Ava facing an ASD diagnosis herself, I feel I need – and want – to put the time in to help her navigate a difficult social scene that may become increasingly painful as she gets older. I’m lucky I can afford to do it now – just about, although I worry, that I will feel that I’m doing more for less, now I have to fit in a school run, and taxi service, homework chivvying and teatime. I also worry I will feel underappreciated by children who rush home to Minecraft  rather than eager conversation about their day, and I feel I may feel underemployed at home, spending the hours simply catching up on domestic chores – perhaps even ditching the cleaner I’d come to value so much for saving from me unpaid drudge.

However, having crunched the numbers, and with – for once –  with an understanding boss, it looks as though it might come out even stevens, once tax and childcare is taken into the equation. In any case, there is perhaps nothing so precious as your children’s school days, so if I can be there to help make things that bit easier for them, it’ll all be worth it in the long run, I hope.