CAREERS WEEK: Getting to grips with childcare!

For working families in the UK, childcare is probably the biggest headache. Choosing the right setting for your child/children, how to make it work with drop offs and pick ups, full-time or part-time, making the sums add up. Women often seem to feel that it all falls on their shoulders; making the decisions, working out whether their salary will cover the childcare costs for 1, 2 or 3 kids. In this rather epic review, I take childcare by the horns; examining the UK childcare situation now and the changes that are coming up.

CAREERS WEEK GUEST POST: Want to climb the career ladder? What's stopping you?

By Liz Rouse OBE

Where next?  Been doing the same old job or wanting to get back into work? Thinking about stepping on to the management ladder?   

For most of us, the way to progress within an organisation and indeed earn a bigger salary is to take on management responsibilities. If the case studies of "superwomen" profiled in the press are correct, some women can't wait to be managers - to be in charge. Not only do they run highly successful businesses or rise to the top of their profession, they also seem to have wonderful partners and children, and great childcare! But when faced with an opportunity to go into management or take the next step up the ladder, many of us are more ambivalent. Perhaps we are not so eager to take on extra responsibilities, worrying how this will affect our families and how we will manage childcare. Anyway we don't necessarily see ourselves as "managers", part of the hierarchy. Would we have to change, can we be true to ourselves and our values? 

CAREERS WEEK GUEST POST: Same World... different planet... What do you want now?

By Kerry Hales

Motherhood is a strange, yet wonderful place and the extra earth shattering news is that now your values have changed too.  You don’t want the same ‘anything’ that you did before – how could you?  So who are you now, and what do you really want?  Here are five exercises on ‘Finding what you want’:

CAREERS WEEK GUEST POST: On why motherhood and entrepreneurship can be the perfect fit

Emily Guille-Marrett is a mother of two young boys and founder of new company ReadingFairy.com. Here she talks about how having a baby changed her life and gave her the flexibility, creative space and confidence to set up her own business.

CAREERS WEEK: Q&A with Karen Mattison MBE, Co-founder of Timewise

Karen Mattison MBE

Multi award-winning Karen Mattison MBE is the co-founder and director of Timewise, along with business-partner Emma Stewart MBE. Karen was initially motivated by the skilled and experienced women she’d meet at the school gates, who wanted work to fit with family, and is now passionate about the gains for business of taking a more flexible approach.

Introducing CAREERS WEEK on Feminist Mum

Credit/Howard R. Hollem - Own photograph of original

For women with children, careers can be a tricky topic. Something to steer clear of during parent & baby coffee mornings. The sighs....stressed about going back to work, can't find the right job, stuck in a rut, the childcare problem. The word "career" itself can be pretty intimidating, maybe you don't imagine yourself with a career at all. Maybe you have simply hopped from job to job or juggled several jobs simultaneously to pay the bills. On the other hand, you might be in the career you always wanted but finding juggling family needs with professional demands an unexpected headache. You might be having an identity crisis about opting out for a while (forever???) to spend more time with the kids, or contemplating setting up your own business so you can be the boss for a change.

JOINT POST: On “free birth”. Tempted? Not tempted?

A woman gives birth unassisted at home. 

LaVergerrayCherie-birth, credit Lisa J. Patton, available by Creative Commons license

"Free birth”, or “unassisted birth”, can be defined as the decision by a pregnant mother to give birth unattended by medical or health professionals. This isn’t the stories we all know of babies arriving in hospital car parks or in the lift. It’s not a planned home birth when the midwives get stuck in traffic and the father ends up having to catch the baby. This is a decision to give birth in a place of your choosing with the people you want to be there. Maybe even alone.  A birth without medical supervision or intervention but not without a certain level of risk. In this joint post, Chrissy from AttachmentFeminism and Francesca from FeministMum tell us their opposing views: “tempted” and “not tempted”!

What's in a name?

Edmund Blair Leighton "Signing the register"

So recently there was an article in the Guardian by Lauren Apfel about how she wished she had given her daughter her surname. It sparked quite a lot of interest - what women decide to do with their names when they co-habit, get married or have children is tricky. All, yes ALL, my married friends, many of whom I think of as having feminist leanings, simply switched to their husband's surname. No debate, no inner turmoil. Just the simple, straightforward route. What was the reason? Mainly because they wanted a "family name"; something that would unite the couple and their children, creating a sense of identity and belonging. One friend said she just "sleepwalked" into it.