Your maternity leave is coming to an end soon and you are considering what to do next. Go into employment or become an employer yourself? Many moms start a job that is initially just a part-time job while on maternity leave, but eventually becomes something more. Are you hesitant to continue with your business or take the plunge and join the workforce? Or are you just now thinking about what to start a business in?
Work on maternity leave
Working on maternity leave is very different from working without children. Many moms choose different ways to earn money from home or from a cafe. A necessary feature of working from home on maternity leave is, above all, that you can do it at any time. Children are unpredictable. You rarely manage to stick to a scheduled routine with them. So regular working hours are not appealing to mothers on maternity leave. When maternity leave ends and the children are handed over to the clutches of the school system, change sets in. Now we can go to work in the morning and leave in the afternoon. We have a choice. But what’s better for a mother?
Employment for a mother: benefits
Employment offers the following benefits (not only) to mothers:
- Security,
- Employee benefits such as sickness and nursing benefits,
- Fixed working hours,
- Working space outside the home.
Job security
Children cost money. If you are a single mother or if you don’t have that much money as a family, job security is one of the most important things. Responsibility comes first. Entrepreneurship is insecure. You never know exactly how much you’ll make the next month, if you’ll even pay rent and shoes for the kids. That’s why many mothers choose to work on a contract after maternity leave for this very reason.
The security of your former job?
Legally, your employer should keep your job for the duration of your parental leave. However, in practice, employers often get around this requirement. Positions are abolished or remain only formally and the job description changes completely. It’s not so surprising. The company has done without you for several years, not every employer wants to fire that worker who has been filling in for you for six years and take you back. When you’re looking for a new job, you may run into the problem that companies don’t like to hire mothers of young children. They know what you may not want to admit yet, that the children will always be sick. But here again, employment provides security just for you.
Sick leave and sick pay
As a mother, if you fall ill with a disease that your children bring home from nursery, you can go on sick leave at work and not be left without an income. But more important is the aforementioned sick pay. If the children get sick, you can stay at home with them and receive 60% of your salary. All you need is a certificate from the paediatrician. No one can stop you from caring for a family member. However, practice may not be so rosy. You often have to do the work anyway – either from home or when you return. Your employer may blame you for your frequent absences and stress you out. On the other hand, it depends on the job you choose. If your boss is a mother with grown-up or young children, you are more likely to be understood than condemned.
Fixed working hours
Maybe you’ve got used to working in your spare time on the evening news or when the kids are in their room for a while. But maybe you never got used to it. A job means you work from a certain hour to a certain hour. You close the office door behind you and go home. You don’t have to bring work home, there’s no one to find you outside of work hours. For a mother, this can be a blessing, because when you pick up your kids from daycare, you can give them your full attention. You don’t have to be always partially present in your business. You’ve left work at work. Work can wait till tomorrow.
You don’t have to work from home
You may have enjoyed working from home before motherhood. But on maternity leave, you enjoyed it too much. Imagine that oasis of peace. You sit down in your office chair, turn on your computer, and no one is yelling. Nobody’s asking you to do anything. No one to disturb you. The piles of laundry and toys strewn on the floor don’t have to make you nervous because they’re not with you. They’re out there somewhere, in that distant world you’ll be returning to in a few hours. So this is what business will only give you if you pay for your own office. Your employer will probably offer it to you himself, what’s more, he’ll demand it of you. So finally, no one can accuse you of not being at home with the kids.
Employment for a mother: disadvantages
The disadvantages depend on the advantages. There are times when the security of a fixed-hours office can be more of a prison than a liberation.
Disadvantages of employment:
Often sick children.
Fixed hours.
Time-consuming commute to work.
Probationary period.
Children are often sick.
Yes, you can stay home with the children when they are sick. But you only get 60% of your salary. And in most cases, you’ll have to do a big part of your work anyway. You’ll lose money, and you’ll still be working from home or going broke when you return from sick leave. Add to that the stress of wondering how your colleagues will manage without you, or the nerves of telling your boss again. You have to produce a certificate from a paediatrician for your employer to award you benefits. Yet the common childhood viruses that children traditionally suffer from at the start of the school year can be managed without one. It all depends on the type of job and the atmosphere in the workplace. Sometimes the sick leave can be resolved by switching to a home office or partial home office. Other times, you can take a sick day with the kids or arrive at work at a different time when you have found someone to look after your sick children. Either way, 60% of salary while nursing a family member looks nice on paper, but in practice it may not be such a convenient solution.
Fixed working hours.
Children don’t have to be sick. They also have clubs, nursery parties and friend groups. On top of that, you have to take time off work to drive them there or attend with them. Fixed hours when the employee attends work are not an advantage in this case. Life with children is varied and requires a lot of flexibility that a job won’t give you. On the other hand, you are not alone in this. Most mothers go to work. The school system has to account for working parents with fixed hours.
Commuting to work is a time sink.
The calmness of your own office is an oasis of calm compared to a busy home. But you have to drive there. Of course, it depends on the distance you spend in transport. But in general, you probably can’t get under a few dozen minutes. You’ve probably learned on maternity leave that with kids, every minute counts. That won’t change once you start work, on the contrary. Your commute to work may give you space to relax and read on the subway, but eventually you’ll tire of it. Because you could have used that time to do chores or play with your kids.
Probation period
If you start a new job after maternity leave, the probationary period can become a new bogeyman for you. No employer can fire you because your children are sick too often. If you are not on probation. So the legal protection of the nursing institute will not help you much if you start your new job at a time when your children are often ill. That is, at the beginning of the school year.
Freelancing for mother
The main advantage associated with entrepreneurship or freelancing, not only for a mother, is freedom. But freedom is never free. Those who want freedom must also accept some uncertainty. It depends on the industry you are in. In some places you are almost certain of contracts and earnings, in others you are going into the unknown.
Freelancing for a mother: the advantages
The main advantages of freelancing for a mother are:
Flexible working hours.
Work from home.
Staying at home with the children when they are sick.
You are your own boss.
Flexible working hours
Freelance work allows you to enjoy motherhood to the full. Is it forecast to be beautiful tomorrow and it’s raining cats and dogs today? Leave the kids at nursery until five today, work as hard as you can and pick them up after lunch tomorrow. You’ll take a trip. In the mood to laze around with the kids today instead of chasing deadlines? Indulge yourself, paint, play and comb dolls. On Saturday, let the kids sit in front of the TV and catch up on what you missed today. You don’t have to take time off for kiddie carnivals and orienteering, you just go with them. You don’t have to worry about who’s taking the kids to the doctor or the dog to the vet. You take them there and you just work an hour longer in the evening. You’re the boss of your time and you can manage your family’s needs. Flexibility is the main advantage of freelancing.
Work from home
Working from home offers other benefits than watching all the Olympics coverage in real time while people at work wait for the footage. Above all, working from home means you can get household, pet and other things done during working hours. You get up in the morning, throw your laundry in the washing machine and go to work. When you take a break, you hang the laundry. You do the cleaning during your relaxing break. And when your head is fuming, you walk the dog or go for a run. You don’t have to deal with the postman or the PPL, you’re home, you’re always reachable. And most importantly, you don’t have to commute to work, so you save a lot of time every day.
And when the kids are sick…
When the kids are sick, you just leave them at home. You don’t have to deal with doctor’s notes and benefit forms. You don’t have to answer to anybody. You can just leave the kid at home to lie down for as long as you need to. Older kids can respect that you can’t attend to them and have to work. It’s harder for the smaller ones. You have to do the work when they’re watching TV, resting, or in the evenings when they’re sleeping. But if you compare it to a job, you just have to do 60% of the work, because you wouldn’t even get more than that on sick leave. Plus, you can definitely put off some jobs to the next week, you don’t have to take on extra, you can optimize.
You are your own boss
When the kids are on vacation, you don’t have to deal with grandmothers and foster care. Of course, you’ll work better without the kids, so be sure to send them to grandmas and camps. But it’s not a necessity. If you have one day left of your vacation with nowhere to put your kids, the world won’t fall apart. You’re home. You don’t have to ask anyone for a vacation either. You can go on vacation. What’s more, you can take your work on vacation with you. Just go to the cottage with the kids, work in the evenings and enjoy the sun during the day. You’ll only know this luxury when you’re a freelancer. You decide how to organise your time.
Freelancing for mother: disadvantages
From the advantages also derive the disadvantages of freelancing (not only) for a mother:
Uncertainty of earnings.
You don’t have fixed working hours.
You work from home.
You forget what living people look like.
When you’re at home with the kids, no one will give you a penny.
Uncertain earnings
The most significant disadvantage of freelancing for everyone is the uncertainty of earnings. There are some fields in which you are more likely to get lucrative contracts than others. But even if you know that there will always be plenty of work, the certainty melts away in the event of a long-term disability. Moreover, the market can change dramatically at any time, as the crises of recent years have shown. For a young family, this can be the deciding factor in choosing between freelancing and job security.
You don’t have fixed working hours.
Freedom is not free. You don’t have to go to work from eight to five. But many freelancers eventually learn that they work 24 hours a day instead. You’re the one who has to set the boundaries for clients and partners. You are the one who has to determine when you turn off your work phone and keep your email inbox closed. Sometimes it takes a lot of self-control to attend to the kids and not think about what’s in our inbox and what we need to get done.
You work from home
You take the kids to daycare and close the door behind them. Then you come home, turn on the computer and get to work. But at home, you can never quite forget about your chores. They’re everywhere. You step on a Lego block on your way to the kitchen to get coffee, and you still have to pour your coffee into the mug sitting in the dishwasher. No one in the cafeteria will cook your lunch for you, and no technician will fix your internet. What you make at home is what you get. Even at work. Some may consider it more of a curse than a blessing.
You forget what living people look like
A lot of moms look forward to work because the only time they get to see people other than their kids and their husbands is at work or at school. It’s not a little. After a few years on maternity leave, many of us have forgotten what living people look like, and even the most reclusive of us have begun to find self-talk annoying. Any freelancer who works from home will recognize this very difficulty. He or she may lack socialization. This can be solved by evening get-togethers with girlfriends or going to a public gym. But with kids, you need a babysitter for such occasions. Which makes things very complicated.
When you’re at home with the kids…
When the kids get sick, you stay home with them. And that’s both a blessing and a curse. Because you only get the money you work for as a freelancer. All you can do at work is spend your days with a sick child over a story and stroke his fever-sweaty forehead. 60% of your salary is guaranteed. Now you have to work hard for that 60% when you put a feverish child to bed. That’s not for everyone either.
Summary, what’s better for the mother?
It depends on each individual mom and each family’s situation. Some jobs you can’t even do as a freelancer, and conversely, in some fields no one will hire you and you have to work from home. It all depends on your abilities, character and personal preferences. It also depends on the possibilities and opportunities that open up for you at that particular time in your life. Because nothing is black and white. So find out early on what it will be like with your employer if you stay at home with the kids. Whether you’ll actually have that 60% of your salary without a job. Think about how you’re going to concentrate with a scattered legos crunching under your feet and bread crumbs next to your computer.
Think carefully, because in the end it’s all about what works for you and your children.
