Last year I was invited on BBC Radio Scotland to talk about maternity leave. I was the one who’d taken extended leave (almost five years in total!), a decision I don’t regret at all.
The discussion began relatively balanced before becoming more pro work at the end. Callers were predominantly promoting a quick return to work, citing the usual reasons from financial need to social reasons.
On reflection of the debate I began to think that the benefits of taking a period out from work weren’t promoted enough. We seem to have the same debate over and over again about whether it’s right to return to work as soon as possible or become a stay at home mum. One aspect that is overlooked is that maternity leave can be an opportunity to take stock, reassess your life and take it in a different direction. Maternity leave brings a chance to study, retrain and even start your own business, mums who do this have become known as ‘mumpreneurs’.
It’s all to easy for us as women and mothers to complain about glass ceilings and inequality in the workplace. I’m not for a second saying that these don’t exist (it’s clear they do) or indeed that it’s right (it’s not) but I don’t see why we don’t focus more on what we are given – a decent period of time out where we can change our paths and opt out of the unfairness and inequality.
Most mums take at least six months out these days and although that period can be physically and emotionally tiresome I personally still felt that mentally I had space for other things – so much so I ended up starting my blog and doing some part time study. As my daughter has grown up I’ve managed to gain an HNC (now working towards a degree) and even start, fail and succeed in business.
It’s been a long and often disappointing and exasperating road but a lot more fulfilling than some of the alternatives. I’d encourage more women to embrace maternity leave and use it to their advantage. We don’t have to settle for the low-paid, part-time, temporary and often dull work that society offers us. If you count up how much you’d earn from a job like that and take off your expenses you may find that starting even the smallest venture could be more lucrative and a hundred times more fulfilling.
Over the five years I’ve been a stay at home mum (albeit with a few part-time jobs) I’ve learned that if you really want to make it happen and you’re willing to sacrifice and put the hard work in that anything is possible and the pay off at the end is huge!
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Erica Douglas is mum to Erin, 5, and lives outside Edinburgh. She runs the Littlemummy.com blog and is the author of The Complete Mum Blogger eBook and the Mum Blogger e-Course. Erica won the 2010 ‘Best Start Up’ award at the Business Mums Awards. She is someone I follow closely as 1) she makes a lot of sense, knows what she’s talking about and gives great business advice, and 2) because she has a wicked sense of humour! Not one to miss, so read on and don’t forget that you can also find Erica on Twitter.
Nicki x
I love this article! Everything she says is so true. I had to eventually find paid work in order to survive financially (after going though all my savings), but chose to cobble together WAH projects which bring in far oless than a full-time office position. This is partly as I am a single mother with no family nearby so I have no backup for sick days etc… The most interesting thing I have found is my chnge of mindset. I used to want to be rich – now I would be overjoyed just to be able to finish the month with enough left over for a trip to the zoo.
It really is amazing how your focus changes isn’t it?! My complete mindset with regards to work has changed enormously since starting a family. Thanks for reading and replying x
Well said Erica!
My route is similar in some ways – I was all set to go back to work after I had Kieran, I went to my “back to work” interview 4wks before I was due to start, with Kieran on my knee, and I realised there and then it just wouldn’t work. Practically we would have scraped by but it wasn’t the life we wanted for our family. The nature of my job, in management in the health & social care sector, could be very draining with long hours, on calls and could be hugely stressful. Having enjoyed my maternity so far I realised that it just wasn’t for me anymore. I put my notice in.
An instant drop in salary (to zero) was no joke but my husband and I were in agreement, I was to stay at home. Scary as it was, I embraced the opportunity and dipped my toe in a few different ponds. I ran my own retail direct sales business, very successfully in fact, for three years but it wasn’t “me” and now I am doing what I love, earning above minimum wage, am freelance so can be completely flexible around family life and the sense of contentment is amazing.
Had anyone told me when I found out I was pregnant that by now I would be Mum to two and a freelance writer and blogger- I’d thought they were crackers, but I embraced my maternity leave, which became unemployment, then working for myself and have never been happier.
Here here! I left teaching to have my first child knowing I couldn’t return to a career I loved but found too rigid and all consuming. In the last four years I’ve had and raised two children, finished an MA, worked frelance in schools, dabbled in education advisory roles and done an OU Creative Writing Diploma. Sometimes I look at my ‘maternity leave’ and I panic about where my career is headed, but the building blocks are there. And the chance to reflect and adjust to life with children has been a wonderful thing.
I really enjoyed reading this post and can relate to everything Erica says here. I took a year’s maternity leave, which only ended a week ago. But during that time I actually ended up going back to work on an ad hoc basis for 10 shifts. This was partly because I work in an industry where it’s really important to “keep your hand in” and partly because I wanted to make sure it was what I wanted to do at the end of my Mat leave. Turns out it wasn’t – not full time anyway. So I spent the last 5 months of my Mat leave setting myself up as a freelancer and branching out into other avenues of the industry. I think if it wasn’t for having that time out to re-focus what I wanted from a career and life in general, I would probably still be in the job I left. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it took having a baby and Mat leave to give me the confidence to take a risk. Hopefully it’ll end up paying off in the long run!