Kirsten Lees - Let Go of My Leg: A Practical Guide to Returning to Work After Children

Let Go of
my Leg!

Kirsten Lees

Let Go of
my Leg!

A practical guide
to returning to work
after children

First published in 2005
by Hardie Grant Books
85 High Street
Prahran, Victoria 3181, Australia
www.hardiegrant.com.au

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Copyright text Kirsten Lees 2005

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication Data:
Lees, Kirsten.
Let go of my leg: a practical guide to returning to work after children.
ISBN 1 74066 150 8.
1. Working mothers. 2. Mothers Employment.
3. Work and family. 4. Parenting. I. Title.
649.1

Edited by Miriam Cannell
Cover and text design by Ellie Exarchos
Layout by Pauline Haas, bluerinse setting
Cover photography by Greg Elms
Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Contents

YOUVE HAD YOUR BABIES and youve taken a year or two, or five or more, to set them on the path to some kind of reasonably balanced adulthood, and now its time to start earning.

So what do you do?

Well, if you are a teacher or a doctor or an airline pilot, you go back to teaching, doctoring or flying planes... dont you? You just take up where you left off. After all, youre the same person with the same skills and qualifications as the woman who downed tools and took up play dough only a few years earlier.

Or is it that straightforward? Has the working world changed while youve been busy nurturing your brood? Or has what you want from that world and how you see yourself fitting into it changed? Very probably yes on both counts. And itll take some careful juggling or maybe a massive upheaval before you can find a way to slot yourself back into its machinery, and start making it work for you again.

Youre not without ideas of course. Teleworking and job sharing are features of a brave new world of flexible employment you have heard so much about. But whats the reality? Are companies truly seeking out new, flexible employees? Has what we know really begun to count, or is it still whether we know what we know during office hours that matters?

And how do you meet a job share partner? Through the personal pages? Are two people doing one job as good as one person doing one job? It sounds better, but can you sell it to an employer? Who has embraced these new ways of working and how have they made them work? What other options are out there for flexible work? How do you work out which one will best suit your family and make a case for it that will make your employer sit up and listen?

Setting out on your own has a lot of appeal too your own boss, your own structure, your own deadlines. It has to be easier to work around a family to achieve your career goals. If you are going to step back onto the career ladder, why not take control of the ladder and climb it at your own pace? But how do you know if working for yourself will work for you and who can help you to get it right?

Maybe leaping straight back into the workforce is a little daunting. What about a bit more study perhaps to update old skills, develop new ones or just to get a fragmented brain stirring again? A lot of women opt for courses as a stepping stone on the path back into paid work: from a two-day computer literacy course to a full-on PhD. Updating skills, regaining confidence or just putting off the inevitable? What are the courses that help bridge the gap between playgroup and pay cheque?

However you choose to make your move, getting out of the kitchen and onto the commuter bus can be daunting. And yes, uncertainty and shaky confidence and a measure of parental guilt can complicate and confuse you as you seek to make the right choices. How do you look after yourself and your family in this time of transition?

But remember, just as it can be daunting, the transition back to work is a time of opportunity and new possibilities. This may be the time to rethink career choices that you may have made (or were made for you) in your teenage years. Maybe you decide to recommit to those choices, and can do so now with a mature perspective and renewed vigour. Maybe you opt to change direction altogether.

You may have another thirty years or more of your working life ahead of you. The decisions you make over the next few months will have a great influence on how those years shape up. Think carefully. Who are you, and what do you want? What is the best way to get there?

Let go of my leg! is packed with insights and advice from women who have taken up the challenge and reinvigorated their careers after taking time out to be with their children as well as from recruiters and employers who are working out how to make the most of the new flexible workers that make up more and more of the people they employ.

Getting
back out
there

1
Whats
stopping you?

LETS GET DOWN TO THE NITTY-GRITTY. You have been away from work having children and bringing them up. Now you are ready to get a job. You want one that pays, that gives you some professional satisfaction and that leaves you enough time to spend with your family. Get yourself a job, then the rest will fall into place. That is how it should be and that was my approach when I decided it was time to re-engage with the world beyond babies.

I knew it was the right time for me to get back out and start working again. My daughters were more brilliant, and more beautiful by the day. But the fluffy pink haze scented with talcum powder and baby oil that floats down and embraces new mothers was getting a little thick: time to open some windows and let in some air.

There were other clues too, most in red on monthly bank statements. I got the hint. Mothering can be a great job but it doesnt pay the mortgage.

Mark, my partner, took a couple of weeks off work to give me some time and space to kick things into gear the job hunt was on. I decided I couldnt sit at home mulling over the job ads and sipping coffee while he got to grips with the children, tempting though it was. I had to get out of the house and leave him and the children to muddle their way through even if it meant, as I suspected, the girls wearing their clothes back to front and their nappies on their heads.

I took my first day very seriously. I dressed for the office and kissed the girls goodbye at the door. I felt so proud and so liberated as I headed to the bus stop (walking backwards most of the way, so that I could keep waving at them just as Mark did most mornings). This is the kind of mother I want for my daughters, I thought. This is the role model I want to create a working mother, a woman stimulated and excited by her contribution to the world beyond the Hills hoist, but a woman committed to her family and the joy she takes in bringing up her children. I felt I had it all I didnt, of course. I had a copy of the FinancialReview and a weekly bus ticket, but I didnt have a job.

When I didnt have a job by the time Marks leave was up and he headed back to work, I wasnt worried. I had registered with a couple of agencies and with all the online job search sites. I was receiving vacancy listings in my inbox every day. A couple of times a week I would be moved to fire off an application or two. None were for the job of my dreams, but no matter a bit of interview practice would hone my skills and give me a deeper understanding of the market when it came to applying for a job that I really wanted.