Life after maternity leave

Well, that's it... I officially returned from maternity leave on Monday 2nd June 2008, and on Wednesday 18 June 2008, I was informed that there was no job for me there. This did not come as a full surprise, since my close colleagues had been told the same thing in May, when our company was about to be taken over by another one.

The challenge, though, is that when you have been out of the market for 10 months, you hardly remember what you used to do at your desk, and you struggle to answer work-related questions, even from the most benign interviewers. The situation I ended up in was really not what I had in mind when I became pregnant. Of course, if my company had filed for bankruptcy, instead of being acquired, then things would have been worse because there would not have been any desk or payslip to go back to after the maternity leave.

Ironically, with our elder son starting school in September 2008, I was planning to return to work on a part-time basis, to do the school-runs, take him to speech therapy, and possibly to sports or music activities. "Part-time is a particular popular option for women returning from maternity leave" according to http://www.flexibility.co.uk and I understand why. If you leave your child in the care of a childminder, however kind and gifted, every afternoon of his first school years, will you not blame yourself if he soon develops behavioural problems or academic delay?

So, let's look around: accepting that I will not be able to cover trading market hours, but only around 10am-3pm at best, with no work travel involved, this does not really leave many options. I can only seriously consider some form of freelance activity, where I decide how much time I can dedicate to work and when. There is an interesting chart on page 7 of the EU paper http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/pubdocs/2006/96/en/1/ef0696en.pdf about working time and work-life balance. Instead of looking strictly at the time spent in paid activities, the researchers also looked at the time spent on household chores, childcare, etc. Enlightening!