mrssavageangel

First time mother just trying to figure out where to go from here.

childcare

The price we pay

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I never wanted to be a stay at home parent. My plan was to go back to work when Oscar was one, probably full time. The only reason I didn’t was financial. Full time childcare along with my commute meant that it would cost me more money per month than I was going to earn at my mid level admin job. So I quit and stayed at home.

The recent changes to the Government’s support for external childcare have made me wonder if I would have made the same decision had it been mine to take today. Maybe we could have made it work (if only just). And because financially it would have (just) worked, I would have put him into paid daycare, five days a week, regardless of how hard, or stressful or tiring it would have been. No other concerns came to mind back in 2013. It was all about the money. As seems to be a common thread in recent policy. I’d have done it and that would have been that.

And the thought of that makes my blood run cold.

Not because I’ve loved being able to be at home with Oscar. It hasn’t been easy being at home with him. Life with autism, isn’t easy. There have been many days where I just wanted to hand him over to someone else and go to a crappy admin job, just to get out of the house, to get away from what I’m having to deal with at home. No, it scares me because of what might have been missed. It scares the hell out of me to think that perhaps a daycare setting would have missed his speech delay or his different developmental paths. What if his ‘difficult’ behaviour (particularly between the ages of 2-3) had just been classed as that and nothing more. He could have reached the grand old age of three, with a label. A label of difficult, challenging or God forbid naughty. It makes me shake when I think what might have been had we been able to make it financially and I’d left someone else to pick up on the things he was so desperately trying to tell us.

I know my experience of raising my child has been a little different to that of other families, but I didn’t know that was going to be the case. How many other families are missing chances for early intervention or help or support? Just because parents are being leant on so very heavily to leave their children and earn money?

Everyone takes that choice as to whether they return to work after having children. I did. But I never considered anything other than the financial implications, when I now know, there was so much more that I should have been weighing up. I have ultimate respect for how any family makes it through the day. Raising children is the hardest job in the world. But where is the support for Stay At Home mums and dads? Why are we used by the media as scape goats for the ills of the economy? It feels so humiliating to be lumped in to a category of unemployed, when I’ve spent all my time and energy working harder than I’ve ever worked in my life, raising, what I now know is, a child on the spectrum? A diagnosis of which could have been missed had I done what the government wants mothers to do; go back to work and raise the country’s GDP.

I hope it’s clear I have no opinion on whether staying at home or working is a better life choice. My issue is the pressure applied to people, but particularly mothers, to bolster the coffers.

After all isn’t a child’s future more than just pounds and pence?

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Money, money, money…

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So we had a baby back in 2012 (Oscar, he’s 17 months and awesome!). We’d be married nearly 4 years and together for nearly 14 and he was totally planned. But what I didn’t plan for, rather naively, was the financial impact this baby would have on our lives. I’m not talking about the cost of nappies or putting him through University (although holy crap how do we do that!??!). I’m talking about something much more fundamental and that was my capacity to earn.

I absolutely expected to go back to work. I didn’t loooooove my job, but I liked it enough, it was in a sector I wanted to be in and I was doing OK (having been promoted twice in a year). I fully expected to go back once my year of maternity leave was finished. The organisation had a generous maternity package and I saved enough to cover me through the three months at the end of my leave which would be unpaid. I was OK.

However when we started to look into childcare in the local area I was horrified to find out just how expensive it was. I wasn’t on great money (slightly under the national average), but it wasn’t bad. However all of this would be swallowed by childcare fees. When I added to that travelling costs and taxes I found that, even if I went back full-time, I would be paying out more than I earnt per month, without even contributing to the household costs in any way. I was horrified.

We looked at the numbers and realised we could afford for me not to work, but we couldn’t afford for me to continue working in my current role. I knew I should feel grateful. So many people said they wished they were in my position (at least to my face). But for me the thought of giving up any form of financial independence left me feeling slightly nauseous! I just didn’t see it coming and with all the fuss this government makes about “getting people back into work”, how could this even be the case? I was and still am baffled!

So these were the circumstances I found myself in and the circumstances that I have now had to accept. Don’t get me wrong I have days when I absolutely love not having to leave Oscar and days where I feel I’m doing a real bang up job. But there are also days I feel completely isolated and guilty and lacking in any kind of control. I have had my own source of income, one way or another since I was 13 years old. Moving away from that and living a very different life has been harder than I ever anticipated.

But people to do it all the time, some for many years. They seem happy enough. Are they? Maybe I should ask them how they do it and whether they ever felt the same kind of shame I do not contributing and if not how come? Seriously. I’d love to know how to live this life, without feeling guilty all the time.

Or as I said in another post, maybe I just need to look harder for another job. One that pays enough to make it worthwhile, even if it’s only just worthwhile.

I’m not running down what I’m doing. I’m proud of the care I’m able to give my son. A friend said to me the other day “you’re very brave to do this, I don’t think I could do it!”. I don’t feel particularly brave, but it was nice of her to say. I just have to figure out how to move forward in a way that’s best for all of us. And I guess that’s really the biggest change I’ve had to make.