Working Around Having Children: What to Do

If you have children, you will quickly realise that your entire world changes. Your mindset will change, they’ll begin to dominate your thoughts and you’ll find yourself putting yourself second and doing whatever it takes to provide them with what they need. Your lifestyle will change. You’ll begin to revolve your daily routine and activities to meet their needs and preferences. The list goes on. One area that many parents find themselves struggling with when they decide to have children is work and income. Having a kid is expensive and you’re going to have to make sure that you can provide them with what they need from a financial perspective, securing good shelter, ensuring you can pay your bills, providing them with good food, replacing clothes routinely and more. This means earning money, but when you have a kid, time is tight too – especially if they haven’t reached school age. Here are some ways to work around children that could help you.

Freelance Work

If you don’t want to be confined to a nine to five, want to be able to work from home and want to be able to make your work schedule revolve around your home schedule, freelance work could be a good option. When you freelance, you are your own boss. You choose your own hours. You choose who you work for. You choose how much work you take on. You choose what you charge. The list goes on. Just make sure that you are registered as self employed and that you put aside owed tax from each pay packet to be able to pay your tax bill properly at the end of each fiscal year.

Foster Care

Foster care is another option. If you love caring for children, you can take in foster children and actually be paid for it too. You can learn more about how much do foster parents get paid here. Of course, it’s important to remember that foster care can be challenging. You need to be prepared for challenges that come hand in hand with caring for a child who has led a difficult or unstable life. You also need to be prepared for them to leave if the time arises that they will return to their birth parents or find an adoptive parent.

Remote Work

Another option is remote work. This can be an employed role, so you gain all the benefits of working in an employed position (such as annual leave, sick pay, compassionate leave, parental leave and more), but you get to work from your own home. You have to make sure that you have a strong internet connection, so before going for a job that provides remote working, you will need to run an internet speed test first, and then adjust your internet as needed so you can keep up with your required work output. Please note that if you do choose this option, you will still need to do your work, which means you may not be able to provide your child at home with all the care and attention they need throughout the entire day, so may still need to find childcare. Alternatively, you could agree flexible hours with your employer, which could allow you to still undertake activities like the school run and catch up on the time earlier or later in the day.

Give the above options some thought. They really could help!

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