Two Professional Parents

BarraOG

Hi there,

My wife and I currently live in Sweden and would like to move back to Ireland in around 3 years time. At that rate, our children will be aged 5 and 3. And we hope to have one more before moving back...

There are many perks that make living in Sweden excellent when you have young children. Preschool costs around €150 a month per child. Parents with children under 8 are entitled by law to work 6 hours a day instead of 8. Its typical for most children to stay at preschool or school until there parents are finished work at 5 and they are fully supervised and fed.

I'm wondering how parents in Ireland manage to juggle leaving and collecting children to school and commuting to work. What entitlements exist in law to facilitate this? Are these entitlements equal for both men and women? School finishes at 3, while mom and dad finish work at half 5. Who takes care of the children in the meantime?

As well as this, I'm interest in learning how parents who wish to spend more time with their children achieve this goal. For example, my wife and I are interested in the idea of working less than 40 hours a week. Is it common for Irish professionals to work part-time? What typically would an employer's attitude be is you asked to work 80%? How common is it for a man to do so? We both work in the IT industry.

Thanks for your help!

Barry

Moonbeam

BarraOG wrote: »

Hi there,

My wife and I currently live in Sweden and would like to move back to Ireland in around 3 years time. At that rate, our children will be aged 5 and 3. And we hope to have one more before moving back...

There are many perks that make living in Sweden excellent when you have young children. Preschool costs around €150 a month per child. Parents with children under 8 are entitled by law to work 6 hours a day instead of 8. Its typical for most children to stay at preschool or school until there parents are finished work at 5 and they are fully supervised and fed.

I'm wondering how parents in Ireland manage to juggle leaving and collecting children to school and commuting to work. What entitlements exist in law to facilitate this? Are these entitlements equal for both men and women? School finishes at 3, while mom and dad finish work at half 5. Who takes care of the children in the meantime?

As well as this, I'm interest in learning how parents who wish to spend more time with their children achieve this goal. For example, my wife and I are interested in the idea of working less than 40 hours a week. Is it common for Irish professionals to work part-time? What typically would an employer's attitude be is you asked to work 80%? How common is it for a man to do so? We both work in the IT industry.

Thanks for your help!

Barry

It is very different here . After school care costs about 5 euro an hour and full time creche in or around Dublin 1k + a month .
Kids get 1 year of free pre school and start school at 4 or 5 usually closer to 5 .
You can ask your employer for a 4 day week , some of the big multinationals in the IT sector would probably facilitate it but it would not be the norm .
The normal working week here ranges from 35-40 hours but it all depends on your job and especially in IT that can easily spiral upwards .

There is no legislation here to help working parents .

Chattastrophe!

It's very different here. We're paying over a thousand euro a month for full-time creche fees for one baby - maybe you'd get a childminder for a bit cheaper than that; the problem is that, if the childminder is sick or can't take the child for any reason, most employers won't look kindly on a parent taking time off last-minute to look after the child. (Of course, the flip-side of that is that the creche won't take the child if the child is sick.)

There are no entitlements or regulations in Irish law to facilitate school collections. Some people have family to do so (not an option for us) or childminders, or for example our creche offers an afterschool facility for older children where the creche workers collect the children from school.

As far as I know there are good opportunities in Dublin and (I think) Cork for IT professionals at the moment. Also Belfast, if you'd consider Northern Ireland (I know nothing about the entitlements there, I doubt they're much better.) As for working part-time hours, it'll be a matter for discussion with potential employers, and I guess their willingness to compromise on hours will depend on how much they want you working for them. I definitely wouldn't consider it a common thing, for either mothers or fathers, to do so - not in my experience, anyways.

pwurple

Working less hours would be easier as a contractor in IT, rather than full time, but it all depends on the role.

Some places do allow you to take parental leave (unpaid leave) for a day per week, this is 90 days (or nearly 2 years) per child, up to the age of 8. I don't know if you would qualify for that?

For childcare, a lot of people use au pairs, childminders and nannies as well.

With after school, some schools run after school programmes, like music or sports classes or supervisede homework.

BarraOG

I found the following: Working parents have the legal right to a period of unpaid leave of up to four weeks in a year and overall no more than 13 weeks within the first five years of their child's life.

pwurple

BarraOG wrote: »

I found the following: Working parents have the legal right to a period of unpaid leave of up to four weeks in a year and overall no more than 13 weeks within the first five years of their child's life.

That's outdated... Law was changed.

This site has the up to date info

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/employment_rights_and_conditions/leave_and_holidays/parental_leave.html

No Pants

I'd recommend staying in Sweden until the future child is old enough to go to school.

Sleepy

I have to say I'd agree with No Pants. Unless one of you is prepared to give up the job for 5/6 years and be a stay-at-home parent, you'll be spending an entire salary (or more) on childcare for 3 and there's very little flexibility for working parents outside of the public sector who are still on a hiring freeze.

pwurple

I think that's a limited view... Contractors can pretty much determine their own hours, especially if it's in a highly demanded area, like oracle expertise.

Sweden has a fairly severe tax regime, every family will be different, but they may be better off here. They will have to run their own calculations.

Sleepy

Some contractors can dictate their own hours but, lets face it, it's not the norm in IT and it's going to affect your rate, not to mention your ability to get work if you don't have very strong support systems in place for cases when a child is sick etc.

The severe tax regime should really suit working families over singles (almost the opposite of ours) but obviously, individual calculations should be run.