When are you ready to go back to work after having a kid? Some moms are itching to get back to work within weeks, others take years and some never want to return to work after having kids. Others want something very different from work post-children.

Going back to work could mean missing out on lazy snow days

A friend, who has two children, and I were recently talking about what she’d need to return to work.

We mulled over these questions:

• Did she want the same things from work today that she wanted before children? No, she wanted flexibility.
• Was she willing to hunt for a job? She’s interested in working, but she’s hoping something will turn up. The motivation isn’t there yet to hunt aggressively.
• Did she need the money? She’s lucky enough that the money would be nice to have but they’d continue to live well without it.
• And what did she want from a job? No surprises here, something interesting that was flexible.
• Was she getting bored? Not yet, she said.
• Did she want a full time or part time job? Something that let her spend some of the summer with her kids and pick them up after school.
  

After talking to her, I went hunting to see what kinds of resources were available that helped moms like her with this decision.

The answer? Not much.

I did find a great online quiz by Act3, an organization founded to help moms re-enter the workforce. Act 3′s “Back To Work Readiness Test” asks many of the same questions that we asked, including asking moms to rate their agreement with the following statements:

• “I find I’m spending less and less time on my children’s activities.
• “As my children get older I feel the need to try to accomplish something else.”
• “If a job that I liked dropped in my lap, I would take it.”

You can do Act 3′s test anonymously if you don’t want to leave your name and details. It’s worth trying if you are mom weighing up the pros and cons of this tough questions.

What sort of questions did you ask? How did you tackle this issue?

What would you ask your friend if she was weighing up this decision?

Photo source: BRosen’s photo courtesy of Flickr.com Creative Commons at http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosengrant/

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