THE NIGHT TIME WORRIES OF MUMS: REVEALED – MORE THAN HALF CAN’T SLEEP BECAUSE OF CAREER FEARS

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Published on Wednesday, 23 November 2011 11:07

Last Updated on 23 November 2011

Monica Costa

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The work worries of 1,554 mothers are today being made public by Women Like Us, the award-winning recruitment agency that helps mothers to find part-time jobs they can fit with family and provides them with career coaching to help with CVs, interviews and the hunt for jobs in today’s market.

Women Like Us conducted research amongst its members in November 2011, which reveals that 56 per cent of mothers in the capital are losing sleep due to career-related worry’.

One in five respondents said they worry about returning to work most between midnight and 6.00am (20 per cent). Correspondingly, 17 per cent of Women Like Us’ members register with the organisation in the middle of the night (between 10.00pm and 6.00am).”

Not being able to fit work with family is overwhelmingly cited as the greatest source of worry (43 per cent) followed by deciding what kind of jobs to apply for (12 per cent) and the thought of going to interviews again (9 per cent).

In addition:

· More than a third of mums (36 per cent) worry about work / finding work at least 6 times a day

· 1 in 5 (20 per cent) worry more than ten times a day

· One in ten London mums say they first started worrying about returning to work whilst pregnant

Karen Mattison MBE launched Women Like Us with her business partner Emma Stewart MBE six years ago, after meeting women at the school-gates, who told them they wanted to start working again, but didn’t know where to begin.

Karen says: “Many of us have our own internal ‘ticking career clocks’ and the stress surrounding the search for work post children is clearly keeping many women awake at night. There are so many issues to work through: ‘should I go back to my old career or is it time to start anew’?; ‘how should I cover the break to have kids on my CV?’; ‘where do I even begin looking for jobs in today’s market?’. Ironically, most mums will last have had access to careers advice when they themselves were children. Yet your circumstances change so drastically when you have children – this is when you need career support the most.”

RESEARCH BACKGROUND:

An online survey was conducted amongst 1,554 Women Like Us members between 3 November 2011 and 14 November 2011, via Survey Monkey. Based on candidates who have registered with Women Like Us in the past 6 months. Women Like Us has 28,000 registered candidates in total, a number of London-based mothers from low income households. www.womenlikeus.org.uk