journalist seeking mums to interview

[Claire H]

Hi, my name is Claire Halliday and I am a freelance journo with The Age newspaper in Melbourne. I am doing an article on working mums and am desperately seeking to do phone interviews with one or 2 mums, who are happy to talk about their return to fulltime or part-time work and whether it has been worth it, financially. Maybe they wanted to work to keep their foot in the career door and have returned 2 or 3 days a week and, by the time they pay 2-3 days childcare, there is not that much leftover.
I have written article (mostly) to appear in this Sunday's Age but am still looking for one or two great examples of women who feel like they are working 'for nothing' due to childcare costs.

Can anyone help?? Please email me on claireehalliday@yahoo.com asap as I was needing to chat tonight. A call to The Age switchboard, asking to be put through to my mobile, is another point of contact.

thanks.

Claire

[mumaoftwins]

Hi Claire

I don't know if I would be much use to you as for 1 I live in Brisbane and 2 I'm a SAHM, however I'm a SAHM because I have twins and the thought of going to work and juggling 11mth old twins is a bit dawnting to me so I quit my job and the 2nd reason is that I did look into going back to work and found that it wasn't worth it as child care for twins fulltime was approx $330.00 per week less my fulltime wage off $470.00 meant that I was going to work fulltime for $140.00 & my centrelink benefit for staying at home is $102.50 per week. So for the extra 37.50 per week, which wouldn't even cover fuel these days wasn't worth the stress of getting them ready for day care and the stress at work & the cost of car maintenance etc.