If you’re at home with the kids, what is stopping you going back to work? In Australia, the top 3 barriers for parents returning to work are lack of flexible jobs (90%), cost of child care (57%) and a general lack of self confidence (26%). Do you think these are similar to what is stopping you?

For those who are working, the main reasons for returning to work include income (85%), social interaction (50%), maintain skills (48%) and career aspirations (38%). And nearly 60% of CareerMums survey respondents stated that their current/previous employer did not have a flexible work or parental leave policy, or they were unaware that these policies existed.

And if you’ve been worrying about the credit crunch, in Australia,
* 28%  believe that the economic downturn will not affect their employment – so they expect to be in the same role and do not expect to be made redundant.
* 23% are considering a return to work sooner than expected.
* 15% indicated that there will be no change to their current plan of being on parental leave or staying at home with their children for an extended period of time.
* Around 10% of respondents have had their work hours reduced or their role has been made redundant.

Find out more about what is going on for working parents in Australia

Source: Survey stats from CareerMums www.careermums.com.au