Being a younger mum (24), I still have many personal ambitions, especially on the academic and career side. Over the past few months, I’ve found myself in the sometimes difficult position of trying to balance family and parental needs with my own personal needs. I love being a stay at home mum, but there is a part of me that still requires a higher level of mental stimulation and ambition outside of being a good wife and mother. My own interests lie in pursuing further academic qualifications to enable me to move into a career which is more in keeping with my passions - children, teaching and education.

My inital plan was to return to college for one year and then do a vocational degree at university, this would have meant that my daughter would be cared for by a blend of myself, my husband, family and either a nursery or childminder. However it’s become clear that this plan is not right for us, mainly because we do not want to rely on outside care ie childminder/nursery.

Since Erin was born I have taken responsibility for the lion’s share of her care, I enjoy nurturing her and am proud that she is receiving such a lot of influence from her family and I want to see this continue. Like most women, and perhaps humans in general, I want to have my cake and eat it. I want to be a full time stay at home mum, available to take Erin to mother and toddler group and then next year to playgroup, on hand to do the school run etc.. however, I also want to ensure that when the time comes I have given myself the best possible chance of picking up a decent career in an enjoyable field.

My situation, like all parents, is constantly changing and my current solution is to attempt to gain a degree through the Open University. Their system is very flexible and all the course work can be done from home. The degree courses are split into units, with each unit having a credits value, you basically collect 360 credits for the ful degree. Of course each unit also comes at a price, around £300 for a 30 point unit and £560-£620 for a 60 point unit. Yup, it’s going to be quite expensive, although, it’s not as bad as it first seems. I receive £200 a year from ILA Scotland and apparently I am eligible for a seperate grant of up to £200 per unit (unconfirmed as yet). I’ll try an accumulate the small amount I make from this blog which should help with the balance, all in all I think it’s do-able, and at the moment seems to be the best solution all round.

I’d love to hear from anyone that has done, or is doing a degree with the Open University