At what point do your choices around having kids begin to impact on your desire or ability to work? For many women, the answer is 3. No matter how old you are or what ages your kids may be, women with 3 kids are less likely to work than women with 2.

According to News Ltd reports:

This makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Here are some of the reasons 3 is the tipping point for many women:

-the cost of childcare when 3 kids are small is massive. Not to mention the difficulty in even finding suitable childcare at all.

-a lack of confidence and skill gap in women who have been out of the workforce for a long time due to having 3 kids.

-the logistical complications of managing the busy lives of 3 kids outside work hours.

There are so many factors to take into account when deciding how many children to have – and of course it’s not always a deliberate decision – accidents happen. One Mamamia reader, Ashley* emailed us this week with the following Group Therapy question which neatly covers some of the issues prospective parents face when deciding the number of kids they want:

If you have kids, what are the factors that helped you decide how many to have? Did career come into it? At what point does it become ‘too hard’ to try to juggle both?