Childern and Flying

nita90

nita90

Well-Known Member
So I am finally upstarting in my aviation career by finally attaining a full time CFI position after being part time for about a year. Ideally, once I obtain the hours, I will like to go to the airlines. However, I have always wanted children before getting into the airlines. I want to be at home daily raising my children while they are young. Then I thought, would I be just as busy as a full time CFI? I just wanted to get you guys opinion on the situation. Has anyone found it easier to have children before or even after going to the airlines?
 
Keep in mind too that CFIs often work according to their students' schedules. This could mean a lot of evenings & weekends. You may be "home" every night as a CFI, but does getting "home" at 8pm really count?

With the airlines, when you're off, you're OFF. Living in base greatly increases time at home, though base cities are not always very affordable.

Bottom line: Having kids as a pilot means you've GOT to have family around to help out. Be it a stay-home spouse or grandparents or aunts/uncles very close who are physically able to contribute extensively to childcare. Finding paid childcare on a pilot's salary and schedule is a challenge. Unless you've got a spouse with a regular weekday 9-5 job and can do the "daycare" thing on your spouse's schedule.

A pilot's job is just not a 9-5 job where the kid can go to daycare every weekday on a regular schedule.
 
Just my .02...

I never planned on having kids, but my partner of three years had a daughter from a previous relationship, and now we have a one-month-old girl together. My current job pays well, and is Mon-Fri, but the hours are insane; 13 to 14 hour days are the norm. When I started the job, I thought it would be perfect to be home every night. However, by the end of my working day, I am typically a zombie and more or less useless around the house and with the kids. Once my partner starts working again, we can afford to have me re-enter the professional flying world, and I look forward to being out for several days altogether and then home for a few days. I imagine that being out of the house will suck, to an extent, but I'd rather my kids think of me as an energetic and animated father instead of a burned out half-asser.
 
That is one of the main reasons I am also headed back to flying. No point in being around if you spend all your home time as a burned out zombie.
 
Children are friggin' expensive as hell and require a HUGE amount of your time, attention, and energy. More time, money, attention, and energy than you can imagine. Sure they're cute and fun when they're little, but they will suck the life out of you like a parasite as they get older and older.
CFIs don't generally make much money or have a dependable, regular schedule. It's the making of a perfect storm.
You can always give the flying job up to have kids, but not the other way around.
If I had it to do all over, I wouldn't have had kids. Or at least not until I was well established in my career. My wife also agrees that we should have waited at least ten years or so before having our first one.
 
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Cptnchia said:
Well, technically, you can. Just depends on if you want to be "That Person." It takes an especially cold person to do it though.
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Haha! Yeah, I guess so, but if that's how you treat your children, you must be a lot of fun to sit with for hours on a flight deck.
You could also make a go at a flying career after the kids are grown and out of school, but you would probably be in your mid-40s by then and your flight career options would be much more limited.
 
nita90 said:
...Has anyone found it easier to have children before or even after going to the airlines?
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I don't think it will be easier before or after going to the airlines. Having children is a lot of work either way and your life will also become significantly more complicated.
 
Recently read an article on something similar, an aviatrix I know did her first year at the airlines and wrote about her experience (side note, her blog is excellent). Doesn't sound to me that it was easy on a marriage without any kids, and it would probably be impossible with kids.

http://trendypilots.blogspot.com/2014/01/my-first-year-at-airlines.html

Of course YMMV. I don't have any firsthand experience with it yet but I personally plan to wait until I'm well established in the airlines before I make the kid decision.
 
Seems like having children at all in this profession is a bad idea. I have always been family orientated and wanted children to call me own. I finally have the partner who is even more enthused than me to have children. I want to be in my children lives as much as possible while they are young and I feel like being in the airlines and not coming home every night will ruin that little dream. I figured my best option is to flight instructor until my child(ren) is (are) at an appropriate age to where I will feel comfortable being gone for days.
 
Having kids in this industry isn't bad at all. I have two kids under the age of three and I make it a priority to see them and be a part of their lives every second I am home. That and having a supportive wife is important as well. With the likes of FaceTime now a days, seeing the kids isn't hard at all. There is never a right time to have kids. I think it's a cop out when people say this as you'll never be fully ready to be a parent. It's just part of the game.

Derek
 
My career hasn't gone the way I planned it to and there's been lots of times I've felt like giving it up just to be with the kids. For most of my twins first three years, I've been gone, either doing on-call charter or regional pilot. Neither pays well enough that we couldn't cut back and be on one income.

But I don't think I'd be entirely happy being a stay at home Dad either. But, they are three now and are just so big. I feel I missed a lot being gone as a charter pilot and now as a regional pilot. It's time that you can't get back and it weighs more on me each time I go out, especially on 5 or 6 days. I try to spend as much time with them as I can when I'm home. As dhood mentioned, Skype and Facetime help, but you still don't get to hold them every night. I knew all this would be part of the deal, but until you are actually doing it, you don't realize how much being away can suck.

Having a supportive spouse is a big deal. Supportive not only emotionally, but financially too and I don't mean that lightly. I work with many people who make less than their spouse, which at the regional level, isn't hard to do. Money is a big factor and kids take a lot of it. We could make it on one income, but it would be tight and we don't even have many expenses and little debt besides the house and one car.

Kids are never easy in this job. As an instructor, paid by the hour, I worked my butt off during the 6 months of the year you can fly nearly all the time in Pittsburgh. That meant leaving at 7am or earlier and not getting home until midnight sometimes, but at least until 8pm many days. The money stinks unless you're at a really busy school or paid on salary. Now I'm home less, the money is better, but still not seeing my kids most nights except for Facetime.

This is rambling a bit more than I want, just because it's not a simple issue. When you're a pilot, your job is to fly people and/or things places. That means you will be away from home. Working a CFI job is more like an office job, but I never found the risk/reward of teaching people to fly high enough to consider it full time work, it was always a stepping stone job. It's all in what you value more, a flying career or kids and family. If you want both, you and your family have to make sacrifices and it isn't fun.
 
If you find the right school then being a CFI could be a perfect mommy/daddy job. You would need a place where you control your own schedule and you get a decent per hour rate. Those places do exist.
 
I'm at the point as well where I don't know if I can take being away so much. With being gone up to 20 days a month, usually 8-9 day stretches and having a 1 and 2 year old at home I am seriously considering changing careers. It comes down to the point where you must consider what is really important in your life. I love to fly, but I love my kids more and I don't want them growing up thinking about how Dad was never around. I would probably go crazy in a 9-5 office job, but it may be worth it to see my kids everyday. That's just my 2 cents....
 
Besides CFI, are there many pilot jobs where you're home almost every night? I know you'd be trading top-end salary for QOL, but I'd be curious to hear others' experience for what they feel is a pretty decent job that though doesn't pay a ton, offers being home most nights (or days).
 
I would not let any career path stop you from having kids. You were put on this earth to have kids. Don't screw up the program!

With that being said, we waited until we were in our 30's to have kids. The reason being is that I was so dam tied up with my career in my 20's and early 30's and I did not want to put a spouse though any of that. So I waited to get married and settle down. For us, it worked out well.

I have two beautiful daughters and I would hate to think what life would have been like without them.

Joe
 
JOEFRIDAY2 said:
I would not let any career path stop you from having kids. You were put on this earth to have kids. Don't screw up the program!

With that being said, we waited until we were in our 30's to have kids. The reason being is that I was so dam tied up with my career in my 20's and early 30's and I did not want to put a spouse though any of that. So I waited to get married and settle down. For us, it worked out well.

I have two beautiful daughters and I would hate to think what life would have been like without them.

Joe
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I screwed up the program on purpose and want to let you know I don't give a fecal excrement what you think.
 
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