Top 5 Study-from-Home Careers: Perfect for Busy Mums

 

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{This is a collaborative post}

Juggling nappies, school runs, and endless laundry can make a traditional 9-to-5 feel entirely out of reach. But if there’s one silver lining to come out of the pandemic, it’s the rapid growth of remote and flexible career options. More than ever before, stay-at-home mums now have the opportunity to study and build meaningful careers from home, without compromising family life. If you’re ready to upskill, earn an income, and maintain a healthy work-life balance, here are five of the best career paths to consider.

 

1. Personal Trainer (Online & In-Person)

For health-conscious mothers who love fitness, becoming a personal trainer is one of the most rewarding and flexible careers available. Thanks to online study options, you can complete a Level 2 & 3 Combined Personal Training qualification at your own pace, often in under 12 months.

Once qualified, many personal trainers choose to work part-time, run online fitness coaching programmes, or offer 1-to-1 sessions that fit around school hours. You can even specialise in pre- and postnatal fitness to support other mums, making it a relatable and empowering career path. Best of all? You get to stay active while building a business that works for your lifestyle.

 

2. Virtual Assistant (VA)

Do you have excellent organisational skills and a knack for admin? Becoming a Virtual Assistant could be ideal. VAs support businesses with tasks like email management, social media scheduling, data entry, diary coordination, and customer service, all remotely.

You don’t need a formal degree to get started. Short online courses or YouTube tutorials can teach you the basics, and platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, and LinkedIn can help you find clients. You decide how many hours you work each week, making this career easy to mould around family time. As you grow, you can specialise in areas such as podcast production, copywriting, or event coordination.

 

3. Online Bookkeeper

If you’re good with numbers and like the idea of working quietly behind the scenes, online bookkeeping might be the perfect fit. Many small businesses require assistance in managing their finances, and bookkeeping services are consistently in demand.

You can study to become a certified bookkeeper entirely online through courses that fit around your daily routine. Once qualified, you’ll manage invoices, reconcile bank statements, and track expenses, all from your laptop. This career is well-suited to mums who want consistent, long-term work with minimal stress. Additionally, it often enables repeat business and a stable income over time.

 

4. Freelance Graphic Designer

If you’re creative and enjoy digital design, a career as a freelance graphic designer offers freedom, fun, and flexibility. You can study design principles, branding, and software like Adobe Illustrator or Canva through self-paced online courses. No need for a university degree, just a strong portfolio and a good eye for aesthetics.

Graphic designers work on a wide range of projects, including logos, packaging, social media graphics, and website layouts. You can choose clients and projects that interest you, and most deadlines are flexible enough to fit around family life. This career also offers excellent earning potential as your skills and client base grow.

 

5. Online Tutor or Course Creator

Do you have a background in teaching or a passion for a particular subject? Online tutoring or course creation allows you to share your knowledge and earn an income while staying at home. You can work with school-aged children, GCSE and A-Level students, or even adults learning new skills.

Platforms like Tutorful, Preply, or Udemy make it easy to find students or upload your course content. If you’d prefer not to teach live, you can create pre-recorded lessons or downloadable resources and earn passive income while you focus on family time. With education always in high demand, this career path offers job security and ample growth opportunities.

 

Final Thoughts

These five career paths allow stay-at-home mums to study flexibly, earn an income, and build a fulfilling future, all while being present for their children. Whether you're drawn to fitness, design, finance, admin, or education, there’s a study-from-home route that can align with your passions and schedule.

The beauty of these careers is that they can start small and scale up as your children grow, giving you the control to create a work-life balance that genuinely suits your family. So if you're ready to make a positive change and take the next step in your journey, now is the perfect time to get started.

How I Got Where I am Today: Finding Your Vocation

Thanks to my friend Eva for this image

I was browsing Twitter last week when a tweet from Donna at 'What the Redhead Said' caught my eye. She was responding to a tweet from a random American guy who said it was depressing that our society had failed to provide ambitious role models for our children and then he shared a graphic (which is pretty hilarious when you look at it closely) that apparently shows the top 10 jobs that kids want nowadays.

Put aside the fact that this guy had obviously made the graphic up, or at the very least not checked his sources very well as the jobs add up to nearly 137%, there are very random spelling mistakes and careers like teacher/ athlete are bundled together, what was interesting, was the backlash it had stirred in people, with him receiving over 7.000 responses, including Donna's.

It set me thinking about the job I do nowadays and how I came to this place. If you'd asked 17-year-old Michelle what she would be when she was grown up, it certainly wouldn't be a self-employed stay-at-home mum. The teen Michelle would have told you she was going to be a big success, running an empire, probably a hotel empire and that she wasn't ever going to have kids.  

I disagree. It shows the future and how anyone can carve a career for themselves nowadays.

I left school with no qualifications & am now a self employed blogger earning more than I did as a bank manager AND able to do school runs with the kids.

Even bloggers have ambition. https://t.co/1eduxg23Sp

— Donna Wishart - What the Redhead said (@genuineplacebo) March 22, 2021

Should you study A Level Law, if you want to take a Law Degree?

Photo by Giammarco Boscaro on Unsplash

{Collaborative Post}

I can hardly believe I have a 16-year-old son; time really does pass very quickly. We’ve just done the rounds of the local colleges for him to choose where he wants to go on to next and I realise we are very lucky as he made a decision quickly and feels sure of the courses he wants to do.

JJ has always been academic and the STEM subjects come easily to him, so it was no surprise when he put his application in for Maths, Further Maths, Computer Science and Law. We’re not sure if he’ll be taking three or four A levels as yet, this will be decided at his college interview in December.

I was keen for him to do four. I think it was just so I could be a proud mum, with a really bright son. However, when we did some investigating, it turns out that all the uni’s only look for results in three subjects, and they’d far rather the applicant had three seriously good results than four OK ones. We then noticed that where Further Maths is taken the college normally advocate a fourth subject, so we’ll just see what the college says and take their advice, they have done this many more times than us.

You Can Be Who You Want to Be! Stay #PrettyCurious

It was open afternoon at my girls school last week and they were keen to show me all their hard work

I think it is a very sad world to live in where any child has their dreams and horizons clipped and is expected to develop in a certain way and do certain things when they grow older. When my Mum was young (she is now in her late 60's) it was very much expected that once she married and had children she would give up her work and stay home to care for her family.

Perhaps because of this my Mum was determined that I should undertake any career I chose and as such I was the first in my family to go to University, where I studied Hotel Management. My parents have always been very proud of my career and supported my choice to keep working once I had my own children. I did change fields at that time and moved to work in a large entrepreneurial University near my home as a HR Manager. During my ten years at the University of Hertfordshire (UH) I undertook my Masters and worked in HR and training, supporting our staff to deliverer the best education to our students.

Working at UH was very inspiring and an eye-opening experience as the disciplines taught were vast and it was the first time I was seeing women in high level positions in the fields of engineering, medicine, technology and science. I can clearly recall the first time I went along to see Prof. Dr. Kerstin Dautenhahn (professor of Artificial Intelligence) KASPAR showcase and felt so proud that a women was leading in a field that is traditionally dominated by men.

Thank goodness the UK seems to be moving in the right direction and thanks to forward-thinking schools, colleges, universities and employers we are seeing some positive trends for girls going into STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) careers. However it is still not enough, only 1 in 4 people working in core STEM roles are women and this means we are underrepresented (source).