If you are a working parent, you probably have experienced the feeling of being torn between work and family — all the more so if you are a single parent.
Inevitably, you must make sacrifices to make ends meet. You spend less time than you would like with your children so that you can keep a roof over their heads. Perhaps you feel you can’t expend as much energy as you would like for your professional growth because of the urgency of your domestic responsibilities.
The fact that this is not an uncommon situation doesn’t make it any easier to manage. But what if you found a career with a better financial return for your time investment? What if professional growth were built into your career, and you could even receive customized guidance regarding your personal goals?
Travel nursing could be the career that makes your circumstances more ideal as a single working parent. We at Trusted Nurse Staffing commend the career to you as a perfectly viable option!
Here we present several reasons why choosing to be a travel nurse as a single mom could be a positive move. The occupation is not without its challenges, but we can provide tips for succeeding on this career path.
Table of Contents
- Can Single Moms Do Travel Nursing?
- 4 Reasons To Consider Travel Nursing as a Single Mom
- Are There Challenges To Travel Nursing as a Single Mom?
- 3 Tips for How To Travel Nurse as a Single Mom
- Trusted Nurse Staffing Helps You Create a Travel Nursing Lifestyle That Meets Your Family’s Needs
Can Single Moms Do Travel Nursing?
You don’t need to have achieved superhero status to make travel nursing work as a single mom. With careful prior planning, you can embark on a career as a travel nurse trusting that it is a feasible and positive move.
Trusted Nurse Staffing would love to assist you as you explore the possibility of travel nursing. You can acquaint yourself with job types and availability in different areas of the country by using the Pronto job search tool.
4 Reasons To Consider Travel Nursing as a Single Mom
#1: Amazing Pay
Travel nurses get paid significantly more than staff nurses, and they earn stipends for meals and other items. Coupled with the fact that a travel nurse enjoys free housing, this can mean a drastically larger amount of money that you can put by rather than spend on bills and necessities.
You can stash the extra income away for a surprise trip to Disney or use it to put a dent in your student loans. You might use it to avail yourself of opportunities you wouldn’t otherwise have, such as travel abroad or payment in full of your child’s braces.
Whatever you decide to invest this extra money, you will at any rate free yourself of any anxiety regarding earning sufficient funds to support your family. Knowing that the time you spend working is well-rewarded is also an encouraging prospect.
#2: Flexible Scheduling
As a travel nurse, you have a great deal of scheduling flexibility. You can choose the days and shifts that work best around your children’s school and extracurricular activity schedule. Just let your Trusted Nurse Staffing representative know your preferences.
For instance, if your children are school-age, you could take a night shift to work while they are asleep. You could see them off to school in the morning, sleep while they are in school, and be awake to assist them with homework in the afternoons and early evenings.
Alternatively, if they do online schooling, second shift would allow you to be at home to assist them in their schoolwork. You might opt for 12-hour shifts so that you have more days free, and you would not need the services of a babysitter on those days.
There are many options you can choose from to make life with your children flow smoothly.
#3: Free Housing
Accommodations for travel nurses are typically covered completely, but arrangements for single moms may be more complex, depending on the number of children you have and how old they are.
For instance, you will almost certainly need housing with more bedrooms. Also, you will want to be more mindful of the safety of your neighborhood as well as how family-friendly it is. Such a home will probably be more expensive than a small apartment that would accommodate a single adult adequately.
At any rate, even if your housing expenses are greater than they would be if you had no children, you will receive a housing stipend to help offset these costs.
#4: Travel and Sightsee
One of the neatest advantages of travel nursing is the opportunity to experience new places and cultures. This experience is on a more intimate level because you and your family will spend about 13 weeks at each placement. You’ll make connections with people all across the country.
Besides becoming very familiar with the new places you’ll be living, you can also travel with your family during your time off. This may mean day trips to important landmarks near your job placement. Or you could, with the extra money you’ve been able to save, go abroad for a more extended visit in between placements.
Are There Challenges To Travel Nursing as a Single Mom?
Managing Toddlers
If you have toddlers, the school day will not be a factor in helping you minimize the length of time you will need the assistance of a babysitter or child caregiver. This means that you must consider childcare costs in your budget. Furthermore, you will be limited by the availability and times of childcare when choosing your own work hours.
The healthcare facility to which you are assigned might have an in-facility daycare, which would simplify things logistically. If not, your employer should be able to recommend daycares in the vicinity of the facility to which you could entrust your toddler(s).
If neither of these scenarios presents itself, you can search local listings for child caregivers, interview your top candidates, and hire a babysitter who can come to your house.
Your Child’s Education
One of your most important concerns as a travel nurse is how your children’s education will be affected by frequent moves.
Many travel nurses address this concern by choosing to use an online curriculum, in which case your geographical location is immaterial.
Alternatively, if you want your children to attend a physical school, you can accept assignments only in areas in proximity to a school that you wish for them to attend. This may mean accepting assignments in your current locale so that your children need not leave friends behind.
Another option is to take longer assignments so that your children don’t have to change schools as often. Speak with a representative from Trusted Nurse Staffing to explore this possibility in greater detail.
Extracurricular experiences are an integral part of your children’s education, too. Besides “book learning,” you’ll want them to be exposed to other opportunities for personal growth, including participation in sports and field trips (for example, to museums, parks, zoos, or other interesting places).
By researching offerings and landmarks near prospective job placements, you can see whether your children’s educational needs would be well-served in such places.
Work-Life Balance
Balancing work and home life as a single-parent travel nurse can be very tricky. You are probably already acquainted with overwhelming feelings and anxiety that can plague the mom who tries to provide for as well as nurture her children.
Being proactive can help you alleviate these feelings or avoid them in the first place. Some things you can do to help lessen the strain that is part and parcel with your circumstance include:
- Discuss your situation with your employer so that you can be given a work schedule that doesn’t compromise your major responsibilities at home.
- Seek out opportunities to socialize.
- Events for children such as fairs, birthday parties, and holiday celebrations can be so refreshing for children who feel cooped up in the house or need stimulation.
- Play dates with other moms help both you and your children relieve stress and make new friends.
- If you are so inclined, church is a built-in community and support system that meets regularly and can give you and your children a day or days to look forward to each week.
Wherever you will be living, be sure you have a support system, whether it be family living nearby, your church, a moms’ group, or friends. A support system is essential when times get rough, but not only then. Social interaction keeps our minds healthy. You and your children need all the support you can get, especially as you continually adjust to new surroundings.
Frequent Moves
Moving frequently can take its toll on emotions, for obvious reasons. It’s hard to leave friends behind. Older children, especially, can have depressed feelings as they say goodbye to the places and people they are just getting to know.
Packing all your belongings and working out logistics can be nerve-wracking, especially if you have young children. They need constant or frequent care that pulls you away from the time-consuming tasks you are trying to accomplish.
There is no simple way to cope with these responses, but you can take some measures to help soften the blow of moving yet again:
- Investigate ahead of time the opportunities for social interaction, activities, and field trips in the place you are moving to. Discuss these with your children as things to look forward to.
- Encourage your children to stay in contact with the friends they are leaving, particularly the ones they feel closest to. Moving away doesn’t have to be the end of the friendship. They might even consider giving a memorable gift or keepsake to their friend before leaving.
- For the ride to your new locale, brainstorm activities your children can do while in the car or airplane. This might be a workbook with brain puzzle exercises, such as mazes or dot-to-dot, or a handheld toy like a peg board with rubber bands.
- You will need to keep your belongings relatively minimal, but having some familiar items that go with you wherever you go can provide a sense of comfort and continuity for your children.
3 Tips for How To Travel Nurse as a Single Mom
#1: Consider Your Schedule
If you are strategic about when and where your placements are, you might be able to avoid having to move quite as frequently. For instance, if you choose a local placement during the school year, your children can remain in their public school. Then you can take a placement farther away during their school breaks, allowing for the excitement of travel without any grievous partings or education interruptions.
#2: Hire a Nanny
Hiring a nanny is not cost-prohibitive when you earn the income of a travel nurse. A nanny can travel to your assignments with you and live in your home, providing both child care and perhaps even homeschooling your children.
This is an excellent option because you have the chance to form a deeper, more trusting relationship with a nanny than with a babysitter or daycare worker. Also, it makes logistics so much simpler. You needn’t drop your kids off somewhere before going to work or pick them up before going home.
Since your nanny understands your desired child-raising methods and is responsible for caring only for your children, you will feel more at ease leaving your children in the care of such a person.
#3: Choose Kid-Friendly Housing
Choosing kid-friendly housing can make all the difference in the world for your children. What can they look forward to each day living in your new home? Visits to a neighborhood park, sidewalk strolls, and local libraries are good options for regular outings that can refresh your children after the school day. But if these amenities are not available in your area, the times of respite will be fewer and farther between.
Trusted Nurse Staffing Helps You Create a Travel Nursing Lifestyle That Meets Your Family’s Needs
At Trusted Nurse Staffing, our mission is to help you ascertain the unique needs of your family as you seek job placements and to help you obtain these placements under conditions feasible for you as a single parent.
If learning how to travel nurse as a single mom has piqued your interest and you would like to discuss the prospect, do not hesitate to contact us. We look forward to working with you to show you that what you might have considered unmanageable is quite possible.
All you need are the following:
- Experience as a registered nurse
- Detailed research and careful planning
- Assistance from people experienced with helping travel nurses juggle the variables of children, school, and work shifts
We recommend using the Pronto job search tool to see what kinds of jobs are in demand and where. Try it out, and contact us to initiate the process of becoming a travel nurse.