What do you want to be when you grow up?

Unemployment is looming again.

My husband and I are both trying to figure out what comes next in our professional lives. His contract will soon expire, around the same time that the company he has been working for becomes extinct. I have another six months before it will be time to panic, although I have set the wheels in motion to look for work. But it is still time to think: what to do next? What do I really want to be when I grow up?

I have seen many jobs advertised that I would love. Sadly they are all full-time jobs. I have a young family and I want to work part-time. But part-time jobs - like the one I'm doing now - tend to be the short-term contracts that offer me little in terms of career advancement. I am not madly obsessed by the thought of having a highly successful career. But I do want some level of success and I don't want to be stuck in graduate level positions any longer. I am not getting any younger and it is time my work life moved forward. But I am not quite sure how to make that happen.

One of the reasons I am in this situation is that I started my family while I was still relatively young - in my twenties - before I had had the chance to establish much of a career. Don't get me wrong: I had had a pretty active and full life before having kids. I had moved out of home to the big smoke to go to uni, worked and traveled overseas, and I was happily settling into my postgraduate education when I first became pregnant.

In the early years of motherhood I was grateful that I had started my family while still relatively young. I seemed to be in a better position than the other new mums around me who were often ten years older. But now I look at their established careers and wonder what might have been if I had waited a few years to have children. Now I am in the awkward position of knowing that I am aging (more on that later) while still feeling like a junior in the career stakes. I had a job interview last week where the disparity between my age and career advancement became embarrassingly obvious. I won't go into details, but needless to say I was not offered the job.

A lot has been written about women returning to work after extended career breaks to raise families. But what if your career did not exist until after you started your family? How do women like me get our feet in the door?