MAIREAD has spent nearly as much time working full-time in the home as she did working at her job before her eldest child, now 10, was born.

Although extra money would be handy, she does not need to go out to work for economic reasons, and enjoys being at home with her children. "But what happens when the children go off on you? When won't they need me so much? Should I wait half-way through secondary school, or 'til they've finished?"

Mairead is at a stage where she is still debating what she'll do at some point in the next decade when her children will be increasingly independent. She thinks she would like to go out to work - she has, in fact, already made inquiries about going back to her job in the bank where she worked before motherhood; but though they offer flexible job arrangements, they don't offer the one thing she really wants: school term-time work only. Mairead is, of course, asking the same question Betty Friedan asked more than 30 years ago at the start of the Women's Lib movement: what comes next for full-time wives and mothers once the nest is empty?

Ann found the answer to this question when her children were still in primary school. Like Mairead (but 10 years earlier), she had given up work as a bank official when her first child was born, though it entailed a decided cut in standards for herself and her husband. Once both her children were in primary school, she began to think about doing something with her extra free time, but wasn't sure what that should be.

"One day I was drying the dishes, listening to the Gay Byrne Show, and a woman wrote in saying `now that I'm a mature student . . .' I put the cup down and thought `Why didn't I think of that?' "

Ann had been interested in studying science ever since she left school. She found a third-level course that would accept her as a mature student, repeated a number of Leaving Cert courses to gain entry and got a degree around the time her children started secondary school.

"I wanted to be at home until they were both in secondary school, to start work after they'd left primary. It's not that they need you less, but they're out at school for longer."

Everything worked out pretty much the way she wanted it to: she found work she enjoyed, and her husband and children adjusted to the new set-up after some teething difficulties. Her biggest single problem at the beginning was the long summer months: "When they were 12, 13, 14 it was the one thing that bothered me about going out to work, because they were still too young to leave on their own all day."

The family coped with difficulty - staggering parents' holidays, summer camp, part-time housekeepers etc until the children were older. "By the time children are 16 and 17, they definitely don't want you around all the time, in my experience."

Mairead is apprehensive about the practical difficulties involved in returning to work; her husband would be very supportive "as long as it didn't affect him". But of course it would affect him, because the truth is that it can be very difficult to run a house well when both parents work, even when both partners and the children co-operate in household chores. Another mother who found herself with a choice of jobs after a FAS return-to-work course found keeping up with housework to be a major problem, but not a problem either her husband or teenage children were ready to help solve.

Jane, another mother who went back to work when her youngest child started secondary school, after more than 20 years at home, says: "I get very frustrated. At this stage of my life, I feel I should have a perfectly ordered home."

It's not a factor likely to put someone like Mairead off going back to a job outside the home in the long-term - but the practical problem needs to be anticipated well in advance.

THE HEARTENING thing for women in Mairead's position, who want or need to get back into the paid labour force in their late 30s, 40s, even 50s, is that choices have never been so good.

Patricia Lee, the programme manager of NOW (New Opportunities for Women), an EU-funded initiative which has targeted women "returners", agrees that employers are offering flexible work arrangements but that there are still barriers, lack of flexibility on term-time working being a major one.

The good news is that there is little ageism - and not knowing how to work computers is no barrier either, Lee confirms. If you can type at all, many companies will teach you the rest.

Taking the first step is the real difficulty. She advises women considering returning to work to make contact with their local Partnership company, which can point them to the Local Employment Service.