Sticky Fingers And Wet Kisses: The Pitfalls Of Work At Home Moms
It sounds like the best of both worlds for moms: earning money while you stay at home with your children. You envision working away on your computer, while your toddler plays happily at your feet, or taking conference calls with corporate bigwigs while you ice your child’s birthday cake. So perfect, so easy, so doable.
Unfortunately there is no perfect blending of domestic and office bliss. That simply isn’t what happens in the real world. Instead, you can’t seem to get anything done because your kids won’t stop arguing. Your conference call has to come to an abrupt end when your youngest has a temper tantrum. And that cake never did get iced.
Unfortunately, very few things are as easy as they first appear, escpecially when kids are involved. So how do successful women balance working from home and being a mother? And what are the pitfalls that they have learned to watch out for?
First, you need time to get the work done. In order to do this, you may want to consider hiring a babysitter or nanny to watch after your little ones while you work. The babysitter or nanny can keep your kids entertained and safe. However, this is an extra cost that can severely reduce your earnings. If you have an older child, you may be able to enlist him or her to watch the younger ones. This isn’t a perfect solution. You will still be frequently called upon to break up arguments and soothe hurt feelings whenever the siblings don’t agree.
Children?s pets present another pitfall of working from home and being a mother. Moms who earn income from on-line auctions must rely on freight services to pick up at the house. Delivery vans are notorious for making dogs go bananas. Some work-at-home moms report the mere sound of that familiar brown van coming down the street causes their dog to bark at 105 decibels; loud enough to cause permanent hearing loss. She can?t get rid of the dog, it?s the children?s pet.
One solution to the problem of finding time to get the work done is to work at night when the kids are in bed. To do this, you will have to find a position that doesn’t have set work hours, such as bookkeeping or a position with flexible customer service calls hours. At night, the house is usually quiet and interruptions are rare. However, in order for this to work, you need to be a person who doesn’t require a lot of sleep or who can recharge with your children when they take their naps. Otherwise, you’ll be drowsy and cranky the next day when you have to put in a full day of taking care of your children.
Depending on the job performed, there are other pitfalls of working from home and being a mother. Pay can be low: sometimes work-at-home moms are not paid for their work. Sometimes employers find ways of rejecting the work claiming poor quality. Benefits such as health coverage and pension plans are scarce. But the work-at-home mom knows that those children she has raised can be counted on to take her in and car for her in her elder years.
Finally, the worst pitfall of working from home and being a mother is the lack of adult contact. There is no water cooler chatter of coffee break gossip; mom?s day is full of sticky fingers, ?look what I found under the leaves,? and candy coated wet kisses. The pitfall most moms would choose any day.
Filed under: Business