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• Coworking: Office Space Without the Angst

  I'm not alone in thinking working at home, while it has its benefits, mostly blows.  I mean I love the time with my kids – but on the other hand, I am attempting to work while I am home with my kids. Who, while lovely, are an infant and a preschooler and thus have no respect for deadlines (want to know how many times I have had to stop writing this and tend to someone? Five. So far. And the preschooler is napping. It would be twice that if she weren't).   Plus, there's the pets, and the home phone, and the temptation to load the dishwasher/run a load of laundry/get a jump on dinner instead of work during that brief period when everyone is happy or at least quiet. The solution would be an office outside the home Read More... Posted Jun 30 2008, 06:02 PM by AmyinMotown with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: work-life balance, work and motherhood, work and parenting, working at home, office space, coworking

• Working Moms: Not Guilty Enough? Read This

  I'm of the belief, as the cheesy 80s saying went, "every mother is a working mother" – and as a work at home mother I have a foot firmly in both camps of the so-called "Mommy Wars." So I found this CNN.com story on CareerBuilder.com's annual Mother's Day study to be awfully scoldy in its tone for work-for-pay mothers... Read More... Posted May 08 2008, 12:02 PM by AmyinMotown with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: mommy wars, work-life balance, Mommy Guilt, work and motherhood, cnn.com, work and parenting, working at home

• Canadians Soon to be Even Happier

  When you're Canadian, do you wake up every morning happy ... cold, but happy? I ask because it seems to me that Canadians get it when it comes to families -- healthcare, maternity leave, education. Canadians are just so together, cold but together. Take this as an example: national lawmakers there are seriously considering an overhaul of their lawmaking schedule in order to make it more family friendly. The goal? Getting more parents of young children involved in public office.   Read More... Posted Feb 14 2008, 12:48 PM by Madeline Holler with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: health, work, Canada, america, working, workplace policies, family leave, work and motherhood, family-friendly, government, work/family balance, work/life balance, family living, family values, work and parenting, family life, family issues, family friendly work place, working at home, "family values", work at home

• Work-Life Balance? Don't Even Ask

  For most of us, balancing work with parenting ranges from something of a challenge to ridiculously impossible, sometimes within the same day. Or maybe that's just me. At any rate, family-friendliness or just plain flexibility varies wildly between companies, and sometimes even within departments at the same workplace, and it's a mistake to assume what worked at your old job would fly at a new one. This Wall Street Journal "Career Q&A" tackles the best way to address the issue when interviewing for a new job. Basically, the answer is "don't." It's best to bring it up when you're certain you're going to get the job, or even better, after you get an offer. There are ways, though, to get a sense of the company's  culture when it comes to balance.  For example, ask what a typical day or week was like for the person who previously held the job you're interviewing for. Read More... Posted Jan 30 2008, 03:46 PM by AmyinMotown with | with no comments Filed under: work-life balance, work and motherhood, jobs, interviewing, WSJ

• First Week Back at Work is Crucial

  I haven’t worked in an office for nearly six years, so for me the prospect of going back to work after I have this baby is pretty much completely exciting – I can use my brain! And write! About something other than when he last pooped/nursed/slept! For mothers who must negotiate a breast pump, a commute that's longer than climbing the stairs to your office and shutting the door, and the wearing of real clothes that are not composed of polarfleece, it can be a much more ambivalent situation. Turns out that first week back at work is pretty critical to a new mom's success at juggling the working parent role.   Read More... Posted Jan 24 2008, 06:33 PM by AmyinMotown with | with no comments Filed under: work-life balance, work and motherhood, work and parenting, working at home, forbes magazine

• TV- and Parent-Free Activities For Kids. Help!

  I promise myself every year (every month? every day? every hour?) that I'm going to buck up and quit relying TV to numb the kids' minds and keep them away from me in half-hour increments. But it's hard, so hard. Because sometimes, a mom just wants to sit and email! So I was excited about Parents magazine's 25 TV-Free Activities, which I figured would freshen up some of the options (go outside! draw a picture!).  Problem is ...   Read More... Posted Jan 07 2008, 07:05 PM by Madeline Holler with | with 7 comment(s) Filed under: television, tv, work-life balance, working parents, work at home moms, working moms, TV watching, where are the parents, american academy of pediatrics, work and motherhood, what do you do all day?, TV-Turnoff week, work/family balance, work/life balance, television watching, volunteer, tv commercials, work family balance, working at home, working women, work-at-home parents

• Pregcellent: Country Pays Price For Family Unfriendly Work Policies?

  In the U.S. I think we tend to think of the individual toll of long work hours and lack of support for parents, like how stressed out and crabby we are trying to manage both career and family. However, we certainly aren't the only nation with a tough work ethic and lack of cost-effective childcare. In Japan, late-night meetings, expensive childcare, and the expectation of non-stop work are in many ways the norm, and this might spell trouble for the future of the country. In fact, experts say even the U.S. does a better job of supporting work-family balance. So what's one consequence of the lack of help for 'rents?   Read More... Posted Jan 02 2008, 04:02 PM by Kelly Mills with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: families, stress, Japan, work and motherhood, childcare costs, economy, work ethic, career family balance

• The Calculus of Family Planning: Sometimes Real Young is Real Good

  Once in a while, usually in moments of work vs. family crisis, I think it would have been smarter to have gotten pregnant at 18. I know, I know. But think about it -- college subsidized daycare, something to keep you home at night, grade school by the time you're ready to work full time professionally. Of course, the 20-year-old version of me would have, in no way, been a suitable mother. I'm thinking a mix of Britney and Denise Richards with the McCanns thrown in for high drama. But, you know, logistics. I’m talking logistics. Becoming a mother in my early 30s instead, with few daycare options, long commutes, lots of overnight travel, forced me to make some career compromises. Yet, had I waited, who knows how well my ovaries would have held up. Shouldn’t there be a way to calculate all this? Well … there is! Kind of.   Read More... Posted Nov 21 2007, 08:41 AM by Madeline Holler with | with 6 comment(s) Filed under: stay at home dads, fertility issues, work and motherhood, career moms

• Pregcellent: Does Being Pregnant Hurt Your Chances of Getting Hired?

  Ummm, yeah. It's shouldn't, legally or ethically, but I really do think that for most mamas-to-be, it might. At least that's my feeling and was my feeling from the early days of my pregnancy on. I was freelancing for a large fundraising corporation when I found out I was barely pregnant. I was well into the symptoms but weeks away from telling my parents when I met with my supervisor about an opening she had for a full-time employee on her staff. I wasn't sold on working for her permanently but the decision made itself when she leaned across the desk and aggressively, flippantly said, "I'd love to hire you if you can promise me you won't get pregnant any time soon or anything like that..I'd need at least a year commitment on that." This was a woman with two kids who fought her way into the executive offices after years as a stay at home mom and yet, there she was putting my fertility at the top of my resume. I didn't want this woman choosing my take-out lunch order for me let alone when I'd grow a human in my body and welcome a child into our family.  The job opportunity (obviously) didn't go anywhere and two weeks later, I quit the whole freelancing gig altogether. I never told her I was already pregnant but I also fretted about working before the birth of my child and seriously doubted I could get a job at Starbucks once my belly started poking out. I know my experience is total bullshit and also not extraordinary and this saddens and infuriates me. I know this because I've heard many women debating the right timing to share their pregnancy news with a supervisor, a new boss or even the person interviewing them for a fabulous new job. I don't just hate that people don't think women who are or might be pregnant should cast aside the classifieds with caffeine and lunch meat, but I hate that women doubt whether they should even apply for a job if they're even thinking about conceiving. Read More... Posted Jul 11 2007, 03:03 PM by Jessica Ashley (Sassafrass) with | with 14 comment(s) Filed under: pregnancy, discrimination, work and motherhood, hiring

• Survey Says: Gen X Moms Get What They Ask For

  A survey by Working Mother magazine found 69% of working mothers had asked for changes at work after having children, and 74% of those mothers got what they asked for. The survey also found flextime and telecommuting are the benefits mothers find most helpful and 75% of women feel their bosses are supportive of their other role as mother. A mother in this article says she would have quit her job if her bosses had been unable to be flexible with work expectations. As she brazenly puts it, "It was either, you can take me for what I'll give you or you're not going to get me at all, I was very happy it worked out for me." Read: "Take it, or screw you." I would love to see this survey done with working fathers as well. I do think, in general, the workplace is slowly becoming more working parent friendly but I wonder if mothers have more inclination/flexibility to risk telling their bosses they won't be able to work at all if the job can't be more flexible to their family needs because they have another wage earner to fall back on. Whereas, a great many fathers don't have, or don't feel they have, that same flexibility in providing for their families. Posted Jun 06 2007, 11:21 AM by Melissa Summers with | with 6 comment(s) Filed under: working moms, work and motherhood

• Internet Moms Use Technology to "Have it All"

  According to a recent CNN article, stay-at-home-moms are using the internet not only to connect with other parents while the kids are napping, but to run home-based business or work for companies that offer flex time, a concept the media dubs "having it all." From running eBay businesses to doing customer support from home, women are changing the way they work in order to stay at home with their kids. They're ambitious women who have seen needs and filled them, taking charge of their own professional and parental destinies. Babble's Editor-in-Chief Ada Calhoun talks about how her concept of time has changed now that she has a baby. She works from home two days a week and makes the most of it. She says she "has no time to waste," and she's spot-on. Any parent that works from home has two bosses: family life and work. Every second is devoted to one or the other. As a counterpoint, also on Babble, Pamela Stone discusses the concept of "opting out" (the title of her new book). Highly-educated and trained women are giving up their jobs to stay home, often because they feel like they don't have any other alternative. I've heard many women of my generation talking about "being glad they have a choice to stay home," but that word, "choice," has always bothered me. Says Stone, " Women almost universally talked about their decision as a choice, and they talked about how fortunate they were to have a choice. And in some sense they're right, because they can afford to forgo their incomes. But when you step back, what they are really saying is, 'I'm fortunate to give up years of training. I'm fortunate to give up years of investment and success.'" Stone is also a proponent of "flex-time," and wonders why companies allow talented women to "walk out the door" completely. Where do you fit in?  Are you sitting at home pondering the next great internet business? Or are you worried that taking time off for kids will leave you out of the game?  Posted May 24 2007, 01:05 PM by Stefania Pomponi Butler (CityMama) with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: internet, technology, moms, SAHMs, work and motherhood, techmamas

• The Most Important Job Also Prepares You For Paying Work

  We all know motherhood is highly underpaid, and the job can be thankless. However, you can turn some of that trench time into a resume-builder for a more lucrative career. This article points out that motherhood gives you some marketable skills for use in the workplace. Problem-solving, negotiation skills, patience, compassion are all on the list. My favorite one, however, is time-management: someone once told me that moms and dads are the most efficient workers, because we're used to having to complete a day-long project in less than fifteen minutes, before the kid wakes up from the nap or finally figures out how to un-childproof the electrical outlets. I could add a few more skills to this list as well. Many moms I know are adept at prioritizing, assessing a situation in thirty seconds to decide which child's current activity is actually the most life-threatening and following through with lightening reflexes. Ability to focus despite a chaotic environment should probably be on there as well: could a non-parent type four e-mails over the din of an annoying kids show, loud wailing, and the toy jackhammer left on in a corner? Remaining calm is just as helpful for the day when the evil boss demands those reports a week early as it is for when your child reveals he has put "something big" up his nose. And every great parent I know has a very well-developed sense of humor, which should also be a hiring requirement at any good job. I hope for Mother's Day all the moms out there get at least a couple hours to themselves, because everyone needs a little vacation sometimes, especially when your boss is demanding and mercurial, and the hours are as long as they come. And just a tip: while we are happy to work for kisses and sweet watercolor paintings that say "I love you mommy," don't list that as your last salary in your job hunt. Posted May 13 2007, 02:01 PM by Kelly Mills with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: parenting, work and motherhood, Mother's Day, career moms

• Eggs: Freeze 'Em If YOu Got 'Em

  Tessa Darby became the first woman in Britain to freeze her eggs so that she can still opt to have a child at a later date. The 37-year-old woman wants to continue to focus on her career, but doesn't want to be forced out of motherhood. Her case is unusual because she has no medical problems or other concerns: she just wants to keep all her options open. Darby underwent the invasive and not very pleasant process of removing the eggs, and believes the whole thing will be "a wonderful investment." Kind of like a kid-portfolio, I suppose. Of course the ubiquitous experts claim this kind of family planning will be commonplace in ten years. "Picture the scene: High Streets across the country filled with women in their 50s and 60s pushing buggies, a whole new generation of 'ice babies'." Shouldn't that be ice, ice babies? Maybe I ought to get swept up in the odd hysteria of the story, but I just don't think it's such a bad thing. After all, we get told all the time that as we age, our fertility drops off like Paris Hilton's panties, so it's no surprise that ladies want to hedge their bets. And it seems like women are already delaying parenthood to work on career, at least in my neck of the woods, where I'm practically a teen mom for not waiting until my thirties to get pregnant. So what if they wait five more years and use an egg from the freezer? Besides, we'll probably all be living to a hundred and ten in a few years with our heads in jars on top of special robot bodies, like Futurama. Oh, and even though we are supposed to freak out about ancient moms, Darby says she actually wouldn't wait any longer than her late-40's to have a child. And 40 is the new 25, so... Posted May 12 2007, 11:49 AM by Kelly Mills with | with no comments Filed under: older parents, fertility issues, work and motherhood, frozen eggs

• The Work At Home Mother: Freedom From Pantyhose

  Apparently it's National Work at Home Mom Week next week and Leslie Truex is sharing her enthusiasm for the work at home lifestyle. She calls herself a Pajama Mama, she doesn't have to rush herself and her kids off early each morning. She doesn't have to miss out on what's going on with her kids during the work day. She still contributes to her family's economic success but on her own terms. Most importantly, she doesn't have to wear pantyhose. Something I hate on many levels, starting with the actual word. Truex started the Work at Home Success website back in 1998 to help other mothers build their own work at home situation. She says, "Working at home really is as close to 'having it all' that mothers can get." The site helps women locate opportunities, start a business and offers support for women managing the work at home lifestyle. During this upcoming weeklong celebration Truex will be offering a helpful report titled "WAHM Plan-It: A Guide to Becoming a Work-At-Home Mom" and will host a nation wide conference call to answer all your burning work at home questions. I wonder if they'll offer tips on balancing it all?   Read More... Posted May 03 2007, 07:03 PM by Melissa Summers with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: work at home moms, work and motherhood

• SAHMs are "Worth" $138,000 Annually. Like They'll Ever Get It.

  Good news, moms! You all get a 3% raise this year! Because 3% of zero is, guess what? That's right, zero! Yep, this year all you SAHMs aren't getting a whopping $134,121 (national average - the national high was $191,983) salary for everything you do. There. Don't you feel better now about picking up all those crushed and ground-in Cheerios from the carpet this morning? But hey, in case you were thinking differently, working moms haven't been left out of the new increase! Nope, all you moms who work, guess what? That's right, you're not getting $85,000 this year for the job you do after that other one you do, the one that actually pays real money. Where else can you work two jobs yet only get paid for one? Salary.com broke down all the myriad jobs performed on a daily basis by moms and came up with 90-plus hours per week of work done in job titles like Housekeeper, Day Care Center Teacher, Cook, Computer Operator I, Laundry Machine Operator, Janitor, Facilities Manager, Chief Executive Officer, Van Driver, Psychologist. I think they forgot a few. What about Referee, Entertainer, and Personal Assistant? Or Art Teacher, Dishwasher, and Librarian? I'm thinking of striking for better working conditions, since we're not getting paid anyway. Care to join me?  Posted May 03 2007, 07:34 AM by Karen Murphy with | with 10 comment(s) Filed under: SAHMs, work and motherhood, salaries, relative worth, WAHMs

• The Mommy War Machine: We're Being Played

  Marissa forwarded this Washington Post Op/Ed piece from the weekend saying she thought I'd "find this interesting". And how. I've had some interesting interactions with the media in the last year which gave me several moments of pause to consider how the media plays on the inherent insecurity which seems to come with being a mother for ratings and hits on their websites. E.J. Graff, senior researcher at Brandeis University's Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, argues the Mommy Wars are a fiction being churned out like a War Machine. The tension between actual stay at home mothers and working mothers has been greatly exaggerated and exploited by the media. They're invested in this myth that mothers hate each other for their choices in the work force. This is a great read and I almost entirely agree with Graff. However I've heard my stay at home mom friends make some comments about the choices of working mothers which made me bristle a bit. I've heard women say, among friends, "If you didn't want to spend your days with your kids, why did you have them?" I've heard working mothers refer to stay at home mothers as spoiled and a little boring if not downright stupid. These comments do make me believe there is a lingering version of the Mommy Wars which is not entirely media driven. I would entirely agree the media exploits this lingering animosity between women and I also believe the working vs. stay at home debate will die, once we make the work world more friendly for all parents. Posted May 01 2007, 03:28 PM by Melissa Summers with | with 6 comment(s) Filed under: stay at home moms, working moms, work and motherhood, The Mommy Wars

• Single Women Happier than Married Women with Children?

  Are you a married woman with children, aspiring scientist who occasionally finds it difficult to achieve orgasm?  You are less happy than your single counterparts, according to two recent studies from New Zealand and Australia. The fact that women in traditionally male professions still have great difficulty balancing work and family life shouldn't come as any surprise.  What is surprising, though, is how few women in science, engineering, and technology have kids or are able to find any balance once they do.  I found it at once heartening and discouraging that the women of Australia face similar work-life balance issues. And then the orgasm study, which found 56% of sexually active single women could reach orgasm easily, while only 24% of their married counterparts could.   Interesting though this data may be, I think it's more a function of the age and stage of participants (ranging in age from 40 to 80) than any declaration about those damn husbands and their interference with sexual pleasure.  No one said being a married woman with children would be easy.  But some days some of us wish it didn't have to be this hard. Posted Mar 30 2007, 03:50 PM by Rachael Brownell (Redsy) with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: happiness, Married With Children, orgasms, work and motherhood, women in science and technology, married women