Strollerderby : work at home

Writing is Working - I Promise

JeanneSager — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 20:32:00 GMT

At a time when newspapers across the country are going out of business or laying off writers, I took a long hard look at Mama Bee's rant against the writing moms who dare consider themselves experts on working motherhood . . . and screamed.

At its heart, I think I understand what she was trying to say - that there is no cookie cutter solution for the trials and travails of the working parent. If you think a "10 Easy Tips to Wrangle Your Kids" list is going to solve your struggles, more power to you.

But in accusing mothers who write for a living of being "profoundly disconnected from its real trials and tribulations," she betrays her own lack of understanding of the life of a journalist.

We work, generally far above the forty-hour work week - and not all of us from home. In fact, a fair number of journalists work out of an office, rather than as freelancers. I consider myself lucky that I spend a few days working from home, but it's somewhat of a misnomer - working from home often means packing my daughter in her carseat and heading off with her to do an interview in the middle of a barn with a farmer concerned about milk prices, keeping one eye fixed on her at all times to make sure she doesn't end up UNDER a cow. It means leaving my daughter with my husband at 6 p.m. to head to a five-hour-long town board meeting where I'll listen to politicians sniping at each other about a whole lot of nothing instead of enjoying books before bedtime.

I know what it's like to juggle the sitter's schedule with my own, to go rushing around to find someone to watch my daughter on a random Monday when my daycare provider has a doctor's appointment. I know what it's like to call my boss and say, I'm sorry, I can't go report on that fire right now because I don't have daycare, and to hear him sigh and know that I just lost favor that the non-parent reporters automatically curry.

I also know what it's like to try to work from home, to sit at a computer and try to write a story about parenting while my daughter screams from the bathroom or shoves a cup of juice in my face and asks for more. I know what it's like to be thisclose to missing a deadline and have to go clean up a water spill across the kitchen floor. I chose this, I know, but that doesn't make it any easier. And for those who would say, well, hire a sitter on those days, I counter - where will I get the money?

Because as a writer mom, I also know what it's like to struggle to make ends meet. Newspapers are closing. The paper where I work has cut staff, and that's meant more pressure on the rest of us to produce, produce, produce. But where do I find the time? Where do I find the supplemental income when one of the magazines I write for shuts down, when the new editor decides she doesn't like my style as much as the old editor?

No, I don't know what it's like to be a factory laborer, Mama Bee. I don't know what it's like to have regular hours, when I can punch in, punch out. News doesn't happen nine to five - and daycares don't take kindly to you showing up at 7 because a late breaking story kept you in the newsroom. I don't know what it's like to be a corporate drone either, Mama Bee, to know exactly how much my paycheck will be week in and week out, to know I can make the mortgage and the phone bill.

But I do know how to write their stories. And that's how they end up in the newspaper, on the Web, in magazines. Because the lady working at H&R Block might be a whizz-bang at my taxes (while I can't make heads or tails of a W-2), but she can't write a news story.

So I write, Mama Bee, because that's my job. Which makes me a working mother.

Image: Medway

They Say: How To Work From Home More Effectively

Kelly Mills — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 14:02:00 GMT

Being a work-at-home mom has plenty of perks, like the flexibility to pick up the kid from school and the ability to do dentist's appointments and teacher conference days without begging a boss for the time off. But there's serious downsides too: As I detailed here, it's hard to escape from work when it stares at you 24-7; the household tasks beg for my time; and no one is paying me to surf the ol' 'net, though that doesn't stop me. So when I hear there's ways to be more productive at home, I think, "Yeah! Sign me up!"

Only after reading this, I'm skeptical. Not because these are terrible, but because it sounds a little like slapping a band-aid on top of a giant wound infected with flesh-eating strep.

The tips. 1. Clean up the clutter. Yeah, if I had time to do that I might actually wanna use that time to hit the five deadlines I'm behind on. 2. Move your desk so it's away from the door in a commanding position. Dude, you have a desk? I schlepp my laptop from surface to surface so I can do five things at once! Though I like the idea of my kid walking in as I swivel my chair around from behind my imposing oak desk. I should make her schedule an appointment for snack. 3. Get a plant. Oh god, one more thing to water and care for. No. Way. 4. Get good lighting. Uh, who has fluorescent lights in their house? 5. Move the TV out of the office. Right. I may not be the most disciplined person ever, but I don't actually watch TV during my "work" hours. The internet is another story, but if I get rid of my computer, I'm SOL for work.

Sorry, the feng shui fixes are not cutting it for a working mom with so much to do, so little time. Frankly, the best thing I could do for my productivity is probably lose the kid. Cough. Screw productivity.

Do You Play With Your Kids' Toys?

A Third of Parents No Longer Saving for College

More on Making Ends Meet

Adrienne Martini — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:30:00 GMT

Just last week, we were musing over moms who do a little somethin'-somethin' on the side to help make ends meet.

No.

Not that, pervs.

Although if you could find enough "clients" who like their "professionals" sticky and smelling of spit-up, you could make quite a bit of extra scratch.

Barring that, Divine Caroline blogger Mom Advice has some, well, advice for starting an at-home business. Most of it boils down to "do your homework." However, it is worth giving a read if you are serious about jumping into the work-at-home world.

Canadians Soon to be Even Happier

Madeline Holler — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:48:00 GMT

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.

Now, I don't know the workings of the Canadian legislature, but basically they're ending a requirement to be there on Fridays, cutting out evening and late-night sessions and taking advantage of Blackberrys and other technology so that they can be present while also being absent. The rescheduling, proponents claim, simply packs more work in to a shorter amount of office time. Sounds good to me.

Here in the U.S., we certainly talk about making work, government and society family friendly. But we're very short on action. We're someone to mention this in the U.S., we'd have to have a totally polarizing argument that shamed working parents, belittled stay-at-home parents, called into question the motives of those who didn't want to be around on Fridays while ignoring/unduly burdening the chosen lives of the child-free -- and calling into question the productivity of public officials who may actually like hanging out with their kids.

It's as if the best we get down here, even from the Democratic presidential candidates who seem positively pro-pro-family with their healthcare plans, is a vague mention of universal pre-K. Which is fine. Just not enough, it seems to me.

But those Canadians! They just overhaul their outdated Victorian ways and call it a family-friendly night. A cold but family-friendly night.

What Does This Generation of Moms Want?

Kelly Mills — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:39:00 GMT

There's about a thousand headlines trying to define what moms of this generation want. Do we hope to return to the domestic spheres of the 1950's housewives (as has been reported), or are we career-minded? Do we care about our jobs or our kids? And one writer says we don't know what we want. When she works fulltime she can't wait to be home with family, but when she is on maternity leave she finds she hates staying at home. She gets a work-from-home freelance career but misses office action, and when she goes back to the office she chafes at the set hours that make her miss her kids. In short, women of this day and age have no idea what they want. What they really, really want.

I actually know what women want. Every woman really wants...A pony. Can I have a pony? A nice Shetland?

Sigh. If I had to hazard a crazy guess, I'd venture that women really want to feel fulfilled and satisfied at whatever they do whenever they are doing it, be it time with kids or the office grind or the freelance life. They'd also like financial security and crap like that. And that it's hard to balance many priorities, and the balance probably looks different for different people, making it impossible to (gasp) find one way to define an entire group of women, except with very broad strokes. I don't mean to Myspace the party here, but I'd also guess men want the same damn thing. It's a generation of people wanting to feel like they are engaged in meaningful things, which of course makes us sooooo very different from previous generations. It's just that our choices were more limited in the past, but I'd be surprised to find we have become suddenly impossible to please.

Two Work At Home Parents: Filed Under "Professional Doom" Or "Divorce?"

Jessica Ashley (Sassafrass) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 20:27:00 GMT

The year my son was born, I traded a nice office with a view of the El train and guys in royal purple and gold suits at the menswear shop across the street for a cubicle called my dining room table. I prefer to tell people this is my office because there of the long and awkward pause that comes when I tell them I am working from Starbucks while they try to figure out of I have gone from blogging to barista-ing and if I can get them a fat discount on their decaf fraps. While the flexibility and fortune of my many work at home gigs is great as a parent, I can't imagine how it would work with two parents. Let me clarify: Two parents, two jobs, one home. Just the thought makes me want to stab myself in the neck with my PDA.

Well, just as soon as I turn off The View, grab a Diet Coke and finally get productive. Apparently, though, this dual-WAHP set-up is just what the work-balance doc ordered up for some families. Somehow, these married folk who clearly have far more patience and far less need to peek in and share fourteen brilliant brainstorms and the funny parts of all the forwarded email of the day than I do. Even with separate offices in the same house space -- like these enviously disciplined parents who hole up in their own rooms all day long -- I can only see the extremes of working at home alongside someone else, especially a spouse. Like all (cough) healthy relationships, what I see is a frantic pendulum swinging from bugging the crap out of each other with interruptions and being completely unproductive to bugging the crap out of each other with ignoring and being completely unproductive.

The dilemma of the dual-WAHPs then is whether you will tank your career by seeing each other all day or by not seeing each other all day. I get oogy just thinking about making my partner a colleague, especially if I can't be in charge of all the office supplies and the holiday party is always left to me to plan. I guess that leaves me to sit alone at my dining room table, talking to myself, or venturing out for a venti coffee of the day so I can talk to my real coworkers, the 20-year old baristas behind the counter.

What do you think? Is it just me, or are two work at home parents a prescription for professional and marital disaster?

Strollerderby : work at home

Writing is Working - I Promise

Why It's Not Too Late to Say What You Should Have Said . . .

Want Free Childcare? We Can Help

Babble Talk: Why Preschool is NOT a Scam

Forget the Hospital Gown: Give Birth in Couture

They Say: How To Work From Home More Effectively

More on Making Ends Meet

Canadians Soon to be Even Happier

What Does This Generation of Moms Want?

Two Work At Home Parents: Filed Under "Professional Doom" Or "Divorce?"