I was once a working mother. A super busy trial lawyer one. I sometimes left the house before my baby woke up and got home after he went to sleep, so I was also a very-guilty-feeling-working mother.
After I found out that my live-in-nanny was pretty much a crazy person, I instantly quit my career and I was then a stay-at- home mother. I was all in. In one fell swoop, I went from carrying a briefcase to pushing a double stroller around every single mall in South Florida during the especially hot and rainy summer of 2000 to keep the three of us from going crazy.
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I then became a hybrid of the two. I work out of my house.
I deal with all of the stay-at-home mother stuff like doing a million loads of laundry (per week!), cooking, carpooling, homework, being on the PTA, class projects, extra-curricular activities, attending teacher conferences and school events, finding SAT tutors, and on and on and on and on.
I also have two paying jobs and write this blog (for free) and do all three from my home office which happens to be located in my bedroom. I've had a successful eBay consignment business for over ten years and a couple of years ago I started do some freelance trial consulting for a few attorneys that I know.
It would probably be easier to just hire a live in housekeeper and go back to work full time. I'm sure that getting a job outside the home would be more lucrative than to do all three of these other jobs at home.
I really do like being a stay-at-home mother though. I like the flexibility of being able to be present for the fun stuff that happens during the work day like events at school but more importantly, I need to be around when things are not going well like when someone needs to go to the doctor or needs mommy to make grilled cheese for lunch when a bad cold hits. With my kids now teenagers, I think being around to make sure everyone is keeping in check is also not a bad idea.
However, when you work out of your house, no one else thinks that you are really that busy. Everyone from my friends, to the other PTA moms, to my very own large extended family, seems to forget that I am working during the day. While you would never call a business executive during the day to ask him to drop what he was doing to help you out at the book fair because three mom's canceled, it seems to happen to me on a regular basis.
Can we coin a new term for me that will tell everyone that I actually work during the day, especially during school hours? I will print it up on business cards under my name. "Work-at-home mother" sounds too much like "stay-at-home mother". "Domestic Engineer" is a fancy name for a housewife. Please help as I am stumped.
