The Life and Times of a Work at Home Mom

So, you want to stay at home with your children; but you need a second source of income. Granted that source won’t have to be as great as you were making away from home because of the money you are saving in gas, dry cleaning, lunches out, frequent oil changes, not to mention panty hose replacements. Also worthy of mention are savings in day care, taxes (your home or at least part of it is now tax deductible), and the two-hour daily commute-after all time is money. I can really feel your pain and that burning desire to be home with your darling little ones. Of course they are angels when you miss out on 8-10 hours of their daily lives five days a week. Goodness knows the guilt of leaving them with others is almost unbearable. Trust me, this too shall pass.

All right, now that we’ve established your desire to work from home and your reasons for wanting to do so let’s move on the nitty-gritty of work at home life. First of all your children are not going to suddenly become victims of the pods and sit quietly by as you work your fingers to the bone from 9-5. Dinner will not cook itself, and every piece of dust in your house will suddenly stand up and put on neon blinkers to draw your attention decidedly away from both the computer screen and the telephone. Your youngest will kick and scream and throw tantrums in foreign languages in order to overcome the voice on the other end of the phone line. Your first-born will experiment with new methods of setting off the smoke detector at critical moments of concentration. Your husband will expect that since you’ve been home all day dinner will be waiting promptly at 6 and the clothes will not only neatly fold and press themselves but walk themselves to his closet shelves as well. Your children will want your undivided attention because you have tried your level best to ignore their existence all day long as you heroically attempt to meet your deadline.

All these things will happen. Let me say that again. All these things will happen. Maybe not exactly in the scenarios I’ve presented previously but in a manner befitting those you love most, it will happen. Neighbors, friends, and family will also join in the torment and assume that since you are home you are available for whatever need they have. I swear they think we sit around eating bon bons and watching Oprah all day. You will battle with people who feel that you should never have a speck of dust showing in your home since you don’t really do anything all day and there are those who simply think that you aren’t working unless you drive to an office to do it. I tell you these things now so that you understand and are prepared for them when they happen.

I am by no means trying to talk you out of this dream. I am trying to convey the importance of entering into this with a realistic vision of the struggle it will be. There are going to be times when you will ask yourself why on earth you wanted to work at home. There will be times when Antarctica will seem too close to be to your children. You love them, yes. But sometimes you need a dump truck full of patience rather than a cup. There will be days when you feel as though you are so far behind that you will never catch up, and there will be days when you think you’ve got this work from home thing down. You’re in the groove, everything fits into your schedule perfectly and you can really do this. Then tomorrow comes and you’re waiting once again for Calgon to come along and take you away.

These are the rewards for working at home. Even though it sometimes takes 80 hours to get in 40 hours of actual work, you have the flexibility to stop what you are doing to bake cookies and read a story at your son’s kindergarten class. You are home to watch your baby’s first steps and hear her first words. You get to laugh as she sits noisily with her phone at her ear imitating your pitch. You will smile when your children tell other children that their mommy doesn’t leave them to go to an office every day. And you have the knowledge that 18 years from now or sooner you won’t be sitting in a roomful of other parents wondering about all the things you missed. You will sit there with the knowledge that you are so very blessed not to have missed out on so many of the things that most of the parents in this room missed out on. And that is the ultimate reason we do this. Either that, or deep down inside we are black belt masochists.