Home working

PostingBreaks and Ladders

Interesting piece in The Economist about patterns of female employment. According to Sylvia Hewlett of the Centre for Work-Life Policy in New York, more than a third (37%) of all professional women drop out of work at some point and even more will spend time working flexibly. Depressingly, getting back into work isn't easy: only 40% manage to find full-time jobs. And even those women who do make it back full-time suffer a huge loss of earnings - a 38% fall for those who've been out of the office for three years or more compared with those who stayed. The report says the big accounting firms do more than many employers to retain "off-ramped" female staff, offering formal career breaks, flexi-time, home working and seasonal schedules which can fit with school holidays. A couple of other employers offer project work to women who don't want to take on full-time positions. Let's hope more employers follow suit.

Posted 26 July 2007 11:57 | Number of comments: 14 | Comments

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PostingEscape from it all

I've come across a great site called Shedworking that could have the perfect solution for us work-at-home-mums - or WAHMS, in proper blogosphere parlance. It features lots of beautiful sheds, some of which you could site in the bottom of the garden and use as an office.

Apparently the shed's growing in popularity as a thinking and working space, and it could work a treat for working mums - just think, no more working next to damp laundry, our very own space free of husband's and child's discarded socks, half-eaten rice cakes and obscured toys that threaten to cripple.

I have to confess I've been a bit out of touch with the world of sheds. They've gone all designer and beautiful since I last knew anything about them. Now they look more deluxe than some of the wooden houses on Grand Designs.I think Kevin McCloud would like them.

There's only one hitch to my plan.  We live in a second-floor city centre flat. And while I'm thinking about applying for an allotment there's a current three-year waiting list. Another reason, perhaps, to join that well-trod path to the suburbs.

Posted 31 May 2007 11:44 | Number of comments: 8 | Comments

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PostingFeminine mistakes

An article on the excellent News for Parents site reports that an American writer has stirred up controversy with a book arguing that mothers who don't work could be risking their financial security, as well as their happiness.

In The Feminine Mistake, Vanity Fair journalist Leslie Bennetts warns stay-at-home mums that their decision to give up economic self-sufficiency and rely on their partner could have disastrous consequences.

The book's title's an ironic nod to fellow American writer Betty Friedan's 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, the groundbreaking work credited with launching the feminist movement. The book attacked the idea a husband and children were all a woman needed for fulfillment.

The latest book's stirred up a hornet's nest in the US, where according to poor Bennetts, stay-at-home mums are "burning up the blogosphere denouncing me". Last time I checked there were no fewer than 68 heated reviews of the book on Amazon alone, most of them huffy and defensive, all defending the writer's personal choices on working or not working.

Bennetts, herself a working mum, insists she only wants to alert women to dangers in giving up work to rely on a partner's income, like divorce, or a husband losing his job. My fellow blogger Omega Mum over at 3kidsnojob can tell you all about the latter scenario in her entertaining account of what happens when a husband loses his job, in their case through no fault of his own.

Bennetts also says that women who take career breaks planning to get back to work once the kids are ready should know they will take a huge salary hit - and might not get back to the same level at all. And there's also the sense of self-worth that women can gain outside the home. Plus pension entitlement. I'll see what she says about part-time work-at-home mums, and let you know about that.

The report was mostly manna to my web-weary eyes after a sorry day filling up the depleted Mother at Large household coffers. But why do I need a US author I've never even met to validate my parenting choices? Why do I need to read this to feel okay about how I arrange my life? Am I the only mother who needs approval from a book I've not yet read for choosing to work? I'd like to see a time when women can make career decisions without reference to a battery of parenting experts. Then again, maybe most women already do.

Posted 30 May 2007 22:44 | Number of comments: 6 | Comments

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PostingHome working for parents: the plus side

In my posting yesterday on the drawbacks to being a Work at Home Mum, or WAHM, I promised another missive today on the joys of a life spent fettered to a keyboard in the spare bedroom/playroom/study, while pretending to be a carefree "have-it-all" mum, with perfect work/life balance.

Now today's come around and I regret to have to say I can hardly think of any benefits to being a WAHM. But having scratched what's left of my braincells after a year's breastfeeding, I've managed to think of a few upsides.

No colleagues

At first this was a plus and I enjoyed my own company. Now I'm a seasoned WAHM and idealise any office where I've ever worked, however poisonous the politics were, remembering only the cheerful banter, not the nastier sides.

Flexibility in hours

Easier to knock off work early on a sunny day when I fancy taking my daughter to the park. When she was sent home from nursery with a sticky eye it was easy for me to walk over there and pick her up. Major plus for parents of young children. Some mornings I take her in to nursery closer to lunchtime, and then pick her up before teatime.

Master and commander (sort of)

I feel more in control of my own destiny, working for myself, and enjoy the freedom it brings. I can explore ideas and projects that interest me, without checking in with anyone else first.

Fitting work in around children

If things have gone haywire during the day, with our daughter sick at home or similar, I can make up the lost hours in the evening here at home.

Commuting time

For all my moaning about lack of company in the working day, I never enjoyed being shoe-horned into the London Tube every morning on the way to work, squashed in with  dozens of other people. Even I, moaner that I am, have to admit it's not much of a trek from bedroom to spare room.

Ability to work from anywhere with broadband connection

Well, theoretically, although it's strange how so much of work still comes down to talking with real, live human beings, even now. But being self-employed and working from home meant I was able to escape London two years ago to come back to Edinburgh. We're now debating a possible next move to France. If my husband didn't have such good IT skills, I doubt I'd be so sanguine on this point.

Getting more done at home/fewer interruptions?

Arguable point. A friend has a theory that people get more done working from home than they would in offices, because so much time there is taken up with meetings. Hah - but what about tea breaks?

Climbing the laundry mountain

Taking little breaks to work on the laundry leaves me still feeling quite smug and virtuous afterwards, almost as if I'd stayed at my desk and done the work I was meant to be doing, instead of frippering away the minutes on anything I could manage to justify to myself.



Some weeks you can take on more work, others less

When K was unwell a few weeks ago and she couldn't go to nursery, I was able to rearrange my work to look after her.

Posted 09 May 2007 01:39 | Number of comments: 4 | Comments

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PostingHome working: 10 drawbacks

Much as I hate to use this dreadful terminology, I joined the ranks of 'WAHMs', or 'Work at Home Mums', when Katie reached ten months. Before that I was a full-time 'SAHM' (Stay at Home Mum), though I didn't even know it at the time - it's only since I got back to work and had a chance to waste time browsing the net I found out all these new terms. The first six months looking after Katie I didn't miss work at all. Then my friends starting going back to work, one by one, and I got lonely.

Often when I'm talking to people about my work (journalism), they say something encouraging about how it must be easy to do that from home, combining it with looking after the baby. Well, it's not.

In my experience, the reality is that homeworking is really only for people with iron self-discipline, who are motivated and well-organised and aware of the drawbacks as well as the benefits. I am not one of those people.

Listed below are some of the things to bear in mind if you're thinking of becoming a work-at-home-parent. Most are based on personal experience, some from talking with other parents who live, work, eat and sleep in the same small flat.

Today I've written about some of the disadvantages to being a 'WAHM'.

It's not all doom and gloom. There are very real upsides to working this way. Please visit the site tomorrow, to read about the benefits to young parents of working this way.



DRAWBACKS TO BEING A 'WAHM'

1. Don't be deceived into thinking you'll spend more time with your children this way.

You won't. You still have to organise proper childcare for them. Anything else, and you're shortchanging yourself, your clients and them.

2. Home-based childcare will make it impossible to focus on your work

If you choose home-based childcare (for example Granny or childminder coming to your home), you'll find it hard to knuckle down while your children are playing next door.

3. Sleepy head. Just had lunch? Feeling like a little nap?

I'll put my head down for ten minutes. Oops. The afternoon just slid away again. All those hours gone, taken up with what was meant to be a short snooze. And no work to show for it at the end.

4. You may think you're only working two days, but will your clients and contacts?

Once, an all-important contact I was chasing like mad at the start of the week called back unexpectedly a few days later at the nadir, nay, the very trough of my day - Katie's supper-time. Hard-nosed PRs will call any time of day or night if they think there's a plug in it for a client.

6. You get landed with most of the housework

I'm really lucky in that my husband more than pulls his weight around the house. But being at home all day, I still end up loading, unloading dishwashers, vacuuming, cleaning away dishes, wiping worktops, and doing the endless laundry. As soon as I've done it, it all needs doing again. And it's so very, very dull.

7. Lack of company

It's lonely, being at home on my own all day. Chatting to the postman and the old lady two doors down doesn't fill the gap. Even my husband starts winding up phone conversations after ten or 15 minutes. It's why I've turned to blogging. You start to fall behind professionally, as well, if you're not in offices where you can keep up with latest ways of doing things.

8. You've got to have real self-discipline to get through the work

Otherwise the lure of the biscuit tin will get me every time. I falter and stumble, but have to keep things together because I need the work.

9. I can't appreciate my home anymore, it's also my place of work

I spend too much time here. I notice every piece of dirt, every crumb. I need to go on holiday before I can enjoy where I live again. Home's stopped being a retreat.

10. It's hard to draw a line under the end of each day.

Is it obsessive-compulsive to check emails at midnight?

Posted 08 May 2007 12:18 | Number of comments: 2 | Comments

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