WHAMing It and Loving It: Tips for the Work-at-Home Mom

Work-at-home mothers appear to have the life many mothers dream of. They have a satisfying career, are making money and can stay home with their children. But it’s not always easy to separate home and work when your office is your kitchen. Unrealistic expectations, procrastination, toddlers and unsupportive husbands can make working from home a challenge. But moms who do it say that with the right strategies it’s possible to overcome the challenges and reap the rewards.

By Kim Mordecai

While the roles of stay-at-home mother and businesswoman have long been considered mutually exclusive, a growing number of women are showing the world that they can have careers and stay at home with their children.

They are WAHM’s, Work-at-Home Mothers, who have discovered that balancing work and home is a lot more challenging when your office is your kitchen.

Realistic Expectations

Many mothers would love to work and be at home with their children, but few know how to do it. Cheryl Demas, author of It’s a Jungle Out There and a Zoo in Here – Run Your Home Business without Letting It Overrun You, says that one of the keys to being a work-at-home mom is having realistic expectations.

“Have you seen those commercials where there’s a woman sitting in her bunny slippers on a conference call to Europe while her daughters are playing quietly next to her?Well that just doesn’t happen,” says Demas, 43, a resident of Folsom and founder of WAHM.com, a Web site for work-at-home moms.

“The key is to have to have a realistic attitude. Taking care of your home and family really is a full-time job; add a business and something has to give.”

And, Demas says, it is that give that is the key to everything – in order to be a successful WAHM you have to make compromises and let go of perfectionism.

“If you’re one of those people that needs to have a clean house all the time, don’t even bother,” Demas says, explaining that WAHMs have to give up the ideal of being successful businesswomen and perfect mothers.

Support and Perspective

A consistently neat home is not the only thing work-at-home moms sacrifice.

“You get into it with the idea that you want to take care of your kids,” says Heike Boehnke-Sharp, a work-at-home mother who makes T-shirts and sells them on her Web site goddessinthegroove.com.“There were days I thought, ‘I wish I could just go to work.’ There’s no security, no insurance and you have no idea if you’re going to make money or not.”