Home is Where the Job Is

By Laura Ulrich
Issue 153 March/April 2009

My mother was a stay-at-home mom. Even as a child, I think I knew how lucky that made us. When we got off the bus, she was there. While other kids headed off to summer camp, we slept in, helped in the garden, and spent long afternoons reading under a tree in our own backyard.

Last year, when I was pregnant with my son, Graham, I wanted to offer him what I’d had: a mom who was home. But, like many families, we had to accept that we couldn’t make it on one income, so I made plans to take my maternity leave, then return to my job as a magazine editor.

My mother and my husband’s mother agreed to help with childcare; I’d hand the baby over each morning with a neat row of bottles full of pumped breastmilk and head off to the office. At the end of the day, I’d come home and shift my focus back to mothering.

Plans are neat and motherhood is messy—our plan began to unravel as soon as Graham was in my arms. My maternity leave flew by, and with each day that passed, it became harder to imagine leaving my son. When at last I walked back into my boss’s office, I struggled through the door with my baby in one arm and my workbag in the other—an apt metaphor for the tug-of-war going on in my heart. I was willing—even eager—to do some work, but motherhood wasn’t something I could put down.

After that first day, I went to work several more times with baby in tow, but neither my company nor I was ready for the long-term reality of a baby at the office. Eventually a decision had to be made, and in the process, I discovered that I had a choice I hadn’t considered. I turned in my resignation, launched a freelance writing business, and became a work-at-home mom.

Now, freelancing from home, I’m doing something I’ve dreamed of for years. I work for myself, write about issues that matter to me, and connect with a community that feels like home. And my son is never more than a few feet away.

It isn’t always easy. I’ve done telephone interviews while dancing around my house with Graham in a front pack, praying he wouldn’t wake up until I’d hung up the phone. One time, in the middle of an interview, he spit up his most recent meal all over both of us. I had to continue asking questions while marinating in my own curdled milk.

There are toys in my briefcase, audiotapes in my diaper bag—when you’re a work-at-home mom, the elements of your life get mixed together in a wonderful, messy way. I’ve found that if I can be flexible enough to roll with the surprises, I may just discover that my days have become Jackson Pollock paintings: unpredictably beautiful, inspired, and original. For this story, I talked with work-at-home moms in several different careers, some much more experienced than I, and asked them how they make it work.

Working with baby

When I decided to work at home, I pictured my son sleeping peacefully next to my desk while I churned out articles, rocking his cradle gently with my foot. The reality of caring for children at home while you work is a little more complex, but with patience and flexibility, moms and babies can accomplish a great deal side by side. The first step is getting off on the right foot, and that entails avoiding a trap many work-athome moms fall into: planning a lightning-fast maternity leave, because you won’t be leaving the house to go to work. However, a difficult birth, a high-needs baby, and nursing or sleeping troubles can force work onto the back burner for longer than you expected; you and your baby will both benefit if you plan to take your time.

“I struggled with two bouts of bouts of mastitis, among other breastfeeding difficulties, and wasn’t able to work for the first two months,” says Mandi Meidlinger, who, as a work-at-home mother to Jillian (now four), started Jillian’s Drawers, a New York–based online cloth-diaper and natural-parenting company. “My advice is to plan on spending the first three months dedicated to becoming a new mother. If you can start working before that, great! But if you can’t, don’t feel like you’re behind, because you’re not.”

Once they do start working, many mothers find the first several months the easiest for working alongside baby. “I was able to do everything I needed to do with my babies on me or next to me until they were several months old,” recalls Pamela Crawford, a Massachusetts-based work-at-home mom who has spent a decade serving as art director for a national-magazine publisher while mothering Simon (ten), and now also Alice (four). “For the most part, they slept, nursed, or played happily as long as they were with me.”

When baby begins to sleep less and becomes more mobile, most work-at-home moms start to divide their work into two categories: tasks they can accomplish with baby, and tasks they can’t. “I used to make two lists: one for things I could do while wearing Jillian, and one for things I needed to do while she slept,” Meidlinger says.

Toddlers can often be incorporated into moms’ work, reaping huge developmental benefits as they “help.” Meidlinger relates that “Jillian started helping me with my work when she was about 12 months old. When I was packing orders, I’d say, ‘Can you pick that diaper up and give it to me?’ She’d stay happily engaged as long as she was helping.”

Older children can spend some of their time independently, checking in with mom periodically. “Now that Simon is ten, I can tell him, ‘I really need to get this project finished,’ and he understands,” Crawford says. “We each work on things for a couple of hours, and then we meet in the kitchen, make lunch, and eat together on the porch.”