The days when having a career meant 9 to 5 in an office, with a chauvinistic male boss are thankfully, long gone. The Internet and web-based software applications today mean that it is easier than ever for mothers (yes, and others) to remain in their homes, caring for their children, while they continue a career and maintain their career goals. The day of the "mommy track" is (or should be) over.
The Internet's ubiquitous presence can allow home workers the ability to have a virtual office from anywhere they happen to be. Today, with a laptop and a cell phone, it is just as easy to serve client needs or work on a project from a picnic table in the park watching the kids play as it is from a traditional office.
The question is, are managers willing to allow their staff this freedom? I have been promoting "work from home" for years -- since I saw a modem for the first time during my middle school years. My mother was a work at home mom, efficiently running Dad's pest control company from a spare bedroom in our home. She set me a wonderful example of how working from home can, and should, work. And that was back in the 70s -- before the Internet, before cordless phones, before PCs. She ran the business efficiently, ran our home efficiently, kept things reasonably clean, had snacks for us after school, prepared a home-cooked dinner every night, and cared for her six children.
With the tools at our fingertips today, it is out of step to assume that the modern mother must make a choice between a career and her children. Some mothers will always choose not to be in a paying position during their children's childhoods -- after all, motherhood in and of itself is a strenuous full time, underappreciated, job. Others will always need the social stimulation of a busy office. But for mothers who want to be home with their precious little ones, but who must earn a living for their family, or who can't make ends meet, isn't it time to provide work from home jobs that pay well?
I have held a large number of clerical positions, from office manager to credit manager to medical biller for a medium sized hospital. In every administrative or clerical position I've ever held, the question I've always had is, "Why can't I do this at home?"
At the hospital in particular, where I worked in a "bullpen" without even the imagined privacy of cubical walls, I would have to bring a portable CD player or radio to work with headphones in order to concentrate on my work. (This was in the pre-Ipod days.) There was almost nothing I was doing there that I couldn't have done more efficiently from a home office -- with no concerns about office politics, the very thing I have despised the most about every job I've ever held. I was not allowed to work from home, though -- because I could not be supervised from a remote location (so said my boss).
I disagreed with her then, and even more strenuously now.
Let's make the workplace more mom-friendly.
Donna Vazquez
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