Ever since having kids, I’ve said (and predict I will continue to say for a very long time), that my ideal working situation is part-time–whether out of the home, in the home, on a boat, with a goat…whatever. Most of my mom friends seem to feel the same way, which is why I was surprised to read that the number of mothers who say they’d prefer to work full time has risen dramatically in just the last five years. Mothers who say they’d prefer to work full time increased from 20 percent in 2007 to 32 percent in 2012, according to a Pew Research Center survey (link goes to an overview) of 2,511 working parents (both men and women) conducted at the end of last year. Are you as surprised by this as I am?
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When you hear the label work-at-home mom, do you picture do you picture a woman who works from home and also happens to be a mom or do you think of a woman working at home while her kids are there? The label is up for grabs for anyone who wants to use it, and I certainly wouldn’t say that one definition is any more accurate or difficult or heroic than the other, but I will say, having now done both, that they definitely can be different, and at times vastly so.

I kind of hate the image I chose to accompany this post because the idea that “working mother” equals “woman on a laptop while holding a baby” is a misguided and/or uninformed interpretation of how many versions of work-at-home motherhood there are out there. And yet…here I am, the lady on a laptop while holding my baby. (We do not, however, wear matching outfits that also coordinate with the giant arrangement of fresh flowers giving a “pop of color” to our sparkling white kitchen. Right now, for instance, I am wearing green plaid pajama pants that belong to my husband, and the baby is wearing oatmeal in his hair.)
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It’s back-to-school time for the kiddies and back-to-work time for me. Remember how I thought I’d take two weeks off work after having my baby and then just jump right back in? Well, here I am with a seven-week-old and I’m still chugga-chugga-ing at the station and only just now starting to move (slowly, slowly) down the track.
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Just thirteen more days until I’m officially on maternity leave from what I call my “day job”–working at home part-time for the book publishing company I’ve been with for ten years. Thirteen more days until I can ignore that email account, those Dropbox notifications, the pressing pressure that I am responsible for hundreds and hundreds of pages of someone’s near-and-dear-yet-riddled-with-typos composition. Thirteen days!

What shall I do to celebrate? Spend mornings napping in a hammock? Indulge in a six-hour Pride and Prejudice marathon? Throw a handful of confetti and then collapse in a heap because I really, really, really need this break?

Yes, I should definitely do all of those. Definitely. Right after I finish writing those four articles and proofing those ten posts and cleaning up that eighty-page file and invoicing for those three jobs. Then I will relax. I mean, I’ll relax if the baby doesn’t need me for something, because chances are he’ll arrive before all my freelance deadlines do, a situation that’s…not ideal.
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When my son was an infant, I had a thirty-minute office commute. When he was a toddler and I switched to working from home, I still had a fifteen-minute drive to daycare. For the two months my husband was out of work (”WAS”! HE GOT A JOB LAST WEEK!), my work day would blend right into my mom day because when the boys got home I’d still be sitting at my desk trying to eke out a few more moments of daylight productivity. When my son bursts in the door (his current bit is to announce loudly, “Hey Dad, where’s that nice lady who lives here?”), I just as often greet him with a hug as I do a “Just a minute, I’m almost done, no, you can’t sit on my lap, not right now, don’t touch that, stop, just a minute, JUST A MINUTE.”
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When it comes to picking up extra work, I’ve gotten more finicky with age. I won’t work on anything for just anyone and whatever price, and although that makes it seem as thought the extra money is less important to me now than it was when I was twenty-two, it’s actually more important, it’s downright integral. The difference now is that there’s not just a cost to the client but a cost to myself, and it’s not always easy to balance that out.   
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Some days it sure feels like I’m trying to do it all myself, but even in my darkest woe-is-me hours, I know that I definitely, definitely am not. It would be hard to overlook the hands-on support of my does-more-than-his-fair-share husband, and then there are the “it takes a village”-style friends and family who are a part of my son’s life too, but when I take an even bigger step back and look at all the balls I’m juggling on an average day, and I see how impossible it is to do that alone, I realize how much I rely on not just a village but a sprawling network of helpers (paid and not) to keep things running (relatively) smoothly, and I imagine most other working mothers do too.
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Yesterday marked the end of a glorious twelve-day vacation for my family, and for five of those days we were out of town staying in a house without internet access. Did reading that make your fingers twitch? Or did you feel your shoulders drop, your lungs exhale, your whole body relax?
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One good thing (the only good thing?) about having a Dreaded December Baby is that while everyone else is taking year-end stock of the previous twelve months, I also get to take stock of my latest year as mother to a kid born on December 14. Here are the top five parenting lessons I learned in 2010:
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My husband is a spontaneous, adaptable good sport who shines under pressure and thrives on improvisation. And since every yin must have its yang (or is he the yang and I’m the yin?), I’m his other half, the one who depends on structure and consistency and all the pieces of my life fitting together just so or else THE WORLD IS ENDING AND WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIIIIIIIE. For the most part we’ve found a way to make this work in our relationship, but unfortunately we don’t always get along with our jobs as well as we do with each other: He works regular hours in a building across town, and I work eight a.m. to whenever, and wherever, depending on what day it is and who needs me. I’m the one on call for sick days and holidays, I’m the one playing chauffeur, and I’m the one working late into the night because my nine-to-five was interrupted at 10:30 by a toddler spouting volcanos of vomit all over daycare.
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