Besides those that are self employed. If you work at home part time or full time what do you do?
Do you have to go into the office at all?
-
My best friend from law school never went back to a law firm after her maternity leave. She took a part time job (20 hours a week) working at home as sort of an assistant corporate counsel. She says its tough. She has her mom come watch her boy during the time she works at home, I think.
-
I work full time, 2 days in my firm's home office (1.5 hour commute each way) and 3 days in a branch (technically 15 minutes, but with traffic, can be 45 minutes). eta: the original plan was for me to work at home, but we were in temporary living quarters, so I went to the office instead. It worked great so we left it at that.
I do project management work, I am also a contractor, so I do not get benefits, but I do make my own hours and get paid for what I work. I have no guilt about working overtime and I also don't get involved in the office politics, which can be annoying and time consuming!
-
I work at home/my car in advertising sales. I go into the office on Friday mornings. However, this job could not be done will with a baby or child at home! All my co-workers with kids send their kids to day care.
-
I'm a psychologist and I took a p/t position where I only write reports and gave up the counseling aspect of my job temporarily. I'm in the office 2 days a week conducting evaluations and the rest of the time, I'm at home writing them. It's the perfect set-up for me right now, as I feel like I get the best of both worlds. I do have a nanny at home, and that is a big help because I couldn't balance both otherwise.
-
@yerpie110: does the nanny not negate the pay from the PT position?
-
Part-time, I teach at a for profit career college. I do one day a week on campus (on my husband's week day off so we have childcare covered), and some tutoring at night wherever students want to meet. I also teach an online class, which is from home whenever I want, primarily naps and after baby bedtime.
-
@regberadaisy: Nope, not unless I decide to drop the number of evaluations I do. I should add that my husband works F/T, and our nanny is there 4 days a week.
-
@regberadaisy: Thanks for posting this! I am also curious as to what other WAHM do. I am a contractor and work in global public health (a lot of research and writing). I am due Oct. 6th and am trying to figure out what to do for childcare, specifically whether I need a full time nanny/daycare or whether I can hire someone part time. I'll be working 40 hours a week (my husband will also be working/out of the house ~65 hours a week).
-
@regberadaisy: I work two days at home and three days in the office. I work in research, from a computer, so I could basically do my job anywhere there is an Internet connection. I have child care all five days in my home, which I wanted so I wasn't pulled in different directions. It's also great because I can nurse on the days I'm home and don't have to worry about pumping!
-
@Sadieloo: hehe I was asking more in hopes of getting a WAHM job to save on daycare! hehe So hiring a nanny would be out for me. It would defeat the point.
-
i work full time but work 2 days from home. i'm a software developer so everything i need is just on my comp. i could probably work more days from home but i like the balance of going into the office and staying home. so far its not too bad watching her and working but she's always been a good napper so i get chunks of time to do work.
-
I work from home once a week, but i can work from home whenever i need to. I work as an HR consultant, but our company is really big on "mobile workers". I can do video conferencing, and even have a soft phone on my laptop so that calls to my office will go straight to my laptop.
-
@Sadieloo: I'm also in public health research, and I know that I couldn't put in a 40 hour week without full time daycare. On days when LO's daycare is closed and I try to work from home with him around, the best I can do is about 5 hours unless I get up super early or work late into the night. I can write and respond to emails while he's awake, but I can't get much of substance done outside of naptime.
-
My husband works with computers, and he works from home 2-3 days a week. He saves on the commute, and gets to have lunch with us, but that's it. He's still working just as he would in an office.
I think that jobs you can do at home while also taking care of a child are extremely rare, honestly. Some people do sales, or teach online courses, or write, and can do those things in naptimes and at night. But that really is not the norm. Taking care of a baby really is a full time job, and it is almost impossible to do another full time job at the same time.
-
I'm a consultant at a global HR firm. I work from home two days a week, sometimes more depending on emergency days, etc.
My mom watches DS while I'm in the office m-w and will come watch him on Th/Fr when I'm at home if I am slammed. Elsewise, I am my own project manager and can schedule around my two work from home days depending on workload.
It's nice to have the option of flex childcare though, there are busy times that I could not go w/o my mom's help while working at home. I also work from home at night when I need to and also on weekends... there is no way to do my job only 3 days a week in office. Watching DS is a full-time job in and of itself.
-
I have a F/T WOH job, but I also work P/T from home for my previous employer. They're an internet company (SEO type stuff) and I used to work for them F/T in the office. Now I work mainly 1 weeknight and 1 weekend day (about 3 hrs a day, I choose the hrs) a week. I'm still doing it, even though I don't really need the money, because once I have a LO, if I want to SAH, it would be a perfect way to earn some income.
-
@regberadaisy: Ah! That makes sense
I have a bunch of friends who were able to modify their schedules to work from home part time. They are in a variety of fields/positions from HR, to sales, to project management.
-
@Lozza: Good to know! That seems to be the consensus among the Mom's that I know that also WFH. Now the question is daycare or nanny. Fortunately I'll have some time to figure it out!
-
I WAH full time. I manage a team of business analysts for a major insurance company. I only have to travel maybe once a quarter for a week or so. My LO goes to daycare full time, I would not be able to work with her at home.
-
Not a mom yet lol, but just started WAH job this week. I'll be going to office for few days monthly. I'm a data analyst for retirement plans. Not the norm, but not hard to find WAH jobs in my industry once you have over 5 years experience
-
I'm hoping to work PT at home when I go back in January. Maybe 2-3 days at home, the rest in the office. I'm in electronic publishing for a very flexible accounting firm. I do a lot of web based posting and text manipulation and copy editing (spelling, grammar, style). LO will be in daycare, but DH works a five minute walk from home, so will be around to get her if she's sick or if something comes up.
-
@regberadaisy: we just moved to lower cost of living area, but were able to keep our "city jobs" as work from home so better $$. The goal is when we have kids, we will have same income as before, but save over 70% on day care by grandma baby sitting once or twice a week and rest in daycare. Old city vs new city daycare monthly is $1100 vs $400-500
-
@runnerd: DAMN!!!! That's a huge difference!
Our daycare is actually relatively inexpensive. We're in our forever home so no moving.
-
I've been working from home since we relocated out of seas in '08. We're back in the states but in a different state. I've been working part time which works out well because I don't need to pay for child care. It does get hectic though because I do work sometimes after the kids go to bed. I'm logging more full time hours now but one kid is still in school and will probably be starting the younger one in part time day care/preschool. I'm in technology.
-
I work from home 3 days a week and have to go to the office 2 days a week. I work in insurance...boring desk job!
-
@sarac: "I think that jobs you can do at home while also taking care of a child are extremely rare, honestly. Some people do sales, or teach online courses, or write, and can do those things in naptimes and at night. But that really is not the norm. Taking care of a baby really is a full time job, and it is almost impossible to do another full time job at the same time."
TOTALLY AGREE with this. I work for myself now, but wanted to chime in and echo a few posters who have said it's basically impossible to get into the work groove and get quality work done when LO is around, because then she needs my attention. It might work if you did something where you could do 10-15 minutes of work at a time, then leave it, and come back without losing concentration and "steam". We have LO in daycare 3 days a week now instead of 5, and I try to cram all my work into those 3 days because the 2 she is home with me, I can't count on getting any block of time to myself.
ETA: At my former company, if you worked from home on a regular basis (even like 1 day a week) they required you to provide proof that you still had fulltime outside-of-the-home daycare for your child.
-
Yeah, I honestly think that for most jobs, working while also taking care of your child is really uncool and unfair to your coworkers. There are exceptions, obviously, but I don't consider them the norm. My husband works from home half time, and he works his butt off. This year he was rewarded with a great raise - and he deserved it. He has coworkers who just . . . don't. They 'work from home' but spend a lot of time doing child care during working hours. They just contribute less, hands down.
Again, I totally see how it works in sales, online teaching, writing. But for most desk jobs, I think it's a near impossible dream.
-
I work FT - 2 days at home, 2 days in the office and one day at a vendor's office that is about 1/2 hour away. My commute to the office is about an hour and 15 minutes each way.
On the two days I work from home, my FIL comes to watch LO one day and my dad comes the other day. It is perfect as I get to go downstairs to see him any time I want to...or if either dad is having trouble, I can run down to calm him down. And at the end of the day, I save myself the hour and 15 minutes...I also get to get up an hour and a half later in the morning!
-
Before I was a SAHM I actually walked dogs, which was GREAT but you can't really do that very well with a kid or two. Maybe if you had a really good stroller and the dogs were all really well behaved.
When I was a SAHM and our money started getting way too tight to handle, I looked for WAH opportunities. I ended up taking on 3 part time jobs, but I couldn't do any during the day-- it was too hard with the baby, even with his long naps. I did ad sales for a website and managed a local business's social media from home and I worked at a bridal salon a few nights a week and on saturdays. It got so tight that we had zero family time together-- basically one of us was always at work. So that's when I went back to work as a WOHM.
-
I was a WAHM part-time as a training manager when my LO was 4-10 months old. I quit a couple months ago because it was just too much for me balancing home and work life. Even though I tried to work only during my LO's naptimes, there were some days where he wouldn't nap for that long (and he's a good napper). I hold myself to a high work ethic, and I knew I wasn't being as effective as I could have been. Trying to log in and work while my LO was playing was just way too distracting. Really the only time period working from home went well was when he was 4-7 months old. Once he started crawling and was all over the place, it was impossible to work while he was awake. Unless your kid naps for 5-6+ hours a day, it's very very hard...
The extra money coming it wasn't worth it, and because I didn't make enough to cover daycare, the best option was for me to quit. I now work for myself as a Scentsy consultant and can make my own schedule, so it's worked out much, much better for us. But we primarily depend on my husband's paycheck to still pay for everything, basically anything I make covers activities/classes for my LO and helps our savings account.
I have a bunch of friends who were able to modify their schedules to work from home part time. They are in a variety of fields/positions from HR, to sales, to project management.
Reply
Subscribe to our newsletter
- Google Plus
- Stumbleupon
- Twitter
- Facebook
- Pinterest
- Favorite1
30 comments