So, what to do?
Since we cannot control much outside of ourselves, let alone the economy, how can we achieve a balance between the welfare of our children, financial prosperity, and our personal needs?
Further compounding the issues is what is called “barriers to choice”, meaning that even if the choice is made to pursue part-time work, it is often hard to see any prospect of finding a job that works around the kid’s school, holiday schedule, outside activities, and so on.
Can I ask you a question?
If you’re in a frantic day job, is earning an income with flexible hours so you can free up time to spend with the kids the most important thing in your mind?
If you’re a stay at home mom, would you be grateful to bring in extra household income and also give yourself a blissful break from changing diapers and chasing after the kids? Being a working mom in today’s world isn’t easy and often an eye-popping experience.
The pay is usually lower, there is outside childcare to think about, then you come dragging home in the evening to your main job…running the household, feeding and bathing the kids, reading a story with one eye shut and getting them off to bed. Do you really have the money and, as a busy mom, the time to work a job?
Build your own business instead?
So, how about creating your own small business and work from home or space nearby? Sounds easy, but is it really?
With all the online promises of easy money and little or no effort creating a business (and we know that can’t be true) where do you start? Who do you trust? What if you fail?
When I started dreaming behind the scenes about opening a business, I too was running around after 3 small kids who on any given morning were repainting the walls with sidewalk chalk or riding the darn dog like a cartoon character they thought was so funny on the tube. It was fun, but I was exhausted and starting to forget how adults really acted in the real world.
By the way, when this phase ended, I was looking at returning to a corporate job and handing the kids off to childcare until school started.
The expense was frightening enough let alone how unsettling it can be with someone else raising your kid during the day.
So, I prayed hard for the same thing you dream of right now. A flexible way to make extra money that would let me stay a mom and also have some adult time too.
I had no guarantee of success and no road map to follow, but I did the work, made the mistakes, found the route to success. And, many years later with my kids grown up, it‘s the love of my life.
In this day and age of the female entrepreneur, anything is possible and the odds are overwhelmingly in your favor.
Go for it. And when you need help, it’s out there and available to you.
Photo by Katt Yukawa
