Self-Employed Women Balance Work, Family Life
Featured Guest Blogger March 23rd, 2009
Self-employed women have been an increasing demographic in our society over the past 15 years:
A recent study, entitled Self-Employed Women and Time Use, administered by the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration, compared self-employed women to wage-and-salary earners and found that self-employed women are able to spend more time with their children and families, compared to their wage-and-salary earning counterparts. The study found that self-employed women spend about 3.5 more hours per week in household activities than wage-and-salary earning women do, and 6 more hours than men do.
These findings bring up a question for me. With the understanding that women are more likely to be self-employed at home than men are, does this contribute to our expectations of women “doing it all?” For example, our expectation of a self-employed woman will be that she earns an income and does her work well. When she is working from home, do we also expect that she cares for the home? After all, she is there.
I’m not self-employed, but as a PhD student who often works from home, I feel like I am. My “business goal” is finishing my dissertation. I want to devote my time to my work, yet, at lunch, I can’t help but notice that laundry has to be done and the toaster oven could use a cleaning. I’m there, so I might as well just take care of that, too. For whatever reason, because I am home, I feel the obligation to multitask and do two jobs—my regular work, and the housework. Maybe I should start working at the library? Of course, then I wouldn’t be working from home. Catch-22.
I believe women are wired differently and a large majority of us care about domestic things as well as work - just like some men . Most men would do the same thing you do and ignore the laundry, the toaster oven and everything else and probably suffer the same woes over home improvements that needed to be done. I am one of two partners at a CPA firm. The last time I had a child (at 38) I was doing tax returns from the house when the baby was one week old, went back to work 3 days a week when she was 3 1/2 weeks old and still managed to breastfeed for 8 months stopping only because my mother died of Ovarian Cancer…now that I’m 45 and pregnant for the 2nd time…older and wiser…I will bring the baby to the office until she/he can crawl but until then, I’ll have the baby here so I can spend that time doing my paying WORK while breastfeeding (NO NOISY PUMP) and get to care for my baby instead of doing my paying work from home as well as doing domestic work because I was at home. My house will be just fine…it is now that I’m working full-time. It will actually be a relief not to be at the house with my own toaster oven beckoning for a scouring pad!
Can you realistically spend time with your kids and have a career? Can you be a part time at both or do both ultimately suffer? Those who read my blog, know that I do advocate you can have it all. It is a notion that is challenged by the traditional workplace and the cynic I was interviewed by today. And then I came across another article demonstrating how many who are stuck in the middle can make it work.
The truth is that this “gray” area of trying to have it all is not easy from a practical point of view and from a community point of view. To say we can have it all might be overstepping.
MF Chapman
Work-life balance advocate
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