Ooh, now I’m really curious about what that job *is* 🙂

Exactly. My hourly rate is good because when I work, I FOCUS and work hard. And because I have an engineering degree and high SAT-V (done before kids) which made me eligible for the job in the first place.

I’m not doing as well as you are, Laura, but I think we are both exceptions to the rule.

@Twin Mom- thanks for this comment. I completely agree that it’s possible to earn money through flexible work. Often good money! Indeed, in my own life, I’ve worked on getting a certain book of business that can be done in less than an hour a day — it will be somewhere between $25-30k of the work I do this year. Sometimes I think about not doing those projects but I also like that I have options in case things changed in my life. I have a few speeches lined up for next year, so do those, my 1-hour a day stuff, and cash royalty checks from the ebook and 2013 could be a reasonable year mostly during naps. On the other hand — and one thing I’d be sure to tell young women thinking about how they could create flexible work — is that all those options are available to me because of things I wrote in the past that couldn’t be done in an hour a day. I think my main beef with the post (which I realize I should just link to here – it’s kind of a long story) was this tone of how hard the writing life was, trying to find time for it, and my point was that this was a certain mindset of approaching one’s work. If you’re trying to earn a living at a job (even if you’re in the season of life where much of it goes to childcare — it won’t always forever!), you usually don’t try to find time for it.

Just because you do it during naptime/TV doesn’t mean it isn’t a job. I work 8 hr/week and earn about as much as I would working full-time as an engineer and paying for childcare.

I don’t tell most people what I do and if they knew my hourly rate for my SAHM job, they would be shocked.

To each her own!

@Cara- I forget the exact quotes from her book. But she talked a lot about managing energy– finding ways to refill the well when it’s depleted. For some people, that means a walk, or reading a gossipy magazine on the bus commute home, or something that then gives them new energy to tackle the second job. I find that planning what I’ll do in advance helps. If I know in the Am I’ll be taking the kids to the park in the evening, I’m much more energized to do it than if it’s 6 pm and I’m deciding what to do.

@Kelly- both of you support each other at different seasons of life… But yeah, the writer thing is just a personal pet peeve. I almost wrote a post a few months ago responding to a blog post by someone who was, in fact, staying home with the kids primarily, and trying to squeeze in a bit of writing here and there. She wrote about worrying people wouldn’t take her seriously. And I was going to point out that, yes, that’s because you’re not treating it as a job. To use my plumbing example again, you don’t hear plumbers say “I try to squeeze in a little plumbing during nap time.”

I think loving what you do is a huge piece of this work/stay home puzzle. Last year I was very burned out at my job and the day was torture to get through. I was grouchy because I felt like I had no control over my life, as Annie Kate mentioned in the comments. Also, when I was working full-time at a job with no flexibility, the day became an elaborately constructed puzzle of drop offs, pick-ups and responsibilities and if one piece was a askew, the whole thing fell apart.

Working for myself is a whole new world of issues to navigate- how do I feel productive? What am I doing that’s going to pay off in the long run? How do I make sure I’m spending time on things that benefit me in the short term? Etc, etc. But I am happy to put together this puzzle, because its MINE and I’m making my own choices. Freedom! Yeah! Which leads to money… ahem….

I have given up my nice, steady paycheck and my family is feeling the pinch. But I’m not going to guilt trip myself about that. I supported my husband through grad school and I ran the family while he started his business, so I feel like I’ve earned some cushion here while I get this writing thing going.

I didn’t know your parents were academics of religion. You should write about religion more or have your dad or mom do a guest post… I found the religious stuff on here interesting. I also deeply admire you and your husband for forging this path b/c I know how not easy it is and would love to learn more about how why you guys do it and how you think it works. I will check out this suggestion for sure about Joanna Barsh b/c I think this idea is interesting that there are some people who take on the stressful job and still make the second shift work — who are they, what do they give up and what can we learn from them… etc.

@Annie Kate- thanks so much for posting your comment here. I meant to go back over to your blog and check to see if you commented, but I was traveling for work this weekend (a speaking gig). My husband was helpfully taking care of the three kids while I was doing that 🙂 A few thoughts on your response. First, as Nicole&Maggie noted, people have different views on the epistles and literalism — what is theologically imperative and what is part of the culture of the day. I imagine most of us don’t believe slaves have any obligation to obey their masters anymore. As for dragons, we all have been given ours to conquer, and it’s not clear to me why one set of dragons is more important just because of the slayer’s gender. I think we should all support and encourage our spouses in whatever ways work for our families, as you put it — ARC has a nice essay over at House of Peanut on why she’s working, even though she might in the abstract like to stay home, because she wants her husband to be able to find work he loves and spend time with their daughter too. Incidentally, I say this as someone married to a man whose profession has long been up-or-out, stressful, etc. Many of his colleagues have stay-at-home spouses (of whatever gender) for precisely this reason, but we’re trying to forge our own way. And as I’ve gotten to know many of his female colleagues, I see how they’ve figured out ways to manage their energy in order to have love and attention left to give after the workday. Joanna Barsh has a whole chapter on this in her book How Remarkable Women Lead that I thought was interesting. When something is important to you, you figure out a way to do it.