No experience necessary - the Myth of the WAHM

"Work from home and earn 20-25 bucks an hour. No experience necessary."

You will see several ads for this on wahm.com,
...and for data entry,
...and posts about women who have their own multi-million dollar "Candle Business".

I am here to debunk the myth of the WAHM (For those of you unfamiliar with this term, it stands for "Work at Home Mom"). I personally think the term should be WOHP-Work at Home Professional. It's a much cooler term, and it doesn't bias the situation with sex.
I know several people who work at home, work in the car, work at the coffee house. They are both men and women, both moms and dads.

I work from home, and happen to be a mom too. The more the term WAHM is thrown around, the more I find myself being taken less seriously. I don't sell candles, I don't do data entry, I don't do ghost writing for Stephen King. I do exactly what I did before I had children (design). I know WAHMs that work for the Rand Corporation, that are Sociologists, etc.

One of the women in my "virtual office" was featured on the Today Show a few months back. It showed her shuffling her three kids off to school in an orderly fashion after feeding them a healthy breakfast, and "commuting 6ft. to her office". She confided in me that this was the most organized she's ever been. They were up at 4:30 to have everyone neat and tidy for the show.

What I found interesting is that they focused the show on a woman. It wasn't about work at home parents, it was about a work at home mom. The show concluded with a woman who sold "designer clothing" from her home. She summed up the show in a sales pitch about how the clothing was the "finest quality" (holding a garment for the camera to see) and how you too could join her team and sell these "fine"products. I swear I saw the camera zoom to the street and her driving away in a pink Cadillac branded with Mary Kay.

My colleague that was featured is nothing like this woman. She has skills beyond your typical Avon sales lady. She is doing what she did before she became a mom, she just happens to do it remotely. She is not kicking legos around under her desk while she works. She goes to meetings. She owns suits.

I remember going to a meeting with a banker that was going to work a loan out for a home we wanted to buy. My husband was there first, I came second with the kids. The man (granted, he was an older fellow, stuck in the stone-age) looked at me as he worked out our finances, and said "with these two, I am presuming that you stay at home". I was in the midst of putting out coloring supplies for my oldest to keep her occupied, and probably nursing the baby at the same time. So, I guess it was an honest mistake. I simply said "yes". It was true. I DO stay at home.

While he was working out the numbers, he suggested "we'll just put no income down for you". I honestly don't know where he thought we were going to get the money to buy the house we were looking at if I had no income. I think the words "back up buddy" came out of my mouth. Maybe I just stuttered "Oh no. I have a profit statement here from my business, please take a look". At this point it became apparent that I could bring home the bacon and nurse the baby at the same time.

Still that doesn't take me out of the Avon lady role. I probably could sell enough Avon to buy a house. I don't know, does Avon still exist? I know that Mr. McConnell (and Jr.) made a bundle from women going door to door, and selling products to their friends. Timing is everything. Women! You can now work! Go sell beauty products to your friends! They even "Sponsored Radical Feminist Hate for Fathers Day, featuring known lesbians, man-haters, and supporters of child sexual predation such as Rosie ODonnell, Jane Fonda, Eve Ensler, and Marlo Thomas. (What? Get a load of THAT link if you want a laugh).

So, the way I see it is: women were allowed to work. We gained stride... we got out of the bondage of the house. People questioned, "is it good for the kids?". Our guilt got to us. "Mr. Mom" was just not working. We decided that we could work at home. We could be professionals AND watch the kids.

Or maybe, just maybe, a little thing called "the internet" was developed an enabled more people to not have to commute. It enabled us to go to work on our couches, in our own living room office. To be at work at home. To be a professional on the toilet.

So, I guess the stigma attached with WAHM is, not so much the "Work at Home" part, but the "Mom" part. WAHM suggests that even though you work at home, you can still be responsible for the home and the kids, simply because you are a "Mom". ("WAHD" could also be an appropriate term for Dads. As in "Whad you say? I can't concentrate on anything else while I'm working". The site for WAHD's though was built by a WAHM. She decided to be a web designer too while she was at it.)

The Today Show says that this is normal, a new phenomenon. How wonderful that women can work at home so the kids aren't in day care. They actually make Supermom action figures now. I'll tell you, society better pump us up with this stuff, especially if we are going to keep our stride.

We tried to have men do their fair share at home after we hit the work force. This failed miserably in most cases. So we had a couple of choices:
1. Ditch our efforts and resolve to staying at home washing diapers
2. Continue to climb the corporate ladder, leaving our kids in daycare until as late as we can, so that we can compete with those not responsible for the kids (aka. men), all the while feeling a huge amount of societal guilt
3. Adapt by working where the kids are, thumb over the phone receiver, on conference call to London, LA, and New York, baby on the boob, laundry machine going.
4. Doing data entry and earn a WOHP-ing 20 bucks an hour.