30.12.94

FEATURES: Earning with mother 

Most career women with children get a nanny and go back to work. But, says Sally Holloway, the guilt and effort of juggling domestic and office life is prompting a growing number to find new ways of working from home

BY SALLY HOLLOWAY

'AND WHAT do you do?" the dinner-party question goes.

"Well, at the moment I'm at home with my baby, but . . ."

Whoops! Too late. The well ironed man is already turning to the power-dressed woman on his right.

Never mind that until a couple of months ago, you were controlling multi-million pound budgets; never mind that you have all sorts of plans for the future. If you are not powering your way up the career ladder, you signify social death.

You are defined by your job, whatever your sex. Women who stop work - even temporarily - to have a family become invisible. And depressed, if a recent survey of Edinburgh housewives conducted by occupational psychologist Howard Khan is anything to go by.

In my mother 's day women were happy to stop work when they had children and to live vicariously through their husbands. To the modern woman, who is as well qualified as her partner and used to her own income, the idea is anathema.

Most professional women take a short maternity leave, then return to the job they slaved to get, only to spend the next 10 years juggling maternal guilt with officepolitics. Part-time work is the solution for some, but women tend to go part-time when their earnings potential is highest and so damage their long-term financial status. Many complain of being expected to do five days' work in three,and of no longer being taken seriously.

So what do you do if you are in a high-powered job but you want to have children? A solution isemerging, one that is being taken up by an increasing number of women. They are becoming self-employed, so they can do the hours they want, when they want, where they want. They are taking control of their lives.

When Mrs Coca-Cola, Penny Hughes, recently announced her decision to resign on January 1 - the date her maternity leave begins, few women believed she would stay at home mixing feeds for long. We now hear that she has accepted a non-executive directorship of the Body Shop and is reportedly about to become a consultant. It is a sensible solution; she will keep sane by keeping active, but on her own terms.

I made such a choice last autumn. Until my son was born 15 months ago, I was earning one and a half times my husband's salary as editorial director of a well known publishing company. I had slogged my way up from secretary to that position. I worked a nine- or 10-hour day, and spent most Sundays reading manuscripts. I could have negotiated a reasonable maternity leave but, when I became pregnant at 33, I decided to quit. I simply could not see how I could do my job and make a reasonable stab at being a mother.

As the months went by, finances began to run low. I had once had one newspaper article published, so decided to give freelance journalism a crack. I am now making a living out of it. I work the hours around Henry, who goes to a childminder two days a week, and I feel a good deal happier.

My new life has brought me into contact with many other women who have taken similar decisions. Sophie Chalmers, 31, gave up a promising career in television research to have Caspian, now three, on the assumption that she would go back to work "one day". But she felt strongly that her baby needed a mother. As she did not want to return to the same volume of work, there was no longer a place for her ather old job. Things were exacerbated when her husband was made redundant at the time of her maternity leave.

"I temped as a secretary on and off, taking Caspian into offices in his car seat. He slept on my desk, but as he got older this became impossible," says Sophie. "My brain was also going muddy. Most mothers have a few months of besottedness with the baby, then get bored because he's asleep for most of the time."

Three years on, Sophie is running her own magazine from home, in partnership with husband Andrew James. Home Run was born out of conversations with people wanting to work from home but not knowing which way to turn. The monthly magazine for professional homeworkers has more than 1,000 subscribers, and recently won Sophie a Cosmopolitan achievement award.

She had Saskia 18 months ago, slotted between two editions. "I felt very liberated being able to continue working," says Sophie. "Saskia slept on my desk while I carried on as an independent being."

The couple now employ a daily nanny. "Occasionally, the children 'escape' and come and fiddle with computer buttons. But they understand that work is important, which is in a three-year-old." What infuriates Sophie, however, is the assumption that because she works with her husband she is "just helping out".

VICTORIA HISLOP, 35, and mother of Emily, four, and William, 18 months, finds people make the same assumptions about her. She is married to the editor of Private Eye, Ian Hislop. Until recently, she earned more than Ian as accounts director for Wolff Olins, the corporate-identity specialists. She tried to return to work part-time after having Emily but says: "I felt I was doing everything badly. The mixture of guilt and compromise made me miserable."

Victoria began copywriting on a freelance basis - a skill of which she had no experience, although she had often commissioned copywriters. She finds herself in the peculiar situation of turning down work until her children are older and she can meet the demand guiltlessly.

Fiona Greenwood, 43, used to manage a chain of craft shops. After the birth of her first child, she retrained as a calligrapher and now works around the school holidays. "When my children were younger," says Fiona, "I had visions of sitting at my drawing board with them at my feet. It was a hopelessly naive vision, and I now employ a part-time au pair, but at least I'm at home."

Many women find themselves turning to more creative work after the birth of a child; indeed, there is a theory that motherhood fosters creativity. Liz Jensen, 35, screeched up the fast lane to become a BBC radio producer at 24. When she became pregnant, she astonished colleagues by giving it all up to live in France with her French husband.

After Matti, now five, was born, Liz worked as a freelance producer and also sculpted. She now has Raphael, three months, and in March, Bloomsbury is publishing her first novel, Egg Dancing. "Working for an organisation is cushy," says Liz. "You can always refer up. Having a baby means doing things yourself."

Women self-starters are the workers of the future, says Jo Gardiner of the Industrial Society. But, according to Professor Cary Cooper of the Manchester School of
Management, they are far less inclined than before to compromise their family lives - a phenomenon he looks at in The Workplace Revolution. Some companies are beginning to take what business guru Charles Handy calls "the doughnut approach" to their workforce; they have a small core of employees (the jam), contract out such things as catering, use part-timers for everyday work, and keep a select band of skilled professionals on contract for specialised tasks.

This "feminisation" of the workplace will be kinder to mothers than the old nine-to-five, male orientated environment. Meanwhile, women career-changers are learning to feel positive about themselves, their work and their children.

For more details on Home Run, send an s.a.e. to 79 Black Lion Lane

London W6 9BG (tel/fax 081-846 9244).