I’m about to offend a lot of women who designate themselves as WAHMs – work-at-home moms. It’s not an intent to offend, and it’s not a character bashing. It’s some advice on how to market yourself. Start first by removing the WAHM from anything associated with your business.
Thank God for Scott Stratten. He posted a video blog post at Jessica Knows that is exactly what I’ve been dying to say for ages but was too chicken to do. Well if Scott will stick his neck out in order to help you, so will I.
Think about it – if you’re a mom (I am) and you work at home (I do), why exactly is that relevant to your job? My husband is a dad who works from home occasionally. What would he gain by saying so? What would he lose? What are you losing by telling everyone you’re able to stretch your time and you mingle business and personal? You don’t mix the two? Isn’t that what you’re saying when you say you’re a WAHM?
I remember sharing lunch with an HR rep at a major corporation. She was spilling some of her peeves. The biggest – women who bring up family in a job interview. She said she removes them from serious consideration because that’s someone who can’t separate business and family at the initial stage of the process. She said most HR reps find the mention of family as a sign the candidate is not fully committed to career goals, or won’t give 100 percent at work. (To emphasize the point, she said most men don’t even consider bringing up family in interviews. Those who do are not considered, either. Fair play, as she put it.)
You are a writer/designer/fill-in-the-blank. You are also a parent. You may be a daughter or a son or a favorite uncle/niece/cousin. But how any of these connections can possibly be relevant to your career or how you’re going to give your client what’s asked for is baffling to me. And to be honest, I’ve often felt the WAHM designation was a bit demeaning to women and I’m surprised women adopt it. You are a business owner. If you were a man, would you list yourself as a WAHD? If you cared for an elderly parent, would you think anyone would hire you because you’re a WAHC (work at home caregiver)? Do you understand why this can be harming you by creating a duality to your existence, thus splitting emphasis when it comes to your career?
Before you argue that telling the world you can multitask is the entire point of the designation, consider this: you have a ton of life lessons. Where you learned them is of no consequence. Would anyone care to know if I’d learned how to negotiate during a lengthy divorce proceeding? Or if my relationship with my parents is strong or tenuous? Does it matter that I come from a family of five or fifty?
What matters, what will always matter, is what you can do for the client. Don’t harm your chances by making yourself out to be a less viable, less serious candidate.
All WAHMs – I love you all. Really. I am one. That’s why I hope you’ll take this post in the spirit it’s intended. Calling yourself a writer and a mom in your marketing isn’t benefiting you as you’d hoped. More than likely, it’s harming you.
Thoughts?
I agree totally.
Also, those who use the WAHM designation are more likely to take the $5/article mill jobs that drag us all down.
Professional business people balance work and family needs; if an emergency comes up, they go to the boss, discuss it behind closed doors, and the situation is handled. They don’t walk in stating, “I want you to hire me, but you have to work around my schedule.”
Well, maybe they do, but there are plenty of places who won’t hire. NO matter what your obligations are outside of work, you’re hired TO DO THE WORK within the parameters set by those paying you.
Freelancing gives you more freedom, but it also means you have to prove you’re worth the risk.
It’s not just WAHM — I can’t tell you how often I’ve worked at companies where women spend the bulk of their time on the phone dealing with family matters, arrive late and leave early because of family matters (not emergencies, mind you, but just daily family matters), and don’t get the work done, because, as more than one has put it, “I have a life and a family. Those without one can stay and finish things up.”
This kind of attitude hurts the truly professional women who are juggling both and stretched to the max, because a company who’s been taken advantage of by a previous working mother is not going to be so quick to hire another one –even if that person keeps the boundaries clear.
There are always exceptions and emergencies, but too often, the boundaries aren’t honored. When you’re hired to do a job, you’re hired to do a JOB. If you can work out flex time or partial telecommuting or whatever, great, but don’t expect everyone else in the company to pick up your slack ALL the time JUST because you have a family. All of us have obligations and responsibilities outside of work. And we cope.
Or we find a different job that lets us cope.
Great food for thought here. Maybe lots of moms use the WAHM designation to let others know they are not available to work fulltime? With writing it’s easier; ya just put Freelance Writer on the application or say it in an interview, and you get the same kind of message across. Did that make sense? Getting more coffee…
Even if WAHMs don’t take the $5 article mill jobs (many do not), I worry that the mention of family affects their chances and, frankly, their pay rate. It also affects the market value of all of us.
Perfect sense, Angie. 🙂
I really never thought about it, but you do make a valid point. Makes me want to go edit all my bios. 🙂
Oh, Lori sweetie, You’ve started something today! And I also agree 100%.
I’ve had a couple of clients surprised to find out that I have children because I never mention it when doing business. I’m dedicated to my family and my business. It’s one of the reason’s I love working for myself so much.
But it’s also VERY important that I as a writer and my business be taken seriously; and in my humble opinion that can’t happen if clients hear my kids arguing in the background over the last cookie.
It’s very true that there are people looking to take advantage of “desperate, naive, WAHM’s.” On a certain Internet forum (which shall remain nameless…), an Internet marketer wrote and successfully sold out of copies of a report instructing other IM’s how to get good, CHEAP content writers for $3/500 word article at the WAHM.com writers forum. I’ve seen writers promote themselves as WAHM’s on their business websites, and I’ve often wondered how it helped, or hurt, their business. Shoot – Now I need to go out and buy some new speakers so that I can see (and HEAR) Scott Stratten’s video…
I work much better when I keep my personal life seperate from business. That’s just me though.
It’s like this – you’d never bring work into your mom duties. The reverse should be the same.
Michelle, I love ya. 🙂 I had no idea you marketed yourself with the WAHM designation. Glad you’re re-thinking it. :))
Lori, I agree with you that the WAHM designation is not a good image for marketing yourself. I think the implication is that you are a stay-at-home mom first, and simply take odd (read: low-paying) jobs to make a little pin money. But I don’t think you need to hide that you are a mom.
For instance, I have a client who is always asking what my husband and I are up to, if I have any new horse stories for her, etc. (Not being a mom yet, the horse stories are about the closest I come.) Not all of them want to hear about my personal life, and I respect that, but I still won’t hesitate to mention my family in passing if it is pertinent. For instance, many of my clients know I’m turning in work early or need to be paid quickly this month, because my husband and I are going on vacation.
However, this statement troubles me in a major way:
The biggest – women who bring up family in a job interview. She said she removes them from serious consideration because that’s someone who can’t separate business and family at the initial stage of the process.
That’s illegal workplace discrimination, to remove someone from consideration because they are a mom. And she can’t defend herself by saying it’s only if they tell her they’re a mom, because how else would she know? She’s removing them as soon as she finds out. To make matters worse, she specifically said women — so it’s okay if men mention their family?
While I agree that advertising yourself as a WAHM is not terribly professional, I also think that we need to be careful that we don’t promote this momaphobia that our society seems to harbor. There’s a balance to be struck here, and neither extreme is ideal.
Actually, she also said that it applied to men, as well. Fair play and all, according to her. But she said she saw this as something very prevalent among women. And she removed them from consideration when they brought up family in an interview not because they’re moms, but because their attentions were already diverted from the job by their own words. I think that’t totally acceptable logic. This woman is a mom, too, so I don’t think she’s anti-mom.
It’s not about promoting a negative image of moms – it’s about separating business from personal, and we should all do it. I love my family more than my work, but I’m not going to mingle them for any reason. As you said, Katharine, if the clients ask, yes, that’s fine. But to MARKET as a WAHM is creating a slant that some clients don’t get or won’t want to bother to understand.
I’m glad she doesn’t hold women and men to different standards. It still bugs me, though, and I still say it’s illegal. Her logic may SOUND like good sense, but it’s still discrimination again parents.
About the idea of writers marketing themselves as WAHMs, though, I completely agree with you.
That may be true, Katharine. Luckily, her company is history. Went down in the Enron scandal.
Katherine, I’m not sure that what the HR person is doing is illegal. I’m an attorney, and the rule is that employers can’t ask about marital/family status in an interview. If interviewees bring the topic up, the HR person has done no wrong. As to considering that factor in the decision, because the HR person treats both moms and dads the same (both are DQ’d if they can’t separate home from work life), again, I’m not sure what illegal activity is taking place.
Totally agree with the whole post, Lori! My single friends and I used to be irritated in the workplace when we’d have to take business trips because the parents didn’t want to leave their kids. Hey, same job, same responsibilities! I had to arrange and pay for care for my dog in the same way a parent had to do for a child.
Thanks for the input, Gabriella. Very interesting. My husband often interviews and hires new employees for his department in a large corporation, and he says he always dreads an interviewee (particularly a woman) bringing up family, because it means he has to tread much more carefully if he decides not to hire them.
Perhaps it’s not as clear-cut as his company leads them to believe. I suppose they may well be making sure there aren’t any potential lawsuits by making sure their hiring managers err on the side of caution.
Lori, you cracked me up with your “Luckily, her company is history” comment. :o)
Katharine (sorry for misspelling your name earlier!), don’t get me wrong. Yes, there’s a fine line between what’s legal and not legal to consider in hiring. But lots of companies do the wrong thing!
I once interviewed a company owner about what to ask in an interview (before I even became an attorney), and the guy said he asked if women were married. I said, “Um, I think that might be illegal.” The guy said, “Oh, yeah, I ask all the illegal questions.”
Knowingly, Intentionally. Illegal.
Yikes!
Gabriella, what a story! And to tell that to an interviewer… I’d say he wasn’t too bright, either.
I know it’s not uncommon, which is probably why it bugs me so much. The small technical writing firm I used to work for hired only young women fresh out of college — they discarded all the men’s and older women’s resumes without even looking at them. Our boss even told one of my coworkers once that he only hired young women because they were easier to control than men. And he’s right — I don’t think most men would have put up with him, but many women are raised to roll with the punches, so to speak.
I suppose that experience is why I’m extra sensitive to these kinds of things. The thing that gets me about this woman is that while she may claim to treat men and women equally, women are more often the kids’ primary caregiver, and therefore more likely to talk about them. In a way it’s kind of like saying, “I won’t hire anyone who wears pink, whether they are a man or a woman,” when we all know most men don’t wear pink!
I actually think it’s smart for the WAHMs to market themselves to one another. People generally like working with others who are much like themselves.
Having said that, it’s a limiting marketing strategy and I think WAHMs will expand their opportunities by also marketing to a more general audience.
Also, it’s a clique-ish circle and as a single gal with no kids, I often don’t feel welcome in their playground because it’s not just about writing or freelancing – it’s about “we are parents,” which is fine but definitely not very inclusive and certainly takes the main focus off the profession.
Then again, I’m not a parent so I don’t pretend to understand some parents’ need to completely define themselves as such. I do respect it though and admire how difficult and rewarding parenthood is.
Hey, maybe I should start WAHA (Work At Home Aunties). Heheh.
Love it, Melissa. :))
Gabriella and Katharine, thanks for a lively discussion! And thanks for giving us some clarity on that issue, Gabriella. Much appreciated.
I worked at a restaurant once where the boss was interviewing for an open position. A woman came in with all the skills. She didn’t get the job. Moreover, he rejected her the minute she walked out, and wrote this on her application: “Fat slob.” One of the assistants destroyed the application. But Gabriella, isn’t it true that there are no laws protecting a person of size in the workplace?
The boss was eventually fired. Gee – wonder why? And I held little respect for the assistant for covering for him like that.
Katharine, forgot to tell you the best part – her company? Arthur Andersen. Ironic that they’d go down in scandal with that mindset. 🙂
Lori, you’re right that there are no protections for overweight people. Though California may have adopted some rules since I last checked.
Katharine, you’re good. Now you’re making a disparate impact claim, which has a better chance of winning. What you’re essentially saying is that if you create rules that look gender neutral, but their impact is far greater on one gender, the rules are the same as if you’d just had a rule affecting one gender.
Lori, funny you mention that it was Arthur Anderson that had the rule about men/women and families. Arthur Anderson was the subject of one of the earliest gender discrimination suits. The woman wasn’t “one of the guys” and didn’t make partner. The guys thought she was a little unattractive and essentially a bee-yotch. She sued, and won.
Karma, baby!
Karma indeed! That’s wild.
Katharine, I totally agree with you. The practice is for crap – you can’t reject someone offhand for it, but they do. And it sucks. I love that you’ve brought all this up, though. Gabriella’s taught us something here!
Gabriella, I didn’t know about the AA suit. It rings a bell, but perhaps at that time there was a lot of that going on. I remember a radio station in Pittsburgh being sued because one of their DJs – a woman – complained about the way her two male counterparts taunted her on the air. The station did nothing, and I was listening the next day as they taunted her over the airwaves – “You forgot your medication!” They paid. Big time. And they both lost their jobs, but it took a public outcry like nobody’s business for that to happen.
Back on topic, I’ve felt for a while that designating oneself in any dual role – WAHDs included – effectively splits your abilities in half, creates a dual focus, and puts doubt in the mind of the client that this person fits. It’s the fit part. Like Melissa said earlier, she never felt welcome to the WAHM party. Imagine that same feeling in a client approaching your website.
I meant to say that she either left or was fired and the taunting on the air about the medication happened the next day. Sorry. Too early, too little tea. 🙂
When I came back to the business world after working in non-profits and started a business from home, I was ashamed of having a home office and tried to hide this. It became liberating to finally begin to become more “integrated” and to not have to always separate my work life from my home life. My work was excellent even if some of it was produced while breastfeeding — now I didn’t think THIS was something I needed to share.
I think that women who choose to designate themselves as WAHM’s are helping to revolutionize work life. For years men have separated work and home life often to the detriment of their family life and their wholeness as human beings — which has in some ways contributed to dehumanizing the work place. I am happy to see more and more men mention their families in interviews (I’m a recruiter) and it always makes me think they are more whole and real.
I believe that people who designate themselves as WAHM’s may be making it clear that they are integrating family and work, and if they do this successfully then it will open more doors of opportunity and creative structuring of work life in the long run. I believe that it is courageous and bold. So much of the marketplace has been shaped by men. I think men are great but their domination of the marketplace is in part of what has shaped it and its dehumanizing elements.
Perhaps it is time to reinvent the marketplace and these WAHM’s are just one of the sources of this change — creating more freedom for men as well to embrace more fully their multiple roles and become less fragmented as human beings.
I have clients who place a high priority on work/life balance. If a candidate brings up family in the interview, this is a sign to me that they may fit within a particular client’s culture. It is smart for a candidate to bring this up because if this is going to be a know-out factor, its good to it out of the way up front.
If the interviewer rules someone out because he/she mentions family, this says much more about the interviewer than the person. Also, what is the value system that the interviewer has bought into?
So much for writing late at night and not editing first. I meant to say “knock-out factor” not “know-out factor” and the following phrase should read “it’s good to get it out of the way up front.”
Very interesting post and comment string.
Being a business owner, who also happens to be a mom, who also happens to have her office in her home, who also happens to work with women who are business leaders and owners and moms…here’s my thoughts…
I do think that those who define themselves as s WAHM do so because they are primarily doing their work while also doing motherhood…often trying to do both at the same time.
One of the key things that I stress to the clients I work with who do work out of their homes is that they MUST designate some time when they are 100% focused on their business. So many are not. They truly are trying to juggle motherhood and work always…all at the same time. You end up feeling not fully present or productive in either.
If you really want to be taken seriously, get paid what you want, build a referral base, then it’s important to create some boundaries around your personal life and professional life. I am all for “blending” the two–that’s what I help women do everyday–but the idea is to structure it in a way that allows you to feel present and productive, as much as you can, in each area.
Whew! Sorry for my long delay in responses, everyone. My husband and I went on a trip to Europe, and just got back Saturday night. I have a lot to catch up on!
Gabriella, it’s neat to know my logic is on the right track. :o) Funny about the AA case, too!
Lori, it also seems the WAHMs have finally discovered your post. I also think Donna and Nicola have missed the point. It’s not about pretending your not a mom — I agree totally that family needs to be a more accepted reality in the workplace, rather than expecting people to pretend they are married to their job. However, I also think there is a big difference between fair and accepting, and marketing yourself as a mother. You can create an organization and do business with one another with that understanding that family is okay, WITHOUT marketing yourself to the rest of the world as a WAHM. The latter seems overly defensive, if you ask me.
I just stumbled on to this post. I realize it's a whole year and a half old, but I wanted to say that you should feel free to bring it up again.
WAHM used to be a nice supportive community for people to connect with each other. But, I started to see a new trend. Affiliate Marketers have figured out that there's a way to use this to make loads of money. Unfortunately, that's where the marketing comes into play.
This cult, as I like to put it, has gotten so out of hand it's not even funny. There's nothing I hate more than asking someone what they do for a living and their reply is, "I'm a work at home mom".(Is that a new type of job?) Then there are those who state, "I'm proud of being a work at home mom!" Really? I'm proud of being a mom and proud of being a writer-period. The fact that I work from a home office means nothing.