I was excited to read the headline of Sarah E. Needleman's blog yesterday on The Wall Street Journal Online: "Can Home-Based Entrepreneurs Be Stay-at-Home Parents, Too?" Like all creative types, I have myriad business ideas percolating on a daily basis and wonder how ambitious one can be as a SAHP (stay-at-home parent.) I know people, mostly moms, who work from home in varying degrees, but have at least part-time childcare. I have nobody to help me during the day and I do some freelance work from home. Right now I am stealing the time I should be spending writing a column on stock splits and cobbling a pitch about green energy. Michael Alexander has gone down for a nap and could wake in 20 minutes so I need to act fast on the keyboard. Yesterday he didn't nap at all and woke several times throughout the night, so I am taking this precious time to write while I can, sleep deprived and all. I haven't posted to Nommersland in so long I nearly abandoned it over guilt. But reading this WSJ post irked me enough to overcome any self-reproach.
Needless to say, I was needled by Needleman's post. "Christine Perkett, a mother of two, is usually home before and after her kids go to school. But she’s not your typical stay-at-home mom," writes Needleman. OK, I'm intrigued, even if I can't yet relate to a mom with school-aged kids. I'm also confused, wondering how a SAHP can sometimes not be home and still actively parenting. "Ms. Perkett, 40 years old, runs PerkettPR, a public-relations firm, out of her family’s Marshfield, Mass., home. When she started the company, she hired a nanny to take care of the kids while she’s on the clock. 'I needed a solution to dig into my work without feeling guilty,' she says, adding that she also requires her 20 employees, who also work from their homes, to make comparable arrangements if they have young kids." OK, I am pissed off! Perkett is NOT a a SAHP! She is using her likely sprawling South Shore home (judging from the photo of her kitchen) as an office. Perkett doesn't want to feel guilty? Hope she is paying her 20 employees enough to really offset the cost of providing all those nannies with a living wage.
Needleman reveals that "Ms. Perkett says parenting and working from home don’t mix. 'People think they’ll stick (their kids) in front of the TV,' she says, but adds that the move isn’t practical or fair. 'It’s nearly impossible to work productively and watch your children at the same time. And it’s not good for the child because they’re vying for your attention and they can’t get it.'" Now I'm fuming. Perkett assumes all SAHPs who do "outside" work are sticking their kids in front of a TV? I am typing on the MacBook Pro we bought to replace the one Michael Alexander knocked off my leg while I was writing a personal finance column when he was just a few weeks old. Sure, that "move" wasn't "practical or fair," especially in terms of the cost of replacing a laptop, but I wasn't neglecting my son while working.
As someone who contemplates the possibility of really becoming a SAHP entrepreneur (sans full-time childcare like Perkett), I'd like a breakdown of the startup costs and where she got the capital to pay 20 people's salaries. Launching a business like Perkett's isn't a reality for most people.
I am not out to vilify Perkett or any other entrepreneur or business owner. But I am calling out Needleman for classifying Perkett as a SAHP. Perkett gets props for her
savvy by saving on overhead and office costs by running her business from home. The blog post, which features a photo of the PR maven with her elementary school aged son and nanny, is raising kid(s) who spend most of the day in school, according to the lede. I know Needleman is banging out a couple of grafs on the quick just to fill a page, but by serving us just this little slice of Perkett's life, she dis-serving SAHPs like me who grapple with the guilt of "not working" by identifying Perkett as a SAHP.
Needleman also mentions "Jason King, also a home-based entrepreneur, (who) says his wife is a stay-at-home mom and takes care of their two kids during the workday. Still, he says he wouldn’t get much work done if he didn’t have a solid door blocking his basement office from the rest of his Odenton, Md., home." A solid door? I guess that means a hollow one wouldn't work. The founder and CEO of Accella LLC, a website and mobile-application developer, tells Needleman that “Being able to create some type of separation and a way for the kids to know their boundaries is important," and that without the door, his kids “would feel the freedom to come and go as they please,” adding that they’d also be a distraction if the door was made of clear glass. "They’d always be sitting outside looking in.” I guess you need to have a basement and live in suburbia where you can create a fortress from your offspring in order to build a business from home.
Needleman who signs off by asking "Readers, if you run your business from a home office and have kids, is a nanny or daycare necessary?" raises an important question with her lede, but falls short by giving us two examples of people who work from home but are anything but SAHPs. Instead of asking her readers if this is possible, perhaps she could have sought out someone who has actually tried to be a SAHP with a career or business venture. Instead, Needleman has simply produced another self-promoting link for Perkett's "In The News" section of her website. I'm not begrudging Perkett for her headline-hoarding, but I do knock Needleman for false advertising.
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