Supermom – Balancing Home, Family, and Work

Balancing home, family, and work is a difficult task any way you look at it, and truthfully I don't think it's any less difficult for men. However, I do think there is more social pressure for women to live up to standards of a Supermom – moms that appear to have it all together, work all day, shuttle their kids to soccer practice, bake cookies for bake sales, cook dinner every night, AND keep their house spotless.

Not only that but I believe the pressure is even more intense for those of us that work from home. After all, we can't possibly be working ALL DAY. Can we? I think I've mentioned before that even my husband buys into this occasionally, and I just sweetly point out that he probably wouldn't get half as much done at work if he had five kids hanging off his arms for the better part of the day.

Mandi jokingly refers to me as Supermom occasionally, but I'll be the first to tell you I am NOT Supermom. My kids have been known to eat Pop-Tarts for lunch in a pinch and stay in their jammies all day. Even though I bake a mean chocolate chip walnut cookie, I'm not above sending my kids to school with store bought cookies when I'm just too worn out to stay up all night baking. My house is rarely spotless, and in fact, it's only straightened up to my liking for exactly eight hours a day, which coincidentally are the eight hours that my kids are sleeping and no one outside of DH and I will see it of course!

If some of you out there do manage to do it all, I commend you, but I think for the vast majority of us this is an unattainable goal. I beat myself up about this for a long time until one day it suddenly occurred to me that I had better things to focus on. There will be plenty of time for keeping a neat and tidy house when the kids are grown and gone, so rather than dwell on my shortcomings, I should prioritize according to the wants, needs, and goals that are best for me and my family rather than the little box that society wants to squeeze me into.

So what does this have to do with transcription? I guess it's not related directly, but I want other moms that work from home, moms that are thinking about working from home, even those of you that don't have kids to know that it's okay to admit that you're not perfect and that balancing it all is incredibly difficult.

Over the next month or so I'll be writing about some simple and realistic ideas that you can implement in each of these areas – home, family, and work – to help you achieve more balance overall.

We may not be Supermoms, dads, women, or men, but we can still strive to find a level of balance that we are comfortable with and that best fits our lives and our families!