Work-From-Home Moms Get Balance

Star Tribune:

As a communications consultant, Valerie Gunderson crafts messages for businesses and government agencies.
Except when she is taking care of some other important clients, of a sort — her two young sons.

“Everybody has meetings,” Gunderson said. “Sometimes mine are with my kids.”

Gunderson refers to herself as a “microbusiness mom,” balancing dual roles of running a home-based business and raising children. An early riser, Gunderson, 37, works several hours each morning before her sons, who are 9 months and 3 1/2, wake up.

Bringing business and parenting under one roof can pay off. Having entrepreneurial drive helps, Gunderson said, along with a desire for an alternative to the typical options of full-time day care or full-time parenting.

“Women tell me things like, ‘There is no such thing as work-life balance, there’s just a point where you come to peace with your choices,’” Gunderson said. “I’m sad when I hear them say that.”

She used $5,000 from savings to buy a computer and other home office equipment.

Clients include her former employer, the state Supreme Court; the Carlson School of Management, and the Humphrey Institute, both at the University of Minnesota. Revenue dropped last year, when she took six months off after she had her second child. The full-year figure ranges from $100,000 to $130,000, she said.

Gunderson said she sometimes goes months between trips to the gas station, making for a greener existence and less time stuck in traffic.

Photo by Valerie Gunderson.

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