The Work At Home Moms Club
Many women have a change of career after becoming mothers.
Christine Leșcu, 27.07.2016, 00:01
Many women have a change of career after becoming mothers. After maternity leave, some choose to work from home. For all the mothers in this situation, the Work At Home Moms Association offers counseling and support. It was set up two and a half years ago, when founder Elena Gorun gave birth to her boy.
Spokeswoman Andra Todirita told us how they work and grow: We organize various events, workshops to let mothers know about their opportunities, how to register their work at home, and how to find solutions to problems they face. We also help them organize and network through Mama Connect, meetings where mothers meet and talk about what they do, and possibly work together. We also organize fairs on holidays. On that occasion, the members of the association present their products and services, and people outside the association can meet them and know about them. Sometimes we attract investors to support the projects the mothers design.
Many of the mothers working from home turn their passion into a business, be it designing jewelry, tailoring, cooking and painting. Others offer legal and financial advice, others are involved in various marketing or promotion projects. They stay at home mostly for the sake of the children, like Cristina Antonica, a member of the association.
She believes that most members choose to work from home because they can no longer relate to their previous existence, giving herself as an example: “My decision to work from home started with the birth of my second child, and I now have three kids. When I gave birth to my daughter I wanted to be close to her, and at the same time make myself useful. There is a preconceived idea that a stay-at-home-mother only takes care of the home and the child. In reality, in our times, a stay-at-home-mom wants professional satisfaction as well. I run a publishing house, and I do that from home. It is a small business which publishes childrens books and parenting books.
As a manager of editors and an editor herself, in addition to being a full time mother, Cristina has a challenge on her hands. The freedom to manage her own time constitutes a difficulty. Which is why Cristina shares her work with the children: “My kids are my partners. I offer them practical experience. I did not know how fascinating this world is for them before I got involved in this work. They love going to the printing workshop, they love touching the paper, looking how things move around. They go with me anywhere I need to go. We play together too. I mostly work at night. In fact, most mothers who work from home do that.
Andra Todirita, spokeswoman for the association, is herself a work-at-home mom. She told us it was not hard for her to give up her previous job, because working at home allows her to explore various facets of her personality: “I felt I needed something else. Since university I have felt an attraction to alternative medicine. When I got pregnant, as I noticed with other moms to be, a different world opened up to me, a more creative world. And since I had attended a training course during the years spent in the institute, I started using the knowledge gained there when the kid was born and once I had gone on maternity leave. Once I became a member of the Work At Home Moms Association, I had the opportunity to get involved and help other mothers tackle challenges better, by using their own resources. This is the niche I picked. It is a dialog I have with my clients, giving them the opportunity to discover their own solutions and see more clearly what they want for themselves. This is how they get to know what they have to do in the future.
Just like Cristina Antonica, Andra Todirita designs her schedule around her daughter, and when she can, she takes her to the meetings of the association. Andra holds courses there to help mothers in need of psychological counseling and moral support, and she told us about it: “They share their situation with other mothers, they have access to counseling, experts or therapists, to get over difficult situations, such as family trouble. Our association works with mothers in difficult situations, like single mothers or moms with insufficient incomes. We have a responsibility towards ourselves and our children to be more emotionally mature in order to cope with the challenges facing us, and prove to others that we can deal with whatever comes our way. The power of example is great, and if we can prove to our family that we can make things work, then we can change minds.
In spite of the fear that comes with giving up financial and professional safety, more and more mothers choose to work from home. They get to spend more time with the children, and they can also reinvent their lives.
