by Emily McDowell

Created on: January 15, 2010

Oh, how I miss the days when I was a working mom. Although I am fortunate enough to be a stay-at-home mom now while my daughter attends Kindergarten, it was only a few short months ago that I was keeping a daily hectic schedule of getting up at six to make myself presentable for work and then coaxing a four-year old to wake up and get dressed so that, “Mommy won't be late again.”

Anyone who has kids knows that it is no easy task to get them to follow a schedule. There is always some sort of delay or emergency with little ones, whether it is a temper tantrum, an accident (usually resulting in wet pants), or not wanting to stop watching a favorite television show…and the list goes on. Nine times out of ten, it is the mom who has to deal with these scenarios using any method to avoid or stop them – humor, bribery and diversions are three of my favorite.

These “morning holdups” often lead to the first myth I came to realize about working moms – that moms use their children as an excuse as to why they are sometimes late. Maybe that is true in a few cases, but for as for myself I panic when I am late for work. Watching the time in the car change from 9:00 to 9:01 always made my heart skip a beat as I thought about what my repercussions would be. Was my boss trying to call the office and no one was there to answer the phone? Was a client dialing our line with an urgent request and I was not available to help calm them down? I was never purposely late for work, as some of my coworkers believed. The reality was I just never knew how much time to take into account for getting my daughter ready in the morning.

The second myth is that working moms enjoy being away from their kids all day. Why else would a mom choose to go back into the workforce? The job that I held was as a project manager at an advertising agency, and the reality is that on any given day I would have gladly stayed home with my daughter, plus babysat three other children. The constant stress and deadlines that I dealt with everyday gave me a hundred times more migraines than I would have gotten by taking care of a house full of kids. Not that dealing with the demands of children all day is an easy task, but it can be just as frustrating dealing with the demands of impatient clients all day. However, I needed the extra income, so working was not an option. It was a necessity.

The third myth is that working moms will often use their kids as an excuse

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