A Job to Fit Your Lifestyle: The Advantages of Working at Home for Single Parents

The traditional family model of one spouse working full time outside the home and the other spouse, us ually the 

mom, staying at home and caring for the children seems to have gone by the wayside somewhat in the last twenty years. And in a single parent situation, it is nothing short of impossible to work out such a program. But the need for a consistent adult caregiver in the home for your kids does not go away. So we have to find alternatives. 

There are a number of alternatives that can make sure your kids are cared for and allow you to continue to maintain income, which itself is a critical need of the house that doesn't go away just because you are a single parent home. Day care for your younger children is a well known alternative that works well for millions of single parent homes. Sometimes if you have older children who can care for the younger ones, they can become responsible enough to manage things between when school lets out and when you get home from work. And in town relatives can help out too. 

But even with these fine alternatives, many single moms and dads feel guilty driving off to work each day leaving their children in these alternative situations. The ideal situation would be if you could make a good living wage and work from home. You have heard of people who have worked out such programs so its easy to think, "Hey why not me?" 

Its fair question. Why not you indeed? The truth is that work at home arrangements have become more common than ever in the last ten to fifteen years. Some have even called it a work at home movement. So the real question is not if you can find a way to work at home and take care of the kids at the same time. The real question is how to find the right work at home job that you will enjoy doing and will pay the bills while giving you the freedom to care for the kiddos at home each day.

Before you start looking at "work at home" schemes that seem to make their way through the spam networks  

pretty often, don't overlook your day job. If you work in an office and stay in an office or c ubicle all day and use a 

computer a lot, your boss may be open to letting you do your job right at home. Right now in the business community, there is a huge push to let more employees work from home because it saves money for the company, it is a good "green" policy because it keeps the employee's car home and it is family friendly. 

Check with your HR department and you may be able to find a way to work at home all or some of your work week. Perhaps you will find a way to go to the office one or two mornings a week for meetings and other forms of interaction but then take the office work home to do in your home study. This is a fine compromise and if you can make that transition, you can keep your seniority and benefits with an employer that you are already working for. 

If you are "starting from scratch" in finding a career you can do from home, its always a good idea to look first to your skills and interests. For example, if you have always been good with animals, you can set up a very successful home based pet care service. If you have the space, you can board pets while people travel. This is a great way to make good use of that big back yard you have. And since caring for other people's pets only requires you interact with the animals a few hours a day, that leaves you lots of time to take care of your parental duties and still make a good income. 

When looking for a job that is a good fit to your home life, the internet does offer some great opportunities. Yes, it is important not to fall for any internet scams or get rich quick schemes. Many of the scams you see flood your inbox via spam are pyramid schemes that offer vast wealth but you have to pay to get a membership where they can help you set up a web site that basically continues to promote the pyramid scheme. A good rule of thumb is that if you have to pay to start working for someone from home, its probably a scam. Also remember that the internet is still a marketplace just like any other and to make an honest income online, you still have to offer good products and services that are created with nothing more than good old hard work.

But there are dozens of legitimate online employment services that are specifically focused on the work at home  

mom or dad and that will pay you a reasonable wage for your talents and hard work. In th e last few years the 

concept of a "virtual assistant" has become popular. If you can become someone's virtual assistant, you can work at home but handle emails, appointments, book travel for your "virtual boss" and even handle telephone communications, all as though you were in the office. But you are doing all of this work at home while being there for your children when they need you. 

Just about anything you can do in an office, you can do at home. Web page development, research and writing are outstanding applications of the work at home approach to making a good income while staying in your home office always there to be a full time mom or dad to your children. There are some highly respected and well run job boards such as Rent-a-Coder and Elance that consistently see real employers post work for people just like you on a job by job basis. 

Going this route you will become a "contractor" or consultant getting paid by the job. The good of this kind of work at home business is that if you have to run to the school in the middle of the day, that wont disturb your employer because you can do your work whenever it fits your schedule as long as you hit your deadlines. But downside is a contractor generally doesn't get benefits and it takes a lot of discipline to make a good income working job to job. Plus the time you spend bidding and marketing for new work is unpaid. So weigh the pros and cons of contract work well before launching your own business from home.