A Week in the Life of Working Moms: A Series from CorporetteMoms.com

Working moms share a week in their lives, including work-life balance tips from a wide variety of careers. These are ALL of the installments of our very popular interview series, "Week in the Life of a Working Mom," in which we talk to various moms from across the US in various walks of life about their childcare, work-life balance, mom hacks, and more. Some easy tags if you're looking for something particular -- click these links to take you to the interviews with these particular features:

Childcare

nanny • au pair • SAHD • daycare • preschool • grandparents

Mom's Career

lawyer • doctor • project manager • executive/manager • other

About the Kids

only child • two kids • 3+ kids • toddler • elementary school • teen • athlete

Where Mom Lives & Works

Midwest • Southern US • West • Northeast

Mom's Lifestyle

travels often • work from home often

Picture via Shutterstock / Photographee.eu.

Week in the Life of a Working Mom: Contract Negotiator in the Midwest

05/31/2018 by Guest Poster 13 Comments

For this week’s installment of our Week in the Life of a Working Mom series, I’m happy to introduce CorporetteMoms reader Lala, who lives in the Midwest with her husband and two sons and works as a contract negotiator. Our usual caveat applies: Please remember that this is is a real person who has feelings and isn’t gaining anything from this, unlike your usual friendly (soul-deadened, thick-skinned, cold-hearted, money-grubbing) blogger — so please be kind with any comments. Thank you! – Kat

If you’d like to be featured (anonymously or otherwise), please fill out this form! You can see all posts in this series here.

First, Some Basics About This Working Mom…

Name: Lala
Location: MCOL town in the Midwest
Job: contract negotiator at a large company
Age: 31
Home Situation: I live in a 1,800-square-foot, 3-bedroom/2-bath house with my husband (35-year-old programmer), our sons P (3 yrs. 11 mos.) and J (1 yr. 8 mos.), and our large dog. The kids share a room.
Childcare Situation: full-time daycare center, $2,300 per month

A Week in My Life

Week in the Life of a Working Mom: Business Manager in Boston

05/17/2018 by Guest Poster 25 Comments

For this week’s installment of our Week in the Life of a Working Mom series, I’m happy to introduce CorporetteMoms reader K, who lives in the Boston suburbs with her husband and son and works as a business manager in tech. Our usual caveat applies: Please remember that this is is a real person who has feelings and isn’t gaining anything from this, unlike your usual friendly (soul-deadened, thick-skinned, cold-hearted, money-grubbing) blogger — so please be kind with any comments. Thank you! – Kat

If you’d like to be featured (anonymously or otherwise), please fill out this form! You can see all posts in this series here.

First, Some Basics About This Working Mom…

Name: K
Location: Lives and works in a Boston suburb
Job: Business manager in tech
Age: 32
Hours worked in a typical week: 35–44
Home Situation: I live in a 2,500-square-foot house with my husband (engineer in biotech); our 9-month old son, C; and our cat.
Childcare Situation: $1,200/month. We have a unicorn childcare situation: a licensed, in-home provider in our neighborhood who watches C and two other babies his same age. It is essentially a nanny share, but at a fraction of the cost.

We asked K about how she arrived at her “unicorn” arrangement for childcare:

Mostly by luck, sorry to say, there is no magic secret. We toured several big-name centers, one independent center, and two in-home providers — in our area there is no shortage. I do recommend checking with your state’s child care licensing agency when looking for in-home providers, because many do not advertise. That’s how we found ours, but it was purely luck that all her kids were “graduating” to pre-K and she was starting with two other babies C’s age. And because of mandated ratios, she can’t take any more kids right now. We also got lucky that we click really well with the other families and the kids all have similar temperaments.

A Week in My Life

Week in the Life of a Working Mom: A Marketing Director in the Bay Area

05/03/2018 by Guest Poster 30 Comments

For this week’s installment of our Week in the Life of a Working Mom series, I’m happy to introduce CorporetteMoms reader C, who lives in the Bay Area suburbs with her husband and two kids and works as marketing director. Our usual caveat applies: Please remember that this is is a real person who has feelings and isn’t gaining anything from this, unlike your usual friendly (soul-deadened, thick-skinned, cold-hearted, money-grubbing) blogger — so please be kind with any comments. Thank you! – Kat

If you’d like to be featured (anonymously or otherwise), please fill out this form! You can see all posts in this series here.

First, Some Basics About This Working Mom…

Name: C
Location: Lives and works in the suburbs of the Bay Area
Job: Marketing director for a mid-size consumer goods company
Age: 37
Hours worked in a typical week: 35–44
Home Situation: I live in a 2,400-square-foot home with my husband (39-year-old finance director), our kids (5-year-old daughter, 3-year-old son), and our 13-year-old cat.
Childcare Situation: Daughter goes to after-school care and son is in preschool full time, $1,700/month

A Week in My Life

Week in the Life of a Working Mom: In-House at a Large Corporation

04/19/2018 by Guest Poster 28 Comments

For this week’s installment of our Week in the Life of a Working Mom series, I’m happy to introduce CorporetteMoms reader Em, who lives in a small Midwestern city with her husband and son and works as in-house counsel for a corporation. Our usual caveat applies: Please remember that this is is a real person who has feelings and isn’t gaining anything from this, unlike your usual friendly (soul-deadened, thick-skinned, cold-hearted, money-grubbing) blogger — so please be kind with any comments. Thank you! – Kat

If you’d like to be featured (anonymously or otherwise), please fill out this form! You can see all posts in this series here.

First, Some Basics About This Working Mom…

Name: Em
Location: A small city in the Midwest
Job: In-house attorney for a corporation
Age: 31
Hours worked in a typical week: 35–44
Home Situation: I live in a 2,500-square-foot house with my husband (32-year-old project manager for a construction company), our son T (2-year-old), our two dogs (and occasional foster dogs), and our pet rabbit.
Childcare Situation: Daycare center 40 hours a week, $900/month

A Week in My Life

Week in the Life of a Working Mom: Corporate Auditor in Texas

03/28/2018 by Guest Poster 20 Comments

For this week’s installment of our Week in the Life of a Working Mom series, I’m happy to introduce CorporetteMoms reader C, who lives in New Mexico with her husband and two daughters and works as a corporate auditor. Our usual caveat applies: Please remember that this is is a real person who has feelings and isn’t gaining anything from this, unlike your usual friendly (soul-deadened, thick-skinned, cold-hearted, money-grubbing) blogger — so please be kind with any comments. Thank you! – Kat

If you’d like to be featured (anonymously or otherwise), please fill out this form! You can see all posts in this series here.

First, Some Basics About This Working Mom…

Name: C
Location: Lives in New Mexico, works in Texas
Job: Corporate auditor, 45–60 hours/week
Age: 37
Home Situation:

I live in a 4,000-square-foot home with my husband (family medicine), our two daughters (ages 8 and 4), and our dog.

Childcare Situation:

Our children attend an after school program twice per week, and Grandma picks them up from school three days per week (and taxis them to after school activities).

School tuition: approx. $6,000 per child per year. After school program: varies, depends on our use (payment is on a per-hour basis). Grandma is compensated for gas and given a credit card for expenses incurred on behalf of the kids — she uses this to buy the kids dinner, snacks, pay for events, purchase supplies they may need, etc.

A Week in My Life

Week in the Life of a Working Mom: Doctor in NYC

03/15/2018 by Guest Poster 39 Comments

For this week’s installment of our Week in the Life of a Working Mom series, I’m happy to introduce CorporetteMoms reader G, who lives in Westchester County with her husband and four kids (and an au pair) and works in NYC as a private practice physician. Our usual caveat applies: Please remember that this is is a real person who has feelings and isn’t gaining anything from this, unlike your usual friendly (soul-deadened, thick-skinned, cold-hearted, money-grubbing) blogger — so please be kind with any comments. Thank you! – Kat

If you’d like to be featured (anonymously or otherwise), please fill out this form! You can see all posts in this series here.

First, Some Basics About This Working Mom…

Name: G
Location: Live in Westchester County and work in NYC
Job: private practice physician
Age: 40
Home Situation: Live in a 2,500-square-foot townhouse with my husband (52, BigLaw partner) our kids (son, 10, with ADD and dyslexia; daughter, 7; son, 4; and son, 20 months), and our au pair. The three boys share a room.
Childcare Situation: Au pair plus a part-time sitter for a total of 61 hours per week. $460 per week in stipend and pay, plus about $9,000 in au pair fees and about $10,000 for nursery school for the two little guys.

Stock photo via Shutterstock / pathdoc.