That being said, I also know where my desire for wanting to work stems from: my mother. She, too, has run her own business for almost 40 years now. ALl of the stuff i know and desire is pretty much because I grew up with it. If my business is as successful as my mother’s, then I will consider my own business to be a success.

But I do think the difference between me and the “play-acting” version of things is that I completely understand (and am very thankful) that I don’t need to work. But if I didn’t, I don’t know what I’d do with myself. I don’t have to work because I need the money, I have to work because if I didn’t, I would literally go insane. This business is much more to me that just “something to do” – it’s my passion, my creative outlet, and because it brings in money for extra income (which, in this economy, has been relied on more than it ever has in the past) I don’t feel like I’m not pulling my own weight in the home. I do this because I love it. If I didn’t have it, I don’t know what I would do.

I don’t think knowing whether it is that I work from home, with kids, is really that important of a selling point that I need to use it to market myself. Personally, me personal life is that – personal. A client doesn’t need to know unless that actually need to know. Just like … doe sit matter if you’re gay? Do you need to play up the fact that you are gay to get business? No? Then why bring it up? Why market that? Same thing if you’re a minority – do you need to market that fact? Or would you rather be hired on your own merits? For me, I’d rather be hired, and market, the idea that I do what I do because I love what I do, and I’m good at it. Nothing else should matter.

Unfortunately a lot of WAHMs are just that. They are running hobby businesses, but they like the play-acting of being professional businesswomen. They don’t *have* to work, whereas you and me work because we have a passion for what we do and electricity bills to pay. The gulf in understanding between these two types of WAHMs can’t be crossed.

I think, then, it’s important not to play up one’s WAHMiness if only because so many WAHMs present a very poor image for it. If businesses sometimes take a dim view of WAHMs, is it any wonder?