Even when the kids are older, they are a distraction. This last summer when my 15-year-old daughter was home all the time while I worked, my QA numbers nearly went down the porcelain commode. I didn't even see that coming, had no idea I was making so many errors until the QA reports hit on the 1st of the following month.

Since school has started, I am happy to report, the distractions are far fewer and I can actually concentrate through an entire report with no interruption. My QA score has quickly recovered.

It's been awhile since my kids were little, but I cannot imagine being able to do the job with young ones under my supervision.

(Okay, Linda, at least until the next person demands to see my Mommy certificate.)

Heh, heh; infancy is relatively easy (at least once they start letting you sleep a little at night) once you figure out the sleep, eat, poop schedule and how to papoose them somehow for the feedings. It's when they get mobile that the real hell starts. I'd rather take care of 6 infants than one toddler any day, let alone a bigger kid going through a major sulky stage. Good luck on the homeschooling. Maybe you can trade kids with a neighbor and each homeschool each other's? They'll usually listen to not-my-parent people better than their parents for some reason. (Which was one of the main reasons for turfing them out to schools in the first place, back when schools still had teachers that taught.)

Yeah, I'll admit the general attitudes expressed about WAHM over the years make me grouchy. To me, it's kind of like talking to your best friend about what pigs fat people are, while ignoring that your friend is obese. "Oh, but you're not THAT way!"

Everyone who knows me well knows I love to play blackjack. Well, I used to get mad at the people who play like boneheads - until I read the web site of a statistician. He points out that over time, these people don't affect whether you win or lose - and players forget all the times those bonehead moves actually helped the table win the hand.

I think MT is very similar. The flaky mother might stand out in our memory - but we forget all the times the single people flaked, or the number of times we went to the WAHM we could always depend on to get the job done.

In all honesty, and not to pick a fight, that would depend very much on what you mean by "the job." Yes, no argument, some WAHMs are indeed very reliable about getting their scheduled work done and in on time come hell or high water. OTOH, a mother, working at home or elsewhere, is not a very good bet when you need someone to cover a major holiday, come in on her weekend off, work unscheduled overtime, or deliver in other emergency work crises. In my whole working career, in and out of the house, it's almost always been the single, or at least the childless, who have had to be relied on to do most of the heavy lifting in those situations. And that's not a potshot at mothers; it's just a recognition of the fact that most working mothers of young children are already stretched about as far as they can go in three different directions; they're not in a position to give more time when they don't have enough time for what they're already doing. It's a big issue in some job situations. For most of my working life, because of the kind of job I worked, most women left the department at the point they were contemplating marriage or at least pregnancy; they all did by the time they actually had a small child, even the ones who insisted they were going to be staying. It just wasn't workable for them after a while, even if they had live-in grandma at home. MT is a job much more suited to doing while raising a family, but it still isn't usually the gal with a couple of toddlers underfoot who's going to be riding to the big backlog rescue; at least not in my experience.

On the other hand, I have an instructor who always gets her work done on time. She has 4 children. She works before they get up and after they are in bed. When she had the last one, she took off work 1-1/2 days. I don't advocate that or set it up as a model of what people 'should' do, but I was impressed. I sure wouldn't do it but I'm certainly glad she did.

I'm going to guess that she probably has a fairly good idea just what work she's going to have to get through on a daily basis as well as being able to schedule it to a convenient time, though. I don't dispute a mother of small children can be a very reliable worker, even your most reliable worker sometimes, particularly in a situation where that work is predictable and can be done at scheduled hours of her choice. However, your example paragon would undoubtedly have had a hard time of it if you had suddenly had to ask her to crank out 3 hours of concentrated work midday.

That's one reason I pointed out the difference between taking a job typing clinic work for a personal client or a small MTSO that will give 24 or 48 hours to get it done versus going to work for one of the big nationals doing acute care who these days frequently want people scheduled to a fixed shift. It's going to be a lot tougher for a mother of small children to find herself a workable schedule in the second scenario.

Before I add my .02 to this topic I wanted to add this disclaimer - I am not a mother . . . probably never will be because of a medical condition I have. I started working from home in 2003 taking inbound calls for West Telemarketing, and since then have worked from home doing several different types of things - mostly phone work, but I also have done some data entry-type work. When I started working from home it was for economic reasons - my medical condition (epilepsy) makes it hard for me to get a driver's license, so it was more economical for me to get a job from home than it was for me to pay cab fare to go to and from a job outside the home. I am currently doing phone work for a company that has a very flexible work schedule - I can work anytime I want to during their business hours (9 am - 11 pm et 7 days a week) as long as I get in at least 32 hours a week. I have many co-workers who are mothers - and they will work when their kids are sleeping, at school, etc. As a matter of fact, my team leader is a mother, plus she's working on her master's degree, training new sales agents, plus helping people like me who are already trained . . . anyway, the whole point of this spiel is that a lot of it has to do with self-discipline. I realize that a lot of companies that don't provide this same type of flexibility, but it seems to me (maybe I'm wrong here, please let me know if I am), that if you let your supervisor know upfront that you have children and also have to take their needs into consideration, that they should work with you on that, especially if you work from home. I mean that is WHY a lot of people work from home is so they can be at home with their kids.

Oh and by the way, I am not a medical transcriptionist yet - I am working on my last course with Penn Foster though, and hope to continue working from home once I graduate. So if anyone knows of any work from home companies that hire entry-level medical transcriptionists, please let me know.

Erica

"but it seems to me (maybe I'm wrong here, please let me know if I am), that if you let your supervisor know upfront that you have children and also have to take their needs into consideration, that they should work with you on that, especially if you work from home. I mean that is WHY a lot of people work from home is so they can be at home with their kids."

But, see, that is the problem. I don't consider applicants' children my business -- that discussion does not belong in the interview process, and it is not my problem to work with anybody on their personal situation. Somebody who already works with me? Heck yeah, I would bend over backwards. But your kids and their soccer practice and naps have nothing to do with the work that needs to be done.

IMO if you have kids and they come first, it is up to you to find your niche, find a place to work that will let you have that flexibility, but it is not the problem of the person you will be working with.

Working at home to be with your kids is the wrong reason (in my own personal opinion) to be a medical transcriptionist. That could be because I don't think I could ever be productive with a bunch of kids running around.

Very true. That's why before anyone applies anywhere, they should do their homework, come to place like this message board, etc, to find out which companies offer the flexibility that they need.

"Working at home to be with your kids is the wrong reason (in my own personal opinion) to be a medical transcriptionist. That could be because I don't think I could ever be productive with a bunch of kids running around."

Ok, what I meant was that a lot of people work from home to be with their kids . . . that's not the reason why they get into medical transcription. Like you said previously, people need to find their niche with regards to where they work, how much flexibility they need, etc - whether they're working from home doing medical transcription or something else. Over the past six years that I've been working from home, I've worked for companies that offer very flexible schedules (like the company I'm working for now), and those that offer not-so-flexible schedules. Of course, I stuck with the companies that offer more flexible schedules for longer - even though I don't have children, flexibility is still important to me, especially right now since I'm also in school. Again, that's why before a person applies somewhere, they need to do their homework and find out which companies offer that flexibility.

Anyway I think I've expressed my opinion enough on this topic. I'm shutting up - for now anyway

Erica

Yep. I have been in this argument many, many times since I got on the internet in 1994.

That said, my kids were big when I came home to work, and they were very involved in outside things. I had peace and quiet at home for the most part. We lived out in the country. My husband's auto repair shop was on our land. My son's race car was built in that shop. My daughter was a competitive rider and got off the school bus every day at the barn. My husband cooked dinner. I had it really lucky.